Nitpick, "Windows Native Development" also refers to the NT native subsystem, which would be basically coding against private APIs instead of Win32. From the title I thought that's what this was. Then I realized it was about avoiding full use of Visual Studio when building C projects (something that a lot of people already do by the way)
I fixed Windows native development
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Re: I fixed Windows native development
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keeping CI entirely out of windows desktop development is the biggest efficiency and cost improvement I've seen in the last 15 years. Our CI toolchain broke so we moved back to a release manager doing it manually. It takes him 20x less time to build it and distribute it (scripted) than it does to maintain the CI pipeline and his desktop machine is several times faster than any cloud CI node we can get hold of. Edit:…
This is really interesting. Do you think it’s possible server-deployed software could also get similar efficiencies with adequate testing?
Yeah it really doesn’t matter where you build stuff. The big push to CI is from companies that want to sell you a service to do it.
Software should build and test the same everywhere. If you have to use it, CI should only wrap that.
Re: I fixed Windows native development
#243Why not just use Linux?
Re: I fixed Windows native development
#244Why not just use Linux?
Because some developers would like to make money at some point.
Re: I fixed Windows native development
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps people have mimicked the style because LLMs have popularized it and clearly it serves some benefit to readers.
> have popularized it It's hated by everyone, why would people imitate it? You're inventing a rationale that either doesn't exist or would be stupider than the alternative. The obvious answer here it they just used an LLM. > and clearly it serves some benefit to readers. What?
Then why does every vibe-coded "Show HN" app have it in README.md? Surely authors would edit it out if it was true that everyone hates it.
Re: I fixed Windows native development
#246This is harder than what I do. Just install LTSC Visual Studio build tools from [1], then chuck this in a cmd file: cl yourprogram.c /link user32.lib advapi32.lib ... etc etc ... I've built a load of utilities that do that just fine. I use vim as an editor. The Visual Studio toolchain does have LTSC and stable releases - no one seems to know about them though. see: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/visualstudio/relea…
> The Visual Studio toolchain does have LTSC and stable releases - no one seems to know about them though. You only get access to the LTSC channel if you have a license for at least Visual Studio Professional (Community won't do it); so a lot of hobbyist programmers and students are not aware of it. On the other hand, its existence is in my experience very well-known among people who use Visual Studio for work at som…
The Visual Studio Build Tools are installable with winget (`winget search buildtools`).
There are licensing constraints, IANL but essentially you need a pro+ license on the account if you're going to use it to build commercial software or in a business environment.
Re: I fixed Windows native development
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps people have mimicked the style because LLMs have popularized it and clearly it serves some benefit to readers.
Perhaps LLMs have mimicked the style because authors have popularized it and clearly it serves some benefit to readers.
It's a cycle.
Re: I fixed Windows native development
#248Toolchains on linux are not clear from dependency hell either - ever install an npm package that needs cmake underneath? glibc dependencies that can't be resolved because you need two different versions simultaneously in the same build somehow... python in another realm here as well. That shiny c++ project that needs a bleeding edge boost version that is about 6 months away from being included in your package manager…
Well, traditionally, there was no Python/pip, JS/npm in Linux development, and for C/C++ development, the package manager approach worked surprisingly well for a long time.
However, there were version problems: some Linux distributions had only stable packages and therefore lacked the latest updates, and some had problems with multiple versions of the same library. This gave rise to the language-specific package managers. It solved one problem but created a ton of new ones.
Sometimes I wish we could just go back to system package managers, because at times, language-specific package managers do not even solve the version problem, which is their raison d'être.
Re: I fixed Windows native development
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
And a VS license isn't too expensive if you really want to buy one. Stack Social have legit licenses discounted to $15: https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/microsoft-visual-studio-pr...
This definetly looks like some sort of scam. Like a volume key license being resold against EULA or some such.
> Like a volume key license being resold against EULA or some such.
At least in the EU, this is legal.
Re: I fixed Windows native development
#250Is this post AI-written? The repeated lists with highlighted key points, the "it's not just [x], but [y]" and "no [a] just [b]" scream LLM to me. It would be good to know how much of this post and this project was human-built.
I love the style it was written in. I felt a bit like reading a detective novel, exploring all terrible things that happened and waiting for a plot twist and hero comming in and saving the day.