... I would appreciate someone explaining to me how serious
a 'flaw' this problem is. Just what can the developer do while
his or her creation is being compiled?
I guess only somebody who has used BCB 3 can definitively answer
this, but if the review is correct about other tools being
frozen, my answer would be read the paper or surf the net. I am
assuming the editor is included in the category "other tools".
I use Apex on a Sun (Ada development) and the compilation and
linking run in background processes. This is very convenient.
I can start linking a program that may take anywhere from a
few minutes to a few hours to link, depending on what packages
I've changed and how many other dependent packages have been
thereby demoted (need to be recompiled) and I can continue to
work on packages in other projects (a package is a compilation
unit, i.e. a source file). I can even edit packages in the
project which is being linked, before or after they have been
recompiled, if I feel like taking a chance on really getting
things mixed up during the link. The latter is to be avoided,
since the source level debugger expects the current version of
the source to correspond to what was coded in the executable.
The worst that can happen, however, is that I have to clean
some packages (delete the binaries) and relink. Sometimes the
linker will catch this and just spit out a warning at the end.
BCB apparently avoids this complication, and prevents any
chance of a mismatch between the source and the executable.
How serious is this "flaw"? I guess that depends on just how
fast the compiler really is. I've had mixed results in
building (vs. making) a large C project at home with BC/C++ 5.0
with the compiler (admittedly not BCB 3) sometimes running way
slower than I would expect. I could never figure out why, but
this project was just something on the side, not my main line
of work, so I haven't worried about it. I used to use BC running
under DOS in my previous job, and it was so fast that building
a large project still didn't take an inordinate amount of time.
I didn't mind twiddling my thumbs for a few minutes. Now that
I've been "spoiled" by Apex, and I have a project that can take
up to 4 hours to compile from scratch on a SPARCstation 10, I'd
be really annoyed if I was blocked from working on source files
during the intervening time. |
