Visual Studio 2012: 50 Shades of Grey by Microsoft
Microsoft offended thousands in April with a preview of its next Visual Studio, a John-Major-inspired, grey affair intended to take Microsoft’s all-encompassing IDE closer to the look of Windows 8. Thousands gave the new look a thumbs-down on the Microsoft UserVoice poll, with people demanding a return to colour. The day of …
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Re: .NET Fail
@RICHTO - for your education - for the most part, Java powers server side systems in the Enterprise, usually on Linux / *NIX servers. It is a huge area in terms of spending on IT and jobs but invisible to the layman who still thinks of Java as being applets.
As for the CLI - microsoft are downplaying this now. It's legacy, and not guaranteed to be around indefinitely. They, Microsoft, killed VB6, remember, which was brutal no matter what you think of the language. Java will stick around, however.
C++ (and C) is generally used for systems where tight control is required for system or performance reasons, where a VM / runtime is not apt.
Now, back to hacking a biz app using Access with you! ;-)
Re: .NET Fail
Silverlight dead etc...yup thank god and effing obvious from the off, but then you bang on about Java which has got to be the crappiest language ever. My TV runs Java and it's dog slow shite. I haven't coded in the damn thing since 1997, so it's obviously come a long way since then...my arse.
You simply cannot go wrong with javascript and (x)html or whatever they are calling it today, then some nice REST MVC C# for example...mmmm lovely.
By the way, if you're planning on ditching your knowledge every five years, I'm surprised you find any work. I ditch mine every 9 months and choose what I'm going to learn, not what I'm told to learn.
Re: .NET Fail
If you seriously think that "an high level language"..whatever you are thinking of (Java?) is better than C++ then you surely don't have a clue what programming is all about.
You go the easy route because you don't want to learn the hard stuff. The problem is that there is no magic to do the job, knowing the hard stuff and coding in C/C++/Objective-C with inline assembly optimization is the proper way to do things in order to achieve the maximum performance with minimum use of resources.
Re: .NET Fail
"As for the CLI - microsoft are downplaying this now. It's legacy, and not guaranteed to be around indefinitely."
Explain why they just brought out a new version of something that is legacy?
"Microsoft, killed VB6, remember,"
Actually Microsoft just extended VB6 support for Windows 8. And, I have one large, business critical, pita to convert VB6 application that still runs perfectly in Win7.
Re: .NET Fail
It's legacy, and not guaranteed to be around indefinitely.
So it might be around definitely?
No computing platform is "guaranteed" to exist forever. In fact, odds are good that none of them will so so.
Not the only ones doing this
Google Documents has suddenly acquired a black colour scheme, i.e. monochrome buttons on its toolbars. It looks stupid and there is no good reason for it either.
It's been a long time since I developed in Visual Studio...
It's like a walk down memory lane. So many features I could care less about. So many attempts by MS to steer the development community, kicking and screaming if need be, to a new platform. That's not to say VS is a inherently bad IDE. It's just that there has been quite a few tools that I could just do without. The whole our way or the highway mentality.
Had to chuckle about the app store centric templates/projects. What about their customers that are building in house applications and want a proper installer? At least that was the impression I was left with. Guess there is/will be a version for desktop apps.
Re: It's been a long time since I developed in Visual Studio...
Ah yes, fond memories indeed...
I think I paid off my mortgage on a contract to replace your dodgy code...
Colour scheme works great for me
I've been using the new-look Visual Studio for a week or so now and from what I can see the use of colour is in fact very well thought out and much improved from previous editions.
Yes at a glance the initial lack of colour compared to 2010 was a little disconcerting, however one I started using it in my day-to-day coding I found colour being used to draw my eye to the important details, such as my code, the pass/fail state of my unit tests, notifications etc...
I do have some minor complaints (for example when debugging unit tests with all CLR exceptions being thrown I now have to hit continue about 8 times before my unit test actually starts running), however overall Visual Studio 2012 gets a definite thumbs up from me.
Yet another Visual Studio "review" in which there is no mention whatsoever of the code generation.
Also: WinXP is still a supported Microsoft product yet the VS2012 runtime libraries don't work on it?
Microsoft puts so much energy into IDE design
Hm, I think my hamster could have produced a better looking interface than that (or Win8 for that matter) and he spends most of his time asleep.
Re: Microsoft puts so much energy into IDE design
He sounds a talented animal.
It would be a shame to waste such talents by making him run up a toilet roll every day chased by a cigarette lighter. No wonder he is shagged out.
I suggest both of you find other hobbies...
They've been there before.
The screenshot at the first page looks an awful lot like the default setup of Microsoft Expression Web 4 (and Expression Design). The first is a HTML editor / website designer, the latter a vector graphic based editor, I've been using both for quite some years now.
Personally I think they had the right idea, but like everything these days completely exaggerated the final designs. A dark themed colour does indeed bring more attention to your main code window, IMO its a given.
But the lack of colours is something I wouldn't be surprised to see getting people headaches in the longer run. Someone else already mentioned it but I can only reaffirm; its going to tax you a lot more to find out which option(s) you need, which options were selected and so on. However; if you're using the GUI, if you're using keyboard commands then this applies to a lesser degree.
So quite frankly I see a new fail here; making this IDE much harder to get used to than others. How is that going to bring in new developers ?
Microsoft loves developers
That's why they charge $13,299 for the Ultimate extra everything edition.
Re: Microsoft loves developers
"That's why they charge $13,299 for the Ultimate extra everything edition."
And sell the Professional version for 3% of that and give away the Express edition for free. You are aware that the Ultimate version has a tonne of performance management, environment management, version control handling, project reporting tools, architecture modelling, testing suite and is designed for development teams. You just went to MS and specifically searched for the most expensive version without any thought about who would actually need it, didn't you? If you have ten or twenty developers at $35k per year, then the $13k for the software they use doesn't sound as bad, does it? I would imagine any freelancer would be plenty happy with the Professional version for about £300 and depending on what they're working on, possibly even the free version.
Besides, you can program without Visual Studio, you know. Some of us even use text editors (vi), thanks.
Re: Microsoft loves developers
Clearly you are awesome. Why would anyone bother with a proper IDE when it's way cooler to write code in a simple text editor?
Re: Microsoft loves developers
Eclipse is 100% free, is an IDE for a number of languages and has been superior to Visual Studio for a few years now. More features. More plug-ins. Nicer experience and editing. Also, Eclipse is open source and has been improving incrementally. It's safe(r) from corporate shenanigans. If it gets messed about with because some corporation wants to push something ghastly like, say, "Windows 8" then someone will fork it. We don't loose our dev tools! Freedom matters a lot.
Re: Microsoft loves developers
I have to occasionally suffer Eclipse on one of our Java projects. Everyone hates it. It's slow, has the usual terrible java GUI that looks like it was made in 1980 and generally sucks.
Better than VS2012? Ha! It's worse than VS2005, let alone 2012.
Re: Microsoft loves developers
Eclipse is good value for money(!). But it cannot compare with VS.I use Eclipse, VS2008, 2010, and played with 2012.
I personally prefer 2012, but understand that some people prefer flashy colourful eye-candy. Me, I'd rather get on with coding and have the colour highlight the things that need highlighting.
As for coding in vi or notepad...I'd rather chew my own arms off.
Re: Microsoft loves developers
"Clearly you are awesome. Why would anyone bother with a proper IDE when it's way cooler to write code in a simple text editor?"
Oh, you also forgot to mention that the price you mentioned includes a full MSDN subscription that gets you a copy of pretty much every MS product they make to develop against. But I guess saying £300 for their development suite wouldn't have made them sound as bad. My comment about the text editor was not really the point that I was talking about, it was just to illustrate that you don't need to pay MS anything to develop for Windows if you don't want to. You can also use products like Eclipse for free as well. I never said anything about it being better "way cooler to write in a simple text editor" that's just you resorting to mockery in place of argument. Though yes, I still do use Vi sometimes. It's very powerful and I'm comfortable using it. Whenever I'm just writing stuff out, e.g. a load of class prototyping, I tend to use it because I can work more quickly in it than most other tools. Never said anyone else needed to.
Re: Microsoft loves developers
"Eclipse is 100% free, is an IDE for a number of languages and has been superior to Visual Studio for a few years now."
Eclipse is god awful and actually makes me want to use Visual Studio! I can't complain about the price tho.
If only I could still find decent work using Delphi. It's IDEs were always ahead of the field.
Blender
More than a little Blender in the styling there I perceive.
I just all feels so flat and I cannot really find any other word to sum it up. Just does not feel like a UI I can be productive within. No visual hints that draw the eye and so forth. Seemingly MS does indeed believe the world is flat! Maybe someone spiked the cool aid in the UI/Design section at the MS with any hope the trip they are on will wear off soon................
Pint cos it eases the pain.
I'm not using it.....
.....until they put Foxpro back in it
Re: I'm not using it.....
lol. I have a copy of visual foxpro here somewhere. Never used it though. Wasn't it part of VS 97?
Ah.. the failed/discontinued products of MS's past.
Re: I'm not using it.....
Foxpro - one of those many, litereally hundreds, of companies / software packages that MS bought then killed.
Re: I'm not using it.....
I pretty much quit my job because foxpro is so shite... Its about 20 years out of date yet the company i worked for continued to invest into it... It was an embarrassment when people asked 'whats it programmed in?'... Cough cough fox cough pro ahem.
Re: I have two things to say
You could also be daring, and say if you had actually used it or not...
"Microsoft’s all-encompassing IDE loser"
Ok, I stopped right there (first paragraph).
Show me a better IDE.
You obviously have no clue what you are talking about. I don't mind some MS bashing, but VS is one of the best (if not the best) IDEs out there.
Re: "Microsoft’s all-encompassing IDE loser"
Correction: VS 2010 is the best IDE out there.
VS2012? Meh. A step backwards in so many ways. Visually is only one of them.
The 2012 TFS explorer is crap and hard to navigate. Takes way too many clicks to just get to the work item list, let alone creating one.... Heck it took a while to figure out just how to get to that list. Oh wait, that's right all text is black now so you have to guess which text is a link to another page..
Due to the loss of installer projects we have several projects that can't be upgraded (unless we want to use the lite version of InstallShield. Which, quite frankly, has sucked monkey balls for so long that I will be keeping those projects in vs2010 until MS realizes the error of their ways and restores the setup projects in a service pack.
Icon changes: seriously? The project file icons don't match up between source control and the solution explorer. There are other issues like why do the icons change just because you expand a folder (look at App_GlobalResources. Then expand that folder..wtf?)
I could go on. I have a long long list after working in this for the past week (it RTM'd last week).
Re: "Microsoft’s all-encompassing IDE loser"
It's a typo for "closer".
Tim
Re: "Microsoft’s all-encompassing IDE loser"
Show you a better IDE? How about Eclipse for a start. While it is dependent on Java it is non the less a class A tool that can be adapted for most modern development needs. From single lone developers right up the scale to sprawling shops that need all the trimmings. It supports in it's variance a multitude of languages on a multitude of platforms.
Paris cos she is also capable and willing to meet the needs of many.
Re: "Microsoft’s all-encompassing IDE loser"
Show me a better IDE.
Translation: my entirely subjective opinion is better than your entirely subjective opinion.
Really, kids, religious wars over programming tools were boring thirty years ago. Eternal September is eternal, I suppose. Now get off my lawn.
(Personally, I don't like any IDEs, and I've used a lot of them. Turbo Pascal 3's wasn't too bad, but pretty much all of the others are bloated monstrosities that just slow me down. I've never seen an IDE that comes anywhere close to a good shell, a good editor, and a good set of command-line tools. But that's just my preference; I don't claim it's better in some absolute sense.)
What a POS!
"Second, there is some support for C++ 11, though the extent of it is disappointing. The supported features are listed here. You do get features including lambdas, rvalue references, strongly-typed enums, and range-based for loops. Variadic (variable number of arguments) templates are missing though, along with numerous other features. Look elsewhere, for example to GCC, Clang or Intel compilers, for better C++ 11 implementations. The C++ runtime and libraries in Visual Studio 2012 do not support Windows XP, but are being revised to do so. In the meantime, you can use the Visual Studio 2012 compiler from the new IDE via a project setting, provided Visual Studio 2010 is also installed."
Why the hell should I want to buy this if I already have VS2010?
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