Ryu2.mind

[Warning: nerdy entry.  Non-programmer/IT types can stop reading now.]

Unlike many of my fellow techies, I'm not a anti-Microsoft zealot, believe it or not.  As I've previously written, I'm against blind dogmatism in any area, including technology.  There are areas where they shine.  Currently, I'm developing on both Microsoft's and a certain unnamed Japanese company's next-gen console, and Microsoft (still) takes the cake for user-friendliness and maturity of the toolchain.

But like nearly every bias or stereotype out there, there's some basis in fact.  Case in point: Window's console subsystem.  Maybe everyone else all knew this, but selecting text or even right-clicking to bring up a context menu in a console window will cause Windows to block the I/O of all child processes launched from that console until you dismiss the menu or clear the selection.  Since blocking I/O calls are the norm for pretty much any commandline app, this means that the app itself is pretty much dead during that time.

I did a rebuild of our project from scratch from the command line, and as I went to a long lunch with a friend, must've accidentally right-clicked the console window.  When I came back, my build was in suspended animation, not even getting past the first source file.  90 minutes for nothing.  @#$@#@#%@%@#$%#$%^$!

So let this be a warning to all developers working in a Windows environment... watch those right mouse clicks if you're running a long process from a console!

Boring.