I Feel Much Better Since I Gave Up Hope.
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Having wasted many months trying to get any version of Visual Studio to work with the help system installed with it, I quit. Long ago I uninstalled all previous versions and still the new version refuses to do what I paid for. Apparently, if you've ever installed any version of MSDN on a machine you can never change the location - forever. Researching the problem (spelunking the hard drives) I found them littered with folders and files that the uninstaller left behind, and the Registry is a mess of conflicting information. No wonder the poor thing couldn't figure out how to make it all work! It's not the Installer at fault, but the Uninstallers that went before - they all failed to work correctly. Oh well... In the meantime, I spent a couple hours last night playing with VC# 2008 and must say, it's much improved over previous versions I've had. I gave up on most application ideas because it was impossibly frustrating to lay out the GUI and get all the Windows overhead constructed properly. I never got close to writing any actual functional code because 100% of the time available was required to make things look acceptable. I started last night with a vague notion of what I wanted to do and in two hours had the top level forms laid out correctly and a database bound to all the controls the way I wanted them. Now I just need to do the dialogs for data entry and connect the controls to code that does what I think it should do. First, though, I have to spend some serious detail design time; I never expected to get this far in less than 6 months, based on past experience with VS6 and its ancestors. Somewhere along the line I'll probably learn some C#, too, so plan on me plaguing you geniuses in the programming forums. I know a lot of developers hate VS 2008, having mastered the recent previous versions, but coming from the pre-.Net era of Microsoft IDEs, I think it's an extremely welcome improvement. I've been out of the loop for years, having grown disgusted with the ordeal of doing even simple tasks, but I'm looking forward to this little adventure. And, of course, I'm looking forward to annoying all of you in the programming forums with my dumb questions. :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
modified on Sunday, November 2, 2008 11:57 PM
I have an app that I've been working on for over 10 years (started with Borland C then moved to VS6). For the last several years I've been working on it with VS2003 and it builds to 1.27 MB. Thought I'd give VS2008 a try... ends up at 1.7+ MB. WTF? Trying every single option to optimize for size (at the expense of performance?) I can only get a little under 1.5 MB. I've heard VS2008 is supposed to be really good. If this is the case, then perhaps this is a sign that Microsoft is just abandoning (sabatoging?) MFC. *Sheesh*
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I have an app that I've been working on for over 10 years (started with Borland C then moved to VS6). For the last several years I've been working on it with VS2003 and it builds to 1.27 MB. Thought I'd give VS2008 a try... ends up at 1.7+ MB. WTF? Trying every single option to optimize for size (at the expense of performance?) I can only get a little under 1.5 MB. I've heard VS2008 is supposed to be really good. If this is the case, then perhaps this is a sign that Microsoft is just abandoning (sabatoging?) MFC. *Sheesh*
Abu Mami wrote:
For the last several years I've been working on it with VS2003 and it builds to 1.27 MB. Thought I'd give VS2008 a try... ends up at 1.7+ MB. WTF?
Abu Mami wrote:
I've heard VS2008 is supposed to be really good.
Smaller is not necessarily better. There are scheduling techniques, like the one called 'loop unrolling' which expand the assembly code, but reduce the data dependencies, thus allowing for faster execution.
Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue.
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Having wasted many months trying to get any version of Visual Studio to work with the help system installed with it, I quit. Long ago I uninstalled all previous versions and still the new version refuses to do what I paid for. Apparently, if you've ever installed any version of MSDN on a machine you can never change the location - forever. Researching the problem (spelunking the hard drives) I found them littered with folders and files that the uninstaller left behind, and the Registry is a mess of conflicting information. No wonder the poor thing couldn't figure out how to make it all work! It's not the Installer at fault, but the Uninstallers that went before - they all failed to work correctly. Oh well... In the meantime, I spent a couple hours last night playing with VC# 2008 and must say, it's much improved over previous versions I've had. I gave up on most application ideas because it was impossibly frustrating to lay out the GUI and get all the Windows overhead constructed properly. I never got close to writing any actual functional code because 100% of the time available was required to make things look acceptable. I started last night with a vague notion of what I wanted to do and in two hours had the top level forms laid out correctly and a database bound to all the controls the way I wanted them. Now I just need to do the dialogs for data entry and connect the controls to code that does what I think it should do. First, though, I have to spend some serious detail design time; I never expected to get this far in less than 6 months, based on past experience with VS6 and its ancestors. Somewhere along the line I'll probably learn some C#, too, so plan on me plaguing you geniuses in the programming forums. I know a lot of developers hate VS 2008, having mastered the recent previous versions, but coming from the pre-.Net era of Microsoft IDEs, I think it's an extremely welcome improvement. I've been out of the loop for years, having grown disgusted with the ordeal of doing even simple tasks, but I'm looking forward to this little adventure. And, of course, I'm looking forward to annoying all of you in the programming forums with my dumb questions. :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
modified on Sunday, November 2, 2008 11:57 PM
Glad to hear you had some time to actually work with it. I am one of those that like to play out on the bleeding edge of technology, so I usually play with the betas. When I first moved to .NET (back in the betas of .NET of course), while a little lost in the beginning, I could easily see it would be the future. Over the last server versions, VS may have got a bit bigger and need a bit more horsepower, but overall it is getting better and better. Now it can take only a couple hours to generate database driven apps in Web or Desktop applications and even now cross platofrm with Silverlight. Anxious to see what will be coming out next year, downloaded but have not played with yet, VS 2010 VM...
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: LINQ to SQL Dead? Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com
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Abu Mami wrote:
For the last several years I've been working on it with VS2003 and it builds to 1.27 MB. Thought I'd give VS2008 a try... ends up at 1.7+ MB. WTF?
Abu Mami wrote:
I've heard VS2008 is supposed to be really good.
Smaller is not necessarily better. There are scheduling techniques, like the one called 'loop unrolling' which expand the assembly code, but reduce the data dependencies, thus allowing for faster execution.
Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue.
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I started out with VS 2003 (dabbled in VS6 years ago but never used it seriously), have done the vast majority of my development in 2005, and am now working in 2008 - and of the 3, I by far find 2008 to be the superior of the three. It's fast, stable, and offers such an incredible range of development capabilities without that flexibility getting in the way. Out of curiosity, what platform are you using? .NET 2 or 3.5? WinForms or WPF? From the sounds of it, you're using WPF if you haven't actually dived into the code yet. What do you think of it?
I just jumped in with the default - .NET 3.5; I suspect that might bite me when I try to deploy it at work on our bare XP machines, but there should be a redistributable package somewhere that will make it all better. Knowing nothing about WPF I just started out with a WinForm approach. That too may bite me, but I'm not yet aware of any limitations that creates. My thinking was to use forms for the major functions, and dialogs to walk the user through data entry, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that I can't switch between forms or some such. I'm used to that sort of thing.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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I have an app that I've been working on for over 10 years (started with Borland C then moved to VS6). For the last several years I've been working on it with VS2003 and it builds to 1.27 MB. Thought I'd give VS2008 a try... ends up at 1.7+ MB. WTF? Trying every single option to optimize for size (at the expense of performance?) I can only get a little under 1.5 MB. I've heard VS2008 is supposed to be really good. If this is the case, then perhaps this is a sign that Microsoft is just abandoning (sabatoging?) MFC. *Sheesh*
From what I've read around here over the years, Microsoft abandoned MFC after VS6. It wouldn't be too soon for me, as that was one of the major hurdles I fought with before. I have the whole VC++ Reference Library, including the two volumes on MFC, sitting on my shelf. I've read them all and never got one usable thing out of any of them. I'd as soon try to maintain a FoxPro database with modern tools as use MFC again for anything. From what I've seen so far - and remember I've only played with this for two hours - every control now has properties that never existed in MFC; even if they're not used, they're going to add some amount of overhead, and it all adds up. Size is less important now that memory and disk space are cheap. If your app still performs well, why worry?
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Glad to hear you had some time to actually work with it. I am one of those that like to play out on the bleeding edge of technology, so I usually play with the betas. When I first moved to .NET (back in the betas of .NET of course), while a little lost in the beginning, I could easily see it would be the future. Over the last server versions, VS may have got a bit bigger and need a bit more horsepower, but overall it is getting better and better. Now it can take only a couple hours to generate database driven apps in Web or Desktop applications and even now cross platofrm with Silverlight. Anxious to see what will be coming out next year, downloaded but have not played with yet, VS 2010 VM...
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: LINQ to SQL Dead? Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com
I used to enjoy exploring betas, but I'm getting too old for that. Life is too busy to waste on things that don't work, and it takes real effort to set aside time for the things that do. When you program for a living (or an avid hobby) it's different, but I'm just an engineer who likes to dabble in programming. I'll let you play on the edge and learn from your reports about the view from there. :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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From what I've read around here over the years, Microsoft abandoned MFC after VS6. It wouldn't be too soon for me, as that was one of the major hurdles I fought with before. I have the whole VC++ Reference Library, including the two volumes on MFC, sitting on my shelf. I've read them all and never got one usable thing out of any of them. I'd as soon try to maintain a FoxPro database with modern tools as use MFC again for anything. From what I've seen so far - and remember I've only played with this for two hours - every control now has properties that never existed in MFC; even if they're not used, they're going to add some amount of overhead, and it all adds up. Size is less important now that memory and disk space are cheap. If your app still performs well, why worry?
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
MFC is not that difficult, it's actually pretty straight forward. More often than not those that have trouble with it are making it more complicated than it is. If you want to do MFC development, there is one and only one real book you need to read (in addition to the MSDN library). That book is MFC Internals by Scot Wingo and George Shepherd. It completly cuts through the fluff and explains how MFC works, and gives you the knowledge you need to understand every basic part of it quite easily. It's an old book, and doesn't cover anything since VS6, but it's still just as relevant. After reading that book, i largely abandonded all the wizards and hand wrote everything. It was a breeze. And MFC was not abandoned.. Microsoft made a number of enhancements to it in each new version of Visual Studio, but the thing that has always been lacking is GUI support. Even VS6 provides more GUI support than any .NET version of Visual Studio, but for those who have read "The" book, it doesn't really matter.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
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MFC is not that difficult, it's actually pretty straight forward. More often than not those that have trouble with it are making it more complicated than it is. If you want to do MFC development, there is one and only one real book you need to read (in addition to the MSDN library). That book is MFC Internals by Scot Wingo and George Shepherd. It completly cuts through the fluff and explains how MFC works, and gives you the knowledge you need to understand every basic part of it quite easily. It's an old book, and doesn't cover anything since VS6, but it's still just as relevant. After reading that book, i largely abandonded all the wizards and hand wrote everything. It was a breeze. And MFC was not abandoned.. Microsoft made a number of enhancements to it in each new version of Visual Studio, but the thing that has always been lacking is GUI support. Even VS6 provides more GUI support than any .NET version of Visual Studio, but for those who have read "The" book, it doesn't really matter.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
MFC Internals by Scot Wingo and George Shepherd
I'm sitting here looking up on the shelf at my copy (second printing, 1996) and remembering fondly reading it over and over, then wasting hours trying to get VS to do it. You're right, it is an excellent text, but it's clarity is no match for the obsurity of MSDN back then, and the total frustration of dealing with all the crap VS injected behind the scenes that was undocumented, unexplained, and often unneccesary. I probably should have done everything manually then, and painstakingly learned the Windows event-driven model, but like a good sheep I tried the MS way, starting with the incomprehensible Scribble app (most of which worked, but with no adequate expanation of why or how), then branched out unsuccessfully on my own. The only things that ever worked correctly were hand-coded console apps - a term which also was used freely with no explanation at the time. Good riddance to MFC, and I don't plan on looking back. Know anyone who would like a full set of VC++ 5 Reference books? :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
MFC Internals by Scot Wingo and George Shepherd
I'm sitting here looking up on the shelf at my copy (second printing, 1996) and remembering fondly reading it over and over, then wasting hours trying to get VS to do it. You're right, it is an excellent text, but it's clarity is no match for the obsurity of MSDN back then, and the total frustration of dealing with all the crap VS injected behind the scenes that was undocumented, unexplained, and often unneccesary. I probably should have done everything manually then, and painstakingly learned the Windows event-driven model, but like a good sheep I tried the MS way, starting with the incomprehensible Scribble app (most of which worked, but with no adequate expanation of why or how), then branched out unsuccessfully on my own. The only things that ever worked correctly were hand-coded console apps - a term which also was used freely with no explanation at the time. Good riddance to MFC, and I don't plan on looking back. Know anyone who would like a full set of VC++ 5 Reference books? :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Sorry, I have several versions of those reference books myself. Actually, i just got done throwing out about 3/4 of my computer books (well, recycled). It was time. I haven't coded MFC in years either, and as long as i'm doing vertical apps, i have little reason to use it. There are certain classes of apps that I would still write in C++ with MFC though, particularly if I were working on a commercial quality app.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?