VS.NET: Where are we going ?
Bendik Engebretsen
to VS.NET 2003, almost every feature a loved about Visual Studio is gone or
not functioning. For MFC programmers, VisualStudio now seem to take away a
lot more than it gives for each new version.
They took away the 'Class Wizard' and replaced it with "something else"
which is not called the 'Class Wizard' but is supposed to do the same job.
Well, it doesn't. It didn't work properly in VS.NET and it doesn't work at
all in VS.NET 2003. Classes in my project come and go from the lists. The
class lists, by the way, are a complete mess: Every time you have to
manually browse through 200-300 classes which are not sorted alphabetiacally
! You must be joking... So far I have not been able to add ONE SINGLE
message handler or dialog member variable. The automatic syntax checking has
also almost disappeared. It might pop up a list of members now and then, but
most of the time its just silent. ("When you don't have anything to say,
it's better to keep your mouth shut!")
And the part I love most, is that the whole thing crashes 3-5 times daily.
(Yesss, I send a report to MS eeeevery time!)
In general, it seems that VS.NET is just unable to cope with my project.
I'm starting to realize, now, how good Visual Studio 6 really was, and
thinking that I should have appreciated it a lot more when I was using it.
Because this is all going in the wrong direction. VS.NET is so full of sh.t
that I don't know how long I can take it anymore. I'm thinking about
migrating my project back to VS 6. It would be a substantial amount of work,
but it might actually be worth it!!!
Anyone else having trouble with VS.NET ? I want to see some serious flaming
here !
Bendik
Bob Moore
>I'm starting to realize, now, how good Visual Studio 6 really was, and
>thinking that I should have appreciated it a lot more when I was using it.
>Because this is all going in the wrong direction. VS.NET is so full of sh.t
>that I don't know how long I can take it anymore.
VS.Net sits in the drawer unused here, it was a complete waste of
money. They can pry our copies of VC6 from our cold dead fingers.
I'd like to compile the code with the VC7 compiler, but it's not worth
the hassle of beating the crappy VS.Net IDE into submission.
About the only positive thing I can find to say about it, is that
VS2003 isn't quite as mind-bogglingly awful as VS2002 was... but it's
still got that God-awful Add Variable dialog that's slower than
molasses and only allows you create ONE variable at a time. The dev
responsible for that should be shot. Twice.
I got so pissed off with this product I ended up writing an article on
my website telling people why they shouldn't use it. Not that this
will make any difference of course... <sigh>.
--
Bob Moore [WinSDK MVP]
http://www.mooremvp.freeserve.co.uk/
(this is a non-commercial site and does not accept advertising)
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red floyd
> On Mon, 1 Sep 2003 12:53:02 +0200, Bendik Engebretsen wrote:
>
> [well deserved VS.NET rants redacted]
Does MS even realize that MVPs are trashing their products? Don't they
realize how bad this looks?
And of course, if they ever *DO* fix the problems, it won't be a service
pack, we'll have to shell out $$ for VS.NET 2004!
Marc Scheuner [MVP ADSI]
I agree that the VS.NET IDE leaves a lot to be desired - I wish the MS
folks would seriously look at the Delphi 7 IDE !! :-) Still by far the
best around - bar none.
Never quite understood what was supposed to be "visual" about Visual
Studio 6.0 and Visual C++.......
Marc
================================================================
Marc Scheuner May The Source Be With You!
Bern, Switzerland m.scheuner(at)inova.ch
Michael Viking
news:eNwN3cH...@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
SNIP
I've done plenty of flaming in the past. The IDE is garbage and we
certainly don't use VS.NET at all here. In fact, since there's nothing new
in MSDN except .NET (the worst named thing to search for ever... just a load
of FUD) we don't even get MSDN anymore. Around two years ago I had many
phone and email conversations with people like Nick Hodapp, Stan Lippman and
Chris Lucas and they gave me lots of "hope" that they understood what they'd
done to the IDE that screwed hard-core C++ developers and that they would do
something about it. Now two years later it's clear that what they had to
say was just so much hot air. In reality, screwing the IDE was a way to
force people to move over to .NET by making it harder and harder not to.
-Michael Viking
Bob Moore
>Never quite understood what was supposed to be "visual" about Visual
>Studio 6.0 and Visual C++.......
You can see the box can't you ? How Visual do you want it ? :-)
Bob Moore
>I agree that the VS.NET IDE leaves a lot to be desired - I wish the MS
>folks would seriously look at the Delphi 7 IDE !! :-) Still by far the
>best around - bar none.
I have mixed feelings about this. Delphi is, hands down, the best RAD
development environment there is: I just never particularly liked the
floating window IDE concept. I didn't like it in VB and I didn't like
it in Delphi either. I said publicly I'd like to see Delphi with the
VS IDE....
...but that was when I was using a single monitor. Now I use a
multi-mon setup, floating windows come into their own : I can place
windows on the other monitor and provided I maintain a clean desktop,
it's not too bad. reasonably usable, with some discipline on my part.
Sadly, the next gen Borland products seem to be going with the VS
docking paradigm, and I hate them already just on the basis of the
screenshots I've seen. Almost indistinguishable from VS.Net on first
sight. Here's hoping they can come up with something that works better
with multi-mon by the time it ships.
Marc Scheuner [MVP ADSI]
>>Studio 6.0 and Visual C++.......
>
>You can see the box can't you ? How Visual do you want it ? :-)
Okay, okay, okay ;-) You've convinced me ;-))
Marc Scheuner [MVP ADSI]
>development environment there is: I just never particularly liked the
>floating window IDE concept.
Well, I strongly prefer it over the docked paradigm we have now - it
would be nice to have the choice, really - some like this, some like
that :-)
I don't particularly like the docking / auto-hiding arrangement since
I feel I'm loosing too much screen real estate to silly windows
everywhere that I don't really need - at the same time, auto-hiding
them makes the IDE way too "busy" and too dynamic - it keeps popping
out a window here and there and keeps changing it's layout constantly.
Don't like that.
My biggest gripes about the VS.NET IDE are the SLOOOOOOOWW sluggish
performance (even on a 2.8 GHz P4 with 1 GB of RAM, it's still
slooooow like molasses on a cold winter day.......), and also the
whole Toolbox thing - I just can't wrap my head around that.
I much preferred the Delphi way - if I install a package with
components (an assembly with components), the package will determine
(through registration code) where the components go (which component
page they end up on) - and THEY STAY THERE! IN the VS.NET IDE, it
seems, the toolbox is ever changing, and I can't really "nail it down"
to be what I want it to be, at all times - no registry or XML config
file that holds its configuration - that's higly confusing and
annoying to me.
>Sadly, the next gen Borland products seem to be going with the VS
>docking paradigm, and I hate them already just on the basis of the
>screenshots I've seen.
Yes, that's rather unfortunate - I wish Borland would steer a more
"distinguishable" course of their own, especially with the IDE's.
Nick Savoiu
news:ft3blv4cmcudvpjkq...@4ax.com...
> >I have mixed feelings about this. Delphi is, hands down, the best RAD
> >development environment there is: I just never particularly liked the
> >floating window IDE concept.
>
> Well, I strongly prefer it over the docked paradigm we have now - it
> would be nice to have the choice, really - some like this, some like
> that :-)
Marc, I'm not familiar with Delphi and therefore not 100% sure as to what
"floating" in that environment meants but in VS you can "undock" things and
have them "float" too.
Nick
Bob Moore
>but in VS you can "undock" things and
>have them "float" too.
But they're still child windows of a frame window. In the
Delphi/classic VB paradigm, all the windows are free floating on the
desktop.
The frame window concept provides a clean working environment, but is
currently only optimal for a single monitor setup (hence the kludges
like slide-out windows <ugh>). The free floating windows concept works
better on multi-monitor setups, but requires that you keep your
desktop very clean if you're to avoid visual confusion.
Still, even if Borland do go with the frame/child setup as appears to
be the case at the moment, I'm betting they'll make a better job of
the IDE than Microsoft did with VS.Net.
The idea of having configurations for "modes" of operation, where you
have one setup of window/toolbars for code-cutting and another set for
debugging, is just a fig-leaf : a kludge for a IDE design that
basically doesn't work.
IMHO the optimal solution would be to support multiple frames, so each
frame could be assigned to a monitor, then you could put whatever
child windows and toolbars you wanted in each frame. If you want to
see more at once, get another monitor. If you only have one monitor
(why?), click the taskbar button to swap between frames. The best of
all worlds.
WTH
> Delphi/classic VB paradigm, all the windows are free floating on the
> desktop.
About the only thing I like about VB, as you said, is that feature. I have
four monitors on my dev machine and I'd DEARLY love to put source code on
all of them w/o stretching my IDE's framewindow across four of them (it
doesn't store its size and position correctly at shutdown when you do this,
AND, the default window size is a proportion not of the screen size, but of
the framewindow's size. Ergo, you get 40 inch wide source windows. This
wouldn't be the end of the world except the stupid VS.Net IDE has a hard
time remembering complicated things like the size of a window when you
closed it last.
WTH:(