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by CoastalCoder 355 days ago
> People routinely write completely wrong CMakeLists and then complain about CMake being "sooo bad".

I think this conflates a few issues.

I believe you that some people have problems with both CMake and Meson.

But in my opinion CMake's scripting language really is pretty poorly suited for it's role, e.g. because of its blurry distinction between strings and lists.

1 comments

> CMake's scripting language really is pretty poorly suited for it's role

The vast majority of projects only need a handful of features from CMake. Sure, it's a weird language and there is enough to criticise. The fact remains that 99% of the complaints I see are from people who write very bad CMakeLists. First learn how to not make a big mess with it, and then you can start complaining, IMHO.

I have had that with other technologies that "everybody hates but is forced to use". The technology is never perfect, so there are always reasons for criticism. But I see a lot more invalid criticisms from people who don't use the technology correctly than valid ones.

Because Javascript is not perfect does not mean that the developers can't possibly be responsible for a bad Javascript codebase.