Of all the misbegotten ideas that Microsoft has hatched over the years, the worst of them all is the background compiler. It is worse than the system registry. It is worse than the notion of supporting ActiveX inside Internet Explorer. It is worse than Microsoft Bob. It might even be worse than the IBM PCjr Chicklett keyboard. It is a totally confounded, wretched, filthy, nasty, counter-productive, anti-quality idea.
The notion is that the C# or VB compiler should be running continuously in the background while you write code. It should be (according to this misbegotten theory of the world) giving the programmer continuous feedback about what he is doing and whether each stroke of the keyboard is correct or not. The idea is absolute rubbish because it does not allow the programmer to finish a single thought before declaring that errors exist in his code.
It is obtrusive and obstreperous as fuck when declaring compiler errors also. We're not talking about mere blue and red underlines below your code. Nope, it will pop up the full compiler results window bar (chewing a considerable amount of screen real estate) just so it can show you read dots declaring that the code will not compile due to this or that error.
My response is simple "Of course the code will not compile. I am still writing it. Now will you please fuck off and die?" Of course, if you are shitty developer, you may need the crutch of constant compiler feedback. You might not know the difference between right and wrong code. You may need the compiler to tell you the difference between right and wrong code. This is true because you do not know the language you are coding in. If you are a good developer, who knows his chosen language, and you like to refactor your code for performance, organization and clarity, the background compiler is the worst enemy you have ever encountered.
Cut just one method or variable or property to promote it or demote it up or down the chain of inheritance, and the background compiler will scream its fucking head off about compilation errors. My response is simple "Of course the code will not compile right now. I am in the middle of refactoring my code. Now will you please fuck off an die?"
Of course, if you are a shitty VB programmer, who never refactors code for any reason (Microsoft Mort as they call you in Redmond), you won't be bothered by this problem at all. You will probably wonder how you could ever get it right without the background compiler. You may never need to promote or demote members or methods due to the fact that you don't use inheritance in the first place. If you are thinking this thought, you just might be a shitty developer and not even realize it.
I would like to get my hands of the fucktard who came up with the notion of the background compiler. I would make Jack the Ripper look like the Church Lady. He would not survive the encounter. I would beat him to death, and not quickly either. I would make him feel that he is dying.
I have already argued with a few Microsoft Devs about this online. Their standard defense of the background compiler goes like this: If we didn't have the background compiler running the time we:
- Couldn't know the type of some variables if you are using type inference or automatic data coercion.
- Couldn't give you immediate visual feedback in a XAML design environment.
- Changes to other assemblies in the project would not be reflected immediately in client assemblies
- You would have to hit CTRL-SHIFT-B or F5 to figure out if your changes were good.
My answer to that is "I am perfectly willing to hit the F5 key. I am perfectly willing to wait for compiler feedback until I am finished with a group of changes. Let me hit the F5 key for compiler feedback when I want it. That is the way all good programmers work. I don't need continuous feedback training wheels. Type Inference is cool, but automatic data coercion is not. If you are using ADC, you are a shitty developer and don't yet realize it"
Microsoft need to give us the ability to opt out. We need a simple switch under the options tab that will allow us to shut off the background compiler. That's all we need. Just let us turn the stupid fucker off.
