VS.2005 is it really usable ?

[Jorgen Sigvardsson]

Try VC6 then. It'll be like driving a F1! :-D (Although, the compiler isn't all that safe, and may explode in your face, should you use anything fancy)

-- 100% natural. No superstitious additives.

[Christian Graus]

I'd say stick to 2003, if you already have it. VS2005 adds close to nothing to C++, that I can see. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++ Metal Musings - Rex and my new metal blog

[Nemanja Trifunovic]

Kevin McFarlane wrote:

Have you tried the excellent PowerCollections library from Wintellect?

The last time I checked them (a year and a half ago, maybe) they were still under development. Are they ready now? Anyway, I don't understand why MS didn't come with something like that in the first place instead of the crappy BCL collections.

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My programming blahblahblah blog. If you ever find anything useful here, please let me know to remove it.

[Gary R Wheeler]

You don't really believe they'll issue a service pack, do you? Back when they release VS.NET 2002, they promised a service pack. Instead, they issued VS.NET 2003, for which you had to pay.

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Software Zen: delete this;

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[Anna Jayne Metcalfe]

Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote:

(Although, the compiler isn't all that safe, and may explode in your face, should you use anything fancy)

Yeah, like properly scoped for-loops! X| I've been writing the VS6 specific bits of Visual Lint (i.e. the VSPackage itself, which has to use MFC42) in VS6 and boy is it painful after 3 years of using VS2003 (the automation interface both sucks and blows too). :doh: Anna :rose: Currently working mostly on: Visual Lint :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "Be yourself - not what others think you should be" - Marcia Graesch "Anna's just a sexy-looking lesbian tart" - A friend, trying to wind me up. It didn't work.

[Anna Jayne Metcalfe]

I'd go along with that. We're not moving to it yet for exactly that reason, although we do test against it. :rose: Anna :rose: Currently working mostly on: Visual Lint :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "Be yourself - not what others think you should be" - Marcia Graesch "Anna's just a sexy-looking lesbian tart" - A friend, trying to wind me up. It didn't work.

[J Dunlap]

JasonSmith wrote:

As a long time user of Java and Java IDEs, you get used to incredibly bloated IDEs that perform like molasses.

Yeah, just sad to see the official .NET IDE going that way...

JasonSmith wrote:

The current VS 2005 may be slower than the previous version, but if you compare it to any Java IDE on the same machine, it screams (and it does more than the previous version).

Anything screams compared to Java! ;P :->

JasonSmith wrote:

I would also like to say that at least for me, the full support for Generics alone makes this worth the upgrade.

Definitely. And then there's refactoring in the IDE, the new ASP.NET stuff, Reflection and delegate perf increases, anonymous methods, the ability to have separate access levels for property getters and setters, etc. All of those very good reasons to put up with a slow and bloated IDE if I have to. :)

[RichardGrimmer]

Sorry, but I'm with Nish on this one - use 2K5 for a few months, then switch back to 2K3....and begin converting all your projects hehe :) "Now I guess I'll sit back and watch people misinterpret what I just said......" Christian Graus At The Soapbox

[robosport]

For C++ the ability to easily debug when using STL containers like std::vector and std::deque made it worth upgrading to VS2005! Unfortunatley stepping in the debugger is painfully slow from one line to the next which makes walking through a for loop ridiculously long. But overall I'm saving debug time by finally being able to see into and traverse a std::vector while in the debugger just by hovering over it. As far as Intellisense goes, I installed Visual Assist X and never looked back. Very pleased overall with the upgrade but I can't wait for the SP and I hope it speeds up debug stepping. robo

[Jerry Hammond]

VS2005 is a fine product even if it does overwhelm some self-taught programmers with its feature rich development environment.

“Profanity is the attempt of a lazy and feeble mind to express itself forcefully”

[AntiSilence]

I use VC# 2005 Express, which has it's issues (like not remembering where I've moved a toolbar to, or that I've minimised my #region sections), but other than that I like the environment. I've moved to VC# 2005 from Visual Basic 6, so there's a . I plan on buying VS.2005 sometime, but while I'm still learning, Express is fine (and since it's free I can't really complain!).

[Member 96]

AntiSilence wrote:

Express is fine (and since it's free I can't really complain!).

Yeah, when I think about the Borland C compiler I used to use back in the day it's amazing how far IDE's have come along. Interesting with the region thing that it took this long to come into the MS ide, back in the Borland C days there was something called the "Origami" editor which basically did the same thing collapsing functions to make readable source code.

[BC3Tech]

Gotta say for the .NET developer it's a HUGE improvement over 2k3. The intellisense finally being intelligent is a big plus. If you're doing .NET, the combination of 2k5 with the new v2 framework is really something that shouldn't be passed up. I'm doing both ASP.NET and Winforms on the new framework w/ the 2k5 IDE and thus far find it very, very usable. -- modified at 14:35 Friday 23rd June, 2006 I should add that I am running it on a Pentium D 830 w/ 2gb RAM so can't really speak on the performance on a standard (1gb non-dual) machine. -- modified at 14:36 Friday 23rd June, 2006 Oh and one last thing, I do absolutely abhore MS's new "document explorer" for the help system. THAT is so unusably slow that I can't even run it. I head to MSDN w/ my browser every single time I would normally go to help. Just makes me scream when I hit 'F1' out of habit.

[Kevin McFarlane]

Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:

The last time I checked them (a year and a half ago, maybe) they were still under development. Are they ready now?

They've been out for ages, i.e., since at least the release date of VS 2005. However, you now have to register at wintellect's site (for free) to get them. They also have a PowerThreading library there but I've not looked at it. I hear that it's good though.

Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:

I don't understand why MS didn't come with something like that in the first place instead of the crappy BCL collections.

I'm sure they'll come up with something like this in the second place!:) Kevin

[timothy_russell]

You may have to change your working style a bit if you are working with asp.net since they introduced a different way of working with websites. However, if you go with the new vs2005 website model, you can get some serious productivity gains from not having to recompile the projects as you make small tweaks to the codebehind. It can be really slow when loading the designer view of pages so I would suggest setting the options so that pages load as the source view by default. There is a lot of cool shiny stuff in 2.0 such as generics which are incredibly useful. I personally think it is worth the pain of upgrading your solutions. (Even though it can be a huge PITA!) Timothy Lee Russell http://www.anatone.net

[Programit]

We upgraded to VS 2005 and recently down graded back to VS2003 VS2005 is okay on highend systems but next to useless on lowend. Far too slow, too bloated. Also not compatable with net1.1 stuff. FX (Net3) will be out soon so net 2 is really a waste of effort. We are waiting for Vista, Longhorn or Windows 2007, whatever they decide to call it, to actually be released before we again waste money and time upgrading. 70% of development is still done on Visual Studio 6. It works! Good deals can be found for Visual Studio 2003.

[DontSailBackwards]

Any IDE is easier than notepad and the express versions are pretty good value for money if you ask me (I paid A$7k for AutoCAD & use it a lot less than XP). Love it or hate it, M$ is the industry standard. If you don't like it - go out in your garage and invent a better one. You could be the next Bill Gates. For the comparison's sake, Ford, GM etc. make relatively crappy cars but they still sell lots of them simply because they are good value for money (compared to Mercedes etc.) and they meet our minimum requirements. They don't work brilliantly but they work well enough. Ah, it's a nice day outside, I think I'll push my Pinto around the block (because my Explorer is still upsidedown on the motorway). Don't have a cow man

[david s_]

i use 2003 for the serious projects cos i'm currently not willing to shell out the cash for 2005. i've been flirting with 2005 Express and i find the speed issue just a little too annoying for my tastes. i'll probably migrate to 2005 eventually after i feel it's worth it for me. then again, they might just surprise us all with VS 2007. it's more a "wait and see" issue for me. ...yeah, i heard you.

[redjoy]

Gabriel 2 wrote:

Oh, I get the idea, I love iteration!!! for (i = 2; ; ++i) System.Console.WriteLine ("XP SP" + i + " is better than XP SP" + (i - 1));

Unless you have int i = 1; declared or if you have compiler option set for loops :), in VS2005, it should read: for (int i = 2; ; ++i) System.Console.WriteLine ("XP SP" + i + " is better than XP SP" + (i - 1)); I am just mentioning this because we convert our projects from VS2003 and this was a major item for compiling. We used the compiler option :(( Michael ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ\|/ ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ^O^O^ ——o00o—0—o00o—— If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? --Albert Einstein

[redjoy]

John Cardinal wrote:

Can't speak for c++ but it's totally usable for c#, just a slow IDE is really the only serious problem.

Our PC's had 512MB memory. Our systems would come to a screeching halt whenever we loaded our solution with VS2005. We recently added 2GB memory (total 2.5GB) and now we no longer experience this problem. It actually loads the solution faster than in VS2003. Michael ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ\|/ ﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠﾠ^O^O^ ——o00o—0—o00o—— If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? --Albert Einstein