Is anyone else considering skipping the VS2008 generation?
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You're a .Net developer and you don't have any freedom in choosing your tools? Have you looked around you? Seen the sun lately? I just negotiated a 4 day work week with a raise and less work! Talent is short, get with the program! =) Anyway, in keeping with the thread...I will jump in...right after I jump into Windows 2008, and SQL 2008...Then I can jump into VS 2008...oi, so much to learn...
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We just got our developers started with VS2005 and I personally would prefer to stick with a stable known platform like .Net 2.0 then to keep chaising the promise of improved developer productivity in a new product. Give me productivity enhancing features that I can use when maintaining code I've already written. There's no ROI for rewritting our whole application portfolio for the latest tool. Microsoft is really falling short lately in delivering value to customers. Just look at Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007. Lot's of wiz-bang but short on value. We want tools that let us leverage our experience not tools that we need to completely relearn every few years. Maybe it is time to switch to Linux.
JayW2 wrote:
There's no ROI for rewritting our whole application portfolio for the latest tool.
That's the telling quote right there. If you can't make money by writing richer, faster or more user-friendly software, then there's not really anything that anyone can do to help you (short of writing your code for you, have you seen snippets?) I think the foolish thing here is assuming that you need to re-write your portfolio to use 2008. You don't, you can deploy backwards, 3.0 code compiles to 2.0. If you have stuff that must be built and deployed under VS 2003, then you should be running an instance of VS 2003 (with tools) inside of a Virtual Machine (i.e.: Microsoft Virtual PC) so that you can always have the correct tools available. Upgrade new stuff, maintain the old all in different sandboxes. Heck if you have any long-running software, you should have VPC images of the development environment for that software. Of course, at some point, your software will die or become uncompetitive or need re-writing. If you cannot bring in money from this process (either via subscriptions or upgrade licenses, etc.), then your software product is doomed to failure or at least obsolescence.
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More naming idiocy: to keep the names synchronized, the next version of .NET Compact Framework will be called .NET Compact Framework 3.5. Unlike the desktop, the Compact Framework gets an entirely new set of assemblies which will install side-by-side with the old ones, and a new set of native helper libraries (netcfagl3_5.dll, netcfd3dm3_5.dll and netcfmail3_5.dll). It also gets a new CLR (mscoree3_5.dll). It gets a weirdly cutdown version of WCF using email as the transport and LINQ. It doesn't get any other part of ".NET 3.0" because there's no practical way to implement WPF and no point in having Workflow. Unlike the desktop, .NET Compact Framework 2.0 could run 1.0 programs even if 1.0 was not installed, without any redirection through a .config file required. They stamp the AppDomain with a 'compatibility version' so that a few compatibility breaks can be shimmed out by the code. (It appears that if you passed a duff object to most Graphics.DrawXxx routines in CF 1.0 it wouldn't throw an exception, while v2 and later do, so the exception has to be suppressed if emulating v1.) This is also true of 3.5.
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991Great.
5. Non-Win32 (Microsoft and non-Microsoft) implementations – Other implementations of the .NET Framework, such as the Compact Framework, SPOT OS, Singularity and Mono will suffer from naming confusions. The CLR team took very, very careful steps to make sure the .NET Framework works on other platforms as well. Mangling the .NET framework with Win32 specific API breaks that, isolating the entire framework to Windows.I knew it would happen, but I didn't think it'd be this bad. -
basically yes. You can download it, but it won't work because it's too tightly coupled to the win32 api. Even if you don't use the parts that require XP+ APIs the framework still does and you're screwed. In theory you could use a 3rd party .net to native compiler to make a win32 exe that would work on older hardware (provided you watch your API usage), but the software to do that is priced similarly to VS itself so I've never actually tried to do so.
-- If you view money as inherently evil, I view it as my duty to assist in making you more virtuous.
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As a purely C++ programmer the .NET improvements etc. are not of interest. What will be of interest will be if they have finally implemented intellisense in a way that works more than occasionally. Typically I would wait until at least the first service pack before looking. I had not realised VS08 will not support win2K. That would definitely keep me off it for some years as many users still have it. At the end of the day you can push users so fast but you have to keep supporting the platforms a majority are using.
M Towler wrote:
As a purely C++ programmer the .NET improvements etc. are not of interest. What will be of interest will be if they have finally implemented intellisense in a way that works more than occasionally.
For real C++ "experience" improvements you'll need to wait until VS 2010. A major IDE revamp is promised.
Kevin
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Or becoming a late adopter? Although there's a lot of cool stuff in .Net 3.5 I can't help but feel that I haven't done .Net 2.0 to death yet. Also, given the amount of stuff currently coming out of Microsoft, I do wonder whether it's best to wait and see what falls by the wayside, for instance WPF - from what I've seen people on CodeProject do with it it looks very cool... but it wouldn't be the first time I've devoted effort to learning something only to see the marketability of such skills divebomb into obscurity.
Me: Can you see the "up" arrow? User:Errr...ummm....no. Me: Can you see an arrow that points upwards? User: Oh yes, I see it now! -Excerpt from a support call taken by me, 08/31/2007
martin_hughes wrote:
considering skipping the VS2008 generation?
As for me and my small co., I plan on skipping, or at least waiting until at least most of the inhearent bugs are worked out of that enviroment. Heck I mostly did the same with .NET peroid. I did not do VS 2002 or 2003, I waited until VS 2005 came out before easing my grasp on VS 6. :-D
DB_Cooper1950 Either enjoy life, Or Hate Life, Just quit SITTING ON THE FENCE!
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martin_hughes wrote:
considering skipping the VS2008 generation?
As for me and my small co., I plan on skipping, or at least waiting until at least most of the inhearent bugs are worked out of that enviroment. Heck I mostly did the same with .NET peroid. I did not do VS 2002 or 2003, I waited until VS 2005 came out before easing my grasp on VS 6. :-D
DB_Cooper1950 Either enjoy life, Or Hate Life, Just quit SITTING ON THE FENCE!
db_cooper1950 wrote:
...before easing my grasp on VS 6.
I'm still hanging on tightly. I just recently bought a new computer so maybe that'll be the nudge I needed.
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M Towler wrote:
As a purely C++ programmer the .NET improvements etc. are not of interest. What will be of interest will be if they have finally implemented intellisense in a way that works more than occasionally.
For real C++ "experience" improvements you'll need to wait until VS 2010. A major IDE revamp is promised.
Kevin
A major IDE revamp sounds nice. Hopefully it will involve another round of copying the nice features from other commercial text editors rather than another awful 'paradigm shift'. For example useful things like comment and uncomment not being hidden so many menu levels down that users miss them. What I am more interested in is some more basic facilities. For starters how about some compiler libraries that will compile cleanly with warning level 4. I have been waiting for more than a decade for them to get this one right. Warning level 4 is really good for finding errors in your own code but is difficult to read due to all the cruft produced from the compiler's standard library. And for debugging the ability to view the return value of a function whilst the cursor is on the closing brace. I used embedded debuggers with this ability ten years ago.
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More naming idiocy: to keep the names synchronized, the next version of .NET Compact Framework will be called .NET Compact Framework 3.5. Unlike the desktop, the Compact Framework gets an entirely new set of assemblies which will install side-by-side with the old ones, and a new set of native helper libraries (netcfagl3_5.dll, netcfd3dm3_5.dll and netcfmail3_5.dll). It also gets a new CLR (mscoree3_5.dll). It gets a weirdly cutdown version of WCF using email as the transport and LINQ. It doesn't get any other part of ".NET 3.0" because there's no practical way to implement WPF and no point in having Workflow. Unlike the desktop, .NET Compact Framework 2.0 could run 1.0 programs even if 1.0 was not installed, without any redirection through a .config file required. They stamp the AppDomain with a 'compatibility version' so that a few compatibility breaks can be shimmed out by the code. (It appears that if you passed a duff object to most Graphics.DrawXxx routines in CF 1.0 it wouldn't throw an exception, while v2 and later do, so the exception has to be suppressed if emulating v1.) This is also true of 3.5.
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991Do you have a link for the NETcf 3.5 info?
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Dave Sexton wrote:
I'd love to dive right in but the company I work for is almost completely web service based
What about WCF? My company have its first WCF project entering its final phases just now and so far it looks like it was the right choice.
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I'm really liking WCF. But you don't need VS2008. We're working with it in 2005 alongside .NET 2.0.
This statement was never false.