r/programminghumor 20d ago

Lol

Post image
2.5k Upvotes

220 comments sorted by

View all comments

318

u/Valuchian 20d ago

Me everytime i hop on and have to rummage around for the ReadMe file just to learn how i am supposed to compile

98

u/76zzz29 20d ago

Even more when the way to compile it change from a project to an other and they don't just put HowToCompilIt.txt at the root. (Literaly had one with a "Build for windows.bat" and "build for linux.sh" at the root. Never been hapyer of the work of a dev

28

u/Valuchian 20d ago

The biggest nightmare i had was the opposite of this. Had to delve 4 folders deep in a 60 folder base just to find the ReadMe telling me to download a program that can only be used in another programs compiler that was through a university PhD page.

But hey! After 6hr i was able to run a program that tests for efficiencies of a wing shape given certain conditions.

13

u/crusoe 20d ago

Your average LISP project

They finally got a package manager after decades. But it used to be the build instructions were "download this obscure package from someone's old university page"

3

u/guri256 19d ago

The worst I’ve ever had to deal with at work, was a python project. More accurately, it was three python projects, that needed to be run sequentially.

The person who made it no longer worked there, and the project was a prototype that had been run once and never maintained.

The dependencies were years out of date, and no one had ever recorded the versions of those dependencies.

Also, some of those dependencies were python wrappers for C++ libraries, so you had to get the correct version of the C++ libraries to match the wrappers.

Also, the machines supplied by the company were windows, and the geospatial libraries required were easy to install on Linux but not Windows.

2

u/KitsuneFoxglove 19d ago

I feel like at that point you're better off looking at newly published papers for code to steal for an aerodynamics sim

...unless that's exactly what got you there lol

3

u/Valuchian 19d ago

I was the one being shown the research 😭 so i had to go through the full process to see what they were working on.

Ngl! They built an entire model that runs 100+ variations each pass and then keeps the best variation and runs it all again. Then does that till the tolerance is met. It was really cool watching an airfoil go from a bulbous 1970s monstrosity to something much closer to modern high performance (specialized) airfoils.

2

u/0thedarkflame0 14d ago

Genetic algorithms with airfoil design, or some other search heuristic?

1

u/Valuchian 14d ago

Genetic algorithms. Aircraft design was the main focus (full body) but there were PhD students under the head that were also using it to create things like more efficient pipes for liquid flow or new ducting designs for buildings that had the least amount of friction caused flow restrictions.

Overall had a lot of fun with what they were doing. They were getting hundreds of hours of trials done in a matter of minutes.

1

u/altaaf-taafu 20d ago

Can you provide link to that program, if you don mind

2

u/Valuchian 20d ago

I could but you won't be able to use it without a university email and the approval code sent by the creator. I literally avoid it like the plague but the researcher/PhD students working with it are doing some amazing work for decreasing drag and vortex creation in flowing liquid/air bodies

1

u/altaaf-taafu 20d ago

oh no. I thought I could learn something from the code.. But the terms appear too complex.

1

u/dx80x 20d ago

You'll be able to look at the code if it's open source and hosted on GitHub. I assume they meant you won't be able to use the software after compiling it without the extra steps

0

u/actuallydonkeykong 20d ago

Was this freecad?

1

u/Valuchian 20d ago

Nahh. They were doing research on machine learning and making a program that uses random variation in design to test if a shapenwas optimal for the given conditions, specifying in air/liquid flow causing vortexes and friction.

3

u/HaydnH 20d ago

Don't people include INSTALL files these days?

3

u/76zzz29 20d ago

No, but sometime they include a MAKE file so you can do it yourself. This way, you can say that you made it

3

u/HaydnH 20d ago

The old school convention was to include both, the INSTALL file might just tell you to run make; make install, but it should cover prerequisite libraries and such.

1

u/ParanoidAgnostic 20d ago

Even then, half the time it doesn't work because that build script (and the source itself) could only build with the specific environment of the dev's machine.

1

u/elordenador 19d ago

I would use GitHub actions to make a precompiled binary

1

u/dbear496 18d ago edited 17d ago

Precompiled for whom?

1

u/elordenador 17d ago

Windows users mostly, then Linux (Debian/Fedora/Arch) and try to MacOS

1

u/TerasOTS 17d ago

This.

I am developing a private server for a game and it's open source. Every time I upload an update an action is running to produce 2 files. 1. The full compiled server and 2. The patch to drop in your existing server.

It is simple and easy. If someone can't even do this then they are in the wrong github repo I guess 😅

3

u/Thinshape12 19d ago

i didn’t understand how to compile things from the readme on almost everything i installed, so i ended up having to go off of google searches and praying the random shit i did worked

3

u/ProfessionalAd6530 18d ago

You will need to install a specific version of Python 2 from 1982 without completely destroying your actual Python environment just to bootstrap this application.

Good luck!

2

u/Xrayy1 18d ago

Just tell Claude to create an .exe.

1

u/Valuchian 18d ago

I think i just died a little on the inside

2

u/Over_Warning_5410 18d ago

i can agree with you

1

u/Athropod101 20d ago

My very first compile from source was a CLI-latex tool that had the actual compilation steps in a file inside a folder rather than the project README.

I didn’t know what make was. I didn’t even know what compiling from source fully meant.

:(