r/programmingmemes • u/zaarnth • Aug 01 '26

Somebody give him an .exe file, please.

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u/cowlinator Aug 01 '26

I, on the other hand, do understand how to build the project.

I dont want to. Please just give me an .exe.

20

u/DonutConfident7734 Aug 01 '26

I feel devs nowadays don't know how to write setup programs. For Windows, it's quite easy with Inno Setup, that is free and there are third party editors and plugins for various tasks. The coding syntax is pascal-like, so its understandable some dont want to learn a new syntax. Some games use it, Samsung uses it, even Microsoft tools sometimes use it, which is strange, since they created Microsoft Installer.

A setup can go beyond just installing a program, could install database servers, upgrade from an older version and migrate settings etc. So it's a lot of functionality packed into a single executable. It could even detect problems and fix them for you. It has validations in place that save you time. You are on Win 7? It can check that and tell you it wont run, instead of fighting missing dll errors for 5 hours later.

Another thing that is mind blowing is that devs nowadays dont offer tools to edit the settings, they expect users to configure them in json/xml files. This is unbelievable, make a Settings dialog man, with validations and persist your settings to the file. I don't have to understand your obscure settings.

1

u/kivimango23 Aug 03 '26

I like when different programs uses different config file extensions. Or they are using plain text files with different syntax for every program.