Why VS 2008 AND VS 2005 Suck today
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What on earth is the point of having an "extensible" format when the dam project loading code in VS can't even load things up gracefully? A simple console test project created in VS 2008, with 1, count 'em, ONE file, fails to load up in VS 2005, complaining about some missing import in the project. Delete the <import> tag manually and it loads up. Of course then it won't build, blah, blah, blah. Isn't the whole point of an XML based format to allow for graceful degradation when loading up things? Why can't VS handle this? How little testing was done of things like this? Seriously, did no one consider that someone might have to use a project generated by a newer version of VS with an older version? I can understand a complex project with lots of dependencies might cause a hiccup or two, but a simple console project with one file and 20 lines of code? Seriously that's just beyond pathetic. :mad: X| ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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What on earth is the point of having an "extensible" format when the dam project loading code in VS can't even load things up gracefully? A simple console test project created in VS 2008, with 1, count 'em, ONE file, fails to load up in VS 2005, complaining about some missing import in the project. Delete the <import> tag manually and it loads up. Of course then it won't build, blah, blah, blah. Isn't the whole point of an XML based format to allow for graceful degradation when loading up things? Why can't VS handle this? How little testing was done of things like this? Seriously, did no one consider that someone might have to use a project generated by a newer version of VS with an older version? I can understand a complex project with lots of dependencies might cause a hiccup or two, but a simple console project with one file and 20 lines of code? Seriously that's just beyond pathetic. :mad: X| ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
funny, your signature is all broken up in your post, but when I'm replying, the signature is ok in the "original" message section above the edit text box where I'm typing this.
Watched code never compiles.
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funny, your signature is all broken up in your post, but when I'm replying, the signature is ok in the "original" message section above the edit text box where I'm typing this.
Watched code never compiles.
Known bug (I reported it already).
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What on earth is the point of having an "extensible" format when the dam project loading code in VS can't even load things up gracefully? A simple console test project created in VS 2008, with 1, count 'em, ONE file, fails to load up in VS 2005, complaining about some missing import in the project. Delete the <import> tag manually and it loads up. Of course then it won't build, blah, blah, blah. Isn't the whole point of an XML based format to allow for graceful degradation when loading up things? Why can't VS handle this? How little testing was done of things like this? Seriously, did no one consider that someone might have to use a project generated by a newer version of VS with an older version? I can understand a complex project with lots of dependencies might cause a hiccup or two, but a simple console project with one file and 20 lines of code? Seriously that's just beyond pathetic. :mad: X| ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
Jim Crafton wrote:
Isn't the whole point of an XML based format to allow for graceful degradation when loading up things?
Exactly, XML allows graceful degradation. Compatibility in both directions isn't a miracle, but it requires planning, care, and a good engineering sense - What seems to lack from most of VS > 6. It's the one thign that really scares me when reading the Visual C++ Team's blog: every dialog, every nit seems to have its own "Program Manager" with good coding but no program management experience.
Totally and absolutely unrelated, XML can never be better than the tools for it. The only true advantage of XML I see that it would allow generic tools to handle all kinds of XML files. I haven't seen any serious tools besides seven ways to parse and three to validate it, and editors that helpfully suggest angle brackets. Also, see Excel: everyone and my grandma prodded microsoft to "use an open format, like XML". Microsoft did, and it turned out that to correctly modify the document, you need most of Excel's functionality.
Agh! Reality! My Archnemesis![^]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v server. -
What on earth is the point of having an "extensible" format when the dam project loading code in VS can't even load things up gracefully? A simple console test project created in VS 2008, with 1, count 'em, ONE file, fails to load up in VS 2005, complaining about some missing import in the project. Delete the <import> tag manually and it loads up. Of course then it won't build, blah, blah, blah. Isn't the whole point of an XML based format to allow for graceful degradation when loading up things? Why can't VS handle this? How little testing was done of things like this? Seriously, did no one consider that someone might have to use a project generated by a newer version of VS with an older version? I can understand a complex project with lots of dependencies might cause a hiccup or two, but a simple console project with one file and 20 lines of code? Seriously that's just beyond pathetic. :mad: X| ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
Jim Crafton wrote:
Isn't the whole point of an XML based format to allow for graceful degradation when loading up things?
Not really. It's so you can appear to be trendy. Any data format can be designed to support degradation when read by a newer version of a program - it doesn't have to be a heirarchical text-based format. I don't see how using a markup language, even if it is exensible, is a good format for a project file.
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What on earth is the point of having an "extensible" format when the dam project loading code in VS can't even load things up gracefully? A simple console test project created in VS 2008, with 1, count 'em, ONE file, fails to load up in VS 2005, complaining about some missing import in the project. Delete the <import> tag manually and it loads up. Of course then it won't build, blah, blah, blah. Isn't the whole point of an XML based format to allow for graceful degradation when loading up things? Why can't VS handle this? How little testing was done of things like this? Seriously, did no one consider that someone might have to use a project generated by a newer version of VS with an older version? I can understand a complex project with lots of dependencies might cause a hiccup or two, but a simple console project with one file and 20 lines of code? Seriously that's just beyond pathetic. :mad: X| ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
Word, Excell, and powerpoint are very good about at least the simple files being compatible across versions. I do not know why they did not do it in 2008
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Jim Crafton wrote:
Isn't the whole point of an XML based format to allow for graceful degradation when loading up things?
Not really. It's so you can appear to be trendy. Any data format can be designed to support degradation when read by a newer version of a program - it doesn't have to be a heirarchical text-based format. I don't see how using a markup language, even if it is exensible, is a good format for a project file.
Electron Shepherd wrote:
I don't see how using a markup language, even if it is exensible, is a good format for a project file.
Reminds me of a well-remembered blog post about XML, that sums it up nicely: If we have learnt anything in the last decades of software development, it is that there are no silver bullets. There is no solution that can be applied universally. So why do people try to define a universal data format?
Agh! Reality! My Archnemesis![^]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v server. -
Word, Excell, and powerpoint are very good about at least the simple files being compatible across versions. I do not know why they did not do it in 2008
Nick Coombs wrote:
Word
Actually not now, documents saved in the latest version of Word fail completely to open in the previous ones. I am terrible with version names so I cannot remember the exact version I have at home.
........................ Life is too shor
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Nick Coombs wrote:
Word
Actually not now, documents saved in the latest version of Word fail completely to open in the previous ones. I am terrible with version names so I cannot remember the exact version I have at home.
........................ Life is too shor
Office 2007 deals quite nicely with Office 2010 documents. I suspect this is due to some of exactly what is missing from VS project files. With these two versions of Office usign the same document format, with the later version merely adding to a document without changing the inherited format, forward compatibility is neatly achieved.
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Jim Crafton wrote:
Isn't the whole point of an XML based format to allow for graceful degradation when loading up things?
Exactly, XML allows graceful degradation. Compatibility in both directions isn't a miracle, but it requires planning, care, and a good engineering sense - What seems to lack from most of VS > 6. It's the one thign that really scares me when reading the Visual C++ Team's blog: every dialog, every nit seems to have its own "Program Manager" with good coding but no program management experience.
Totally and absolutely unrelated, XML can never be better than the tools for it. The only true advantage of XML I see that it would allow generic tools to handle all kinds of XML files. I haven't seen any serious tools besides seven ways to parse and three to validate it, and editors that helpfully suggest angle brackets. Also, see Excel: everyone and my grandma prodded microsoft to "use an open format, like XML". Microsoft did, and it turned out that to correctly modify the document, you need most of Excel's functionality.
Agh! Reality! My Archnemesis![^]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v server.peterchen wrote: Compatibility in both directions isn't a miracle, but it requires planning, care, and a good engineering sense - What seems to lack from most of VS > 6. Agreed, but it's really not that hard. We did something like this on a project I was involved with at work years ago, and it was relatively easy to deal with. Compared to the other things they have implemented in VS, *not* having this working 100% solid is just inexcusable. But hey as long as we have gradients and fancy charting controls that I can spin around in 3 dimensions, who the hell cares right? ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
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peterchen wrote: Compatibility in both directions isn't a miracle, but it requires planning, care, and a good engineering sense - What seems to lack from most of VS > 6. Agreed, but it's really not that hard. We did something like this on a project I was involved with at work years ago, and it was relatively easy to deal with. Compared to the other things they have implemented in VS, *not* having this working 100% solid is just inexcusable. But hey as long as we have gradients and fancy charting controls that I can spin around in 3 dimensions, who the hell cares right? ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Blow
Jim Crafton wrote:
But hey as long as we have gradients and fancy charting controls that I can spin around in 3 dimensions, who the hell cares right?
Oooooh!!! Fancy 3D charting controls that spin? SHINY! ME WANT! :rolleyes:
Agh! Reality! My Archnemesis![^]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v server. -
Office 2007 deals quite nicely with Office 2010 documents. I suspect this is due to some of exactly what is missing from VS project files. With these two versions of Office usign the same document format, with the later version merely adding to a document without changing the inherited format, forward compatibility is neatly achieved.