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Comment by Defletter | Hacker News Reader

Even though I understand why you prefer that, I feel like you're painting too rosy of an image. To quote Tom Delalande: "There are some projects where if it was 10% harder to write the code, the project would fail." I believe this deeply and that this is also true for the build system: your build config should not be rivalling your source code in terms of length. That's hyperbole in most cases, sure, and may well indicate badly written build configs, but writing build configs should not be a skill issue. I am willing to bet that Rust has risen so much in popularity not just because of its memory safety, but also because of its build system. I don't like CMake, but I also don't envy its position.

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> but writing build configs should not be a skill issue

I think it shouldn't be a skill issue because a true professional should learn how to do it :-).

My build configs are systematically shorter than the bad ones.

Also I feel like many people really try to have CMake do everything, and as soon as you add custom functions in CMake, IMO you're doing it wrong. I have seen this pattern many times where people wrap CMake behind a Makefile, presumably because they hate having to run two commands (configure/build) instead of one (make). And then instead of having to deal with a terrible CMakeLists, they have to deal with a terrible CMakeLists and a terrible Makefile.

It's okay for the build instructions to say: "first you build the dependencies (or use a package manager for that), second you run this command to generate the protobuf files, and third you build the project". IMO if a developer cannot run 3 commands instead of one, they have to reflect on their own skills instead of blaming the tools :-).

> I think it shouldn't be a skill issue because a true professional should learn how to do it :-)

Therein lies the issue, in my opinion: I do not believe that someone should have to be a "true professional" to be able to use a language or its tooling. This is just "git gud" mentality, which as we all [should] know [by now] cannot be relied upon. It's like that "So you're telling me I have to get experience before I get experience?" meme about entry-level jobs: if you need to "git gud" before you can use C/C++ and its tooling properly, all that means is that they'll be writing appalling code and build configs in the mean time. That's bad. Take something like AzerothCore: I'd wager that most of its mods were made by enthusiasts and amateurs. I think that's fine, or at least should be, but I'm keenly aware that C/C++ and its tooling do not cater to, nor even really accommodate amateurs (jokey eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTEiQx88B2U). That's bad. Obviously, this is heading into the realm of "what software are you trusting unwisely", but with languages like Rust, the trust issue doesn't often include incompetence, more-so just malice: I do not tend to fear that some Rust program has RCE-causing memory issues because someone strlen'd something they shouldn't.

> It's like that "So you're telling me I have to get experience before I get experience?"

Not at all. I'm not saying that one should be an architect on day one. I'm saying that one should learn the basics on day one.

Learning how to install a package on a system and understanding that it means that a few files were copied in a few folders is basic. Anyone who cannot understand that does not deserve to be called a "software engineer". It has nothing to do with experience.

> I'm saying that one should learn the basics on day one.

Except that C/C++ have entirely incongruous sets of basics compared to modern languages, which people coming to C/C++ for the first time are likely to have a passing familiarity with (unless it's their first language, of course). Yes, cmake configs can be pretty concise when only dealing with system packages, but this assumes that developers will want to do that, or whether they'll want to replicate the project-localness ideal, which complicates cmake configs. We're approaching this from entirely different places and is reminding me of the diametrically-opposed comments on this post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45328247) about READMEs.

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