days and nights of Visual Studio hell
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I am using Win 7, and I think most of what you say above is a complete crock. I may be in "software hell." But, you, seem to be in a totally different kind of "hell," where your sense of humor has been incinerated, all ablaze in an inner bonfire kindled with grudges against Microsoft: to emit such sulfurous fumes, as your words writ here. Do you believe Apple programmers got better dog-food: have never gone through yogic contortions as tools and technologies shifted around them, requiring they re-boot their brains ? I like MS tools, I think Visual Studio is the best IDE ever developed. I have no complaints against the nice people at the MS VS Studio Install Forum trying their best to assist me with resolving the problem. My screed here was delivered tongue-in-cheek; I am not in the hell ... of having ... no ... sense ... of humor :) In reality, there is no "hell," that cannot be escaped from, because, as Werner Heisenberg said, "atoms are not things." Bill
~ Confused by Windows 8 ? This may help: [^] !
You may be right. I am very much against Microsoft. I watch them and have to deal with their projects from the very beginning. Actually I manage to handle their products, but what makes me so anxious is that they break my hopes. Constantly creating new marginally better technologies and abandoning existing ones. Making Windows 8... I do not want to say it is really bad as is, but it might be so much better I cannot think about them calm.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote:
monster-machine with 2 Gb of RAM
:(( I didn't even know they sold computers that low-speced nowadays. :rose: Seriously, 16GB of RAM would cost, maybe, $100. My computer from high school, which I graduated from about 10 years ago, had something like 2GB of RAM. There are graphics cards now that come with 3GB of DDR5 RAM. My God, man, you poor soul. :rose: :rose: :rose:
AspDotNetDev wrote:
:(( I didn't even know they sold computers that low-speced nowadays. [Rose]
It was a gift, most PC's for sale will have 4 Gb now.
AspDotNetDev wrote:
My computer from high school, which I graduated from about 10 years ago
512k. Yes, half a megabyte - and it ran a multitasking graphical OS.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: if you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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I just upgraded my desktop box (Win7 x64) from 4GB to 8GB and the performance shot up - which leads me to conclude that the machine was being slowed down by excessive paging. A dev machine with 2GB RAM will suffer far, far worse. If you're using an x64 OS for development, you really need to be looking at 8GB or more.
Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
I just upgraded my desktop box (Win7 x64) from 4GB to 8GB and the performance shot up - which leads me to conclude that the machine was being slowed down by excessive paging.
I usually conclude that I'm running too much crap, which usually is true. After downloading the MVPS-hosts file, disabling a lot of unneeded services, and cleaning the startup-path, everything seems to fly.
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
A dev machine with 2GB RAM will suffer far, far worse.
Did I mention I'm coming from a 1Gb laptop running Ubuntu? My last article was written entirely on that machine, including the software :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: if you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddie, If your new rig is a monster to you, I think, by gosh, it's monstrous ! Not to worry: Michael is from Oz, where, for males, size really matters (but not as much as beer), and Zac, an American, is an Eagle Scout with all 129 Merit Badges. That should give you a perspective on their comments here :) best, Bill
~ Confused by Windows 8 ? This may help: [^] !
Hey Bill, I've learnt in VB5 since 2005, now i'm using Visual Studio 2012 for Windows Desktop on Win7 and i'm very happy with it. I've just developed the virtual OS, i really enjoyed working on it and its really fun! But hectic and it's not easy to understand the BIOS interrupt to develop using C++ to create a makefile and compile assembly files into a binary file. Thanks to VS2012, it's the best IDE ever! Thanks to Bill Gates! I'm still waiting for COSMOS to release for VS2012.... :) :thumbsup: best, Jared
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This post is made based on the belief that: "suffering shared is suffering diluted" ... which does seem to me to be one modal use of the Lounge :) You have all been in software "hell," I'd bet; if not with Visual Studio, then with an OS issue, or some other issue with an application, or your own code, that, suddenly, begins to malfunction for no apparent reason; an application that won't install, etc., etc. And, I suspect, that you, like me, have tarried long in software hell, because you wanted, at all cost, to avoid the dreaded re-install of the OS, followed by endless upgrading, and endless re-install of all your tools, and programs. I'll spare you the "Google street-level view," which I am exposing, and getting some help with, kind of, on the MS Visual Studio install forum. Here's a high-altitude fly-by view: It started with installing an upgrade to the MindScape dingus (Add In ? Extension ?) to Visual Studio RC 1. Then, the next day, trying to start Visual Studio: it goes into an endless loop presenting a dialog "Loading Components." Only way out: Task Manager: kill devenv.exe. So, what could be more natural, at this time, when MS has a free 90 day trial of Visual Studio 2012 Pro RTM, than to uninstall the RC 1, and install the RTM ? Un-install of RC1 fails with countless issues. Hand editing the Registry to remove all RC1 and FrameWork 4.5RC references, results in the apparent removal of RC1, but then RTM will not install. Endless fiddling with more registry entries, removing selected .NET components: finally RTM installs, but will show, on first launch, when I try to create a Windows Forms solution, a dialog telling me it can't "create the compiler." If I then ignore this dialog, and create a second solution; I end up with a viable solution that will build and run (!), but which will not allow me to access to the Design view, of any Form or UserControl :) I bet you've seen that window with deep blue on top, and a yellow panel top-side, that usually appears when you have done some kind of messing around with the Designer.cs file in a WinForms project. I'd estimate I have now spent nearly twenty hours of my life, over the last five days, unable to use Visual Studio 2012, trying to get the RTM to work, and now trying to get it un-installed. That's major withdrawal syndrome for me, because: using VS is a favorite past-time, and I like to answer QA questions here, checking my answers by coding in 2012, before posting them, to make sure they are correct. Some of the help files I've be
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Sorry to hear it - but this is why I don't touch "Release Candidate" or "Release To Market" or any other MS beta, until they ship the first true release version: SP1. Sorry, but I've been bitten by them too many times: I keep hoping they will improve, but they never do.
Ideological Purity is no substitute for being able to stick your thumb down a pipe to stop the water
OriginalGriff wrote:
Sorry to hear it - but this is why I don't touch "Release Candidate" or "Release To Market" or any other MS beta, until they ship the first true release version: SP1.
Exactly. Once the first SP is released it's a good bet the program or OS is solid. I waited until Vista was at SP1 and never had a single complaint. And I just bought my first Win7 machine a few months ago. Once again, no complaints. Early releases are not worth the headaches.
XAlan Burkhart
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OriginalGriff wrote:
Sorry to hear it - but this is why I don't touch "Release Candidate" or "Release To Market" or any other MS beta, until they ship the first true release version: SP1.
Exactly. Once the first SP is released it's a good bet the program or OS is solid. I waited until Vista was at SP1 and never had a single complaint. And I just bought my first Win7 machine a few months ago. Once again, no complaints. Early releases are not worth the headaches.
XAlan Burkhart
They are from some companies, but there are those (like MS) who charge you for the privilege of beta testing. :sigh:
Ideological Purity is no substitute for being able to stick your thumb down a pipe to stop the water
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Eddy Vluggen wrote:
a 64-bit monster-machine with 2 Gb of RAM
I'm assuming that's a typo.
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
There are Virtual Machines available - don't use your primary environment for experiments, it sucks when you have to live in the ruins of a failed experiment
I'm with you on this. My development environment is now virtualized, and getting rid of the RC was just a matter of deleting the machine, and installing the RTM on a clean OS. I still have VS 2008 and 2010 VMs ready to be fired up at any time (in fact, I still develop with 2010; I only have 2012 installed for tinkering with, until I'm ready to commit to it).
Daniel Desormeaux wrote:
I only have 2012 installed for tinkering with, until I'm ready to commit to it
I've heard several complaints about the VS2012 UI. What do you think of it?
XAlan Burkhart
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They are from some companies, but there are those (like MS) who charge you for the privilege of beta testing. :sigh:
Ideological Purity is no substitute for being able to stick your thumb down a pipe to stop the water
OriginalGriff wrote:
They are from some companies, but there are those (like MS) who charge you for the privilege of beta testing.
I don't mind it so much if it's free/open source. But as you said, MS regards this as a privilege. It's no different from buying a new car and the dealer expecting you to fix their design flaws.
XAlan Burkhart
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This post is made based on the belief that: "suffering shared is suffering diluted" ... which does seem to me to be one modal use of the Lounge :) You have all been in software "hell," I'd bet; if not with Visual Studio, then with an OS issue, or some other issue with an application, or your own code, that, suddenly, begins to malfunction for no apparent reason; an application that won't install, etc., etc. And, I suspect, that you, like me, have tarried long in software hell, because you wanted, at all cost, to avoid the dreaded re-install of the OS, followed by endless upgrading, and endless re-install of all your tools, and programs. I'll spare you the "Google street-level view," which I am exposing, and getting some help with, kind of, on the MS Visual Studio install forum. Here's a high-altitude fly-by view: It started with installing an upgrade to the MindScape dingus (Add In ? Extension ?) to Visual Studio RC 1. Then, the next day, trying to start Visual Studio: it goes into an endless loop presenting a dialog "Loading Components." Only way out: Task Manager: kill devenv.exe. So, what could be more natural, at this time, when MS has a free 90 day trial of Visual Studio 2012 Pro RTM, than to uninstall the RC 1, and install the RTM ? Un-install of RC1 fails with countless issues. Hand editing the Registry to remove all RC1 and FrameWork 4.5RC references, results in the apparent removal of RC1, but then RTM will not install. Endless fiddling with more registry entries, removing selected .NET components: finally RTM installs, but will show, on first launch, when I try to create a Windows Forms solution, a dialog telling me it can't "create the compiler." If I then ignore this dialog, and create a second solution; I end up with a viable solution that will build and run (!), but which will not allow me to access to the Design view, of any Form or UserControl :) I bet you've seen that window with deep blue on top, and a yellow panel top-side, that usually appears when you have done some kind of messing around with the Designer.cs file in a WinForms project. I'd estimate I have now spent nearly twenty hours of my life, over the last five days, unable to use Visual Studio 2012, trying to get the RTM to work, and now trying to get it un-installed. That's major withdrawal syndrome for me, because: using VS is a favorite past-time, and I like to answer QA questions here, checking my answers by coding in 2012, before posting them, to make sure they are correct. Some of the help files I've be
To my mind, Visual Studio has gone downhill since VS2008. The part that pisses me off the most is that MS feels like they need to re-write the user interface with every release, and every time they screw it up even worse. In VS2008 (and 2005, 2003, etc.) you could float toolbars and place them anywhere on the screen, so all the real estate you lost could be largely reclaimed. In VS2010, MS decided they had to rewrite it all into WPF (which should have been called WTF). As a result, none of the toolbars can be floated anymore, so vertical real estate is lost. And now with VS2012, they have gone totally crazy, reducing the whole UI to monochrome colours, upper-case naming, and you still can't float a toolbar. I wish these idiots would get it through their heads that developers make their living using these applications, that they spend 10+ hours a day in them, and screwing with them makse them counter-productive. An IDE is a tool, a massively important tool, so leave it alone. Fix its bugs, add features to it, but don't remove something once you've put it in. No one ever tried to change the user interface on a carpenter's tools; take the same attitude toward a developer's tools.
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Hey Bill, I've learnt in VB5 since 2005, now i'm using Visual Studio 2012 for Windows Desktop on Win7 and i'm very happy with it. I've just developed the virtual OS, i really enjoyed working on it and its really fun! But hectic and it's not easy to understand the BIOS interrupt to develop using C++ to create a makefile and compile assembly files into a binary file. Thanks to VS2012, it's the best IDE ever! Thanks to Bill Gates! I'm still waiting for COSMOS to release for VS2012.... :) :thumbsup: best, Jared
Well, congratulations, Jared, I hope your enjoyable experience continues, and you keep up your enthusiasm ! Creating your own OS using COSMOS (assuming you mean the open-source CodePlex project) sounds like quite a challenge. Perhaps you'll be able to publish an article (tutorial ?) here on CP in the future best, Bill
~ Confused by Windows 8 ? This may help: [^] !
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Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
I just upgraded my desktop box (Win7 x64) from 4GB to 8GB and the performance shot up - which leads me to conclude that the machine was being slowed down by excessive paging.
I usually conclude that I'm running too much crap, which usually is true. After downloading the MVPS-hosts file, disabling a lot of unneeded services, and cleaning the startup-path, everything seems to fly.
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
A dev machine with 2GB RAM will suffer far, far worse.
Did I mention I'm coming from a 1Gb laptop running Ubuntu? My last article was written entirely on that machine, including the software :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: if you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
It depends what sort of dev you do but even on a stripped down system, you're probably losing a significant amount of performance to paging. Whether that's an issue depends on what you're doing. I work on fairly large codebases, and use VMs and static analysis a lot - and in that environment, the extra memory helps a lot. Certainly I've noticed a significant reduction in analysis time for our codebase (360kLOC of C++) between the 4GB and 8GB variants of the same machine, and builds are noticeably quicker too. In fact, increasing the RAM has boosted the performance sufficiently far more than fitting an SSD to the same system that I'm not actually that bothered about SSDs on desktops now. On my laptop (an Win7 x64 i7 machine with 4GB RAM) the disk light is on way more than I'd like, so that's next for an upgrade. YMMV of course.
Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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Daniel Desormeaux wrote:
I only have 2012 installed for tinkering with, until I'm ready to commit to it
I've heard several complaints about the VS2012 UI. What do you think of it?
XAlan Burkhart
A mess, quite frankly - and one that's caused us a lot of extra work[^] this year. Compared to that, everything else I've been working on over the last few months (even the really grotty bits involving Eclipse, x64 and JNI) has been a bit of a doddle. Still, it's done now (a themed version of our VS plug-in goes out at the end of the year), so I'm finally able to get on with more interesting stuff again (including the standalone version of Visual Lint[^], which I'm finding very useful at the moment). As a consolation prize from all of the extra VS2012 work, I've enough material to write a new article on how to implement themed XP style controls with customisable colour schemes. All I need now is some free time...
Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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To my mind, Visual Studio has gone downhill since VS2008. The part that pisses me off the most is that MS feels like they need to re-write the user interface with every release, and every time they screw it up even worse. In VS2008 (and 2005, 2003, etc.) you could float toolbars and place them anywhere on the screen, so all the real estate you lost could be largely reclaimed. In VS2010, MS decided they had to rewrite it all into WPF (which should have been called WTF). As a result, none of the toolbars can be floated anymore, so vertical real estate is lost. And now with VS2012, they have gone totally crazy, reducing the whole UI to monochrome colours, upper-case naming, and you still can't float a toolbar. I wish these idiots would get it through their heads that developers make their living using these applications, that they spend 10+ hours a day in them, and screwing with them makse them counter-productive. An IDE is a tool, a massively important tool, so leave it alone. Fix its bugs, add features to it, but don't remove something once you've put it in. No one ever tried to change the user interface on a carpenter's tools; take the same attitude toward a developer's tools.
I completely agree. I despair at the MS Dev Division sometimes, I really do. :doh:
Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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AspDotNetDev wrote:
:(( I didn't even know they sold computers that low-speced nowadays. [Rose]
It was a gift, most PC's for sale will have 4 Gb now.
AspDotNetDev wrote:
My computer from high school, which I graduated from about 10 years ago
512k. Yes, half a megabyte - and it ran a multitasking graphical OS.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: if you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
it ran a multitasking graphical OS
Fancy schmancy! :)
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Perhaps I'm naive, but I still tend to feel that this is how it should be done: Install: Copy file structure into an empty directory on the target machine Uninstall: Delete that directory Never, ever, put anything into the windows directory Read and write configuration information to/from files - if they are placed outside the target directory, document where they are located. If you are doing COM related stuff, or anything else that requires information to be added to the registry, provide a commandline utility that cleans up the registry.
Espen Harlinn Principal Architect, Software - Goodtech Projects & Services AS Projects promoting programming in "natural language" are intrinsically doomed to fail. Edsger W.Dijkstra
That's sooooo 1980's :) I totally agree. Hiding all these bits of code and configuration around on the system is great.. until something breaks. Then one needs to wipe and reinstall the OS to fix it.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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That's sooooo 1980's :) I totally agree. Hiding all these bits of code and configuration around on the system is great.. until something breaks. Then one needs to wipe and reinstall the OS to fix it.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
patbob wrote:
That's sooooo 1980's
So true - I'm currently postponing a complete reinstall due to an uninstaller that went out of its way to make my laptop unusable. The approach seems to have been similar to: cd ..\..\.. del /F /S /Q *.* with a slight misstake in what cd ..\..\.. actually meant (c:\oracle), it should have been cd ..\..
Espen Harlinn Principal Architect, Software - Goodtech Projects & Services AS Projects promoting programming in "natural language" are intrinsically doomed to fail. Edsger W.Dijkstra
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Michael Martin wrote:
Both my kids laptops are better specced than that.
You upgraded them to the latest Visual Studio? ..look at it this way; if my application runs fast enough on my machine to "not" go on my nerves, it'll probably be good enough for a clients' machine.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: if you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
..look at it this way; if my application runs fast enough on my machine to "not" go on my nerves, it'll probably be good enough for a clients' machine.
What's going to get on your nerves are the problems you'll have with your application AND VS trying to chew on that little bit of RAM you've got. I recommend you upgrade to 4GB at least, ASAP; anything less on an environment running VS and a Win OS later than XP just doesn't make sense.
"Seize the day" - Horace "It's not what he doesn't know that scares me; it's what he knows for sure that just ain't so!" - Will Rogers, said by him about Herbert Hoover
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To my mind, Visual Studio has gone downhill since VS2008. The part that pisses me off the most is that MS feels like they need to re-write the user interface with every release, and every time they screw it up even worse. In VS2008 (and 2005, 2003, etc.) you could float toolbars and place them anywhere on the screen, so all the real estate you lost could be largely reclaimed. In VS2010, MS decided they had to rewrite it all into WPF (which should have been called WTF). As a result, none of the toolbars can be floated anymore, so vertical real estate is lost. And now with VS2012, they have gone totally crazy, reducing the whole UI to monochrome colours, upper-case naming, and you still can't float a toolbar. I wish these idiots would get it through their heads that developers make their living using these applications, that they spend 10+ hours a day in them, and screwing with them makse them counter-productive. An IDE is a tool, a massively important tool, so leave it alone. Fix its bugs, add features to it, but don't remove something once you've put it in. No one ever tried to change the user interface on a carpenter's tools; take the same attitude toward a developer's tools.
Now, here's a serious question: the VS developers obviously don't use VS - what DO they use? (If they actually used VS, I have to believe it would get better).
"Seize the day" - Horace "It's not what he doesn't know that scares me; it's what he knows for sure that just ain't so!" - Will Rogers, said by him about Herbert Hoover
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This post is made based on the belief that: "suffering shared is suffering diluted" ... which does seem to me to be one modal use of the Lounge :) You have all been in software "hell," I'd bet; if not with Visual Studio, then with an OS issue, or some other issue with an application, or your own code, that, suddenly, begins to malfunction for no apparent reason; an application that won't install, etc., etc. And, I suspect, that you, like me, have tarried long in software hell, because you wanted, at all cost, to avoid the dreaded re-install of the OS, followed by endless upgrading, and endless re-install of all your tools, and programs. I'll spare you the "Google street-level view," which I am exposing, and getting some help with, kind of, on the MS Visual Studio install forum. Here's a high-altitude fly-by view: It started with installing an upgrade to the MindScape dingus (Add In ? Extension ?) to Visual Studio RC 1. Then, the next day, trying to start Visual Studio: it goes into an endless loop presenting a dialog "Loading Components." Only way out: Task Manager: kill devenv.exe. So, what could be more natural, at this time, when MS has a free 90 day trial of Visual Studio 2012 Pro RTM, than to uninstall the RC 1, and install the RTM ? Un-install of RC1 fails with countless issues. Hand editing the Registry to remove all RC1 and FrameWork 4.5RC references, results in the apparent removal of RC1, but then RTM will not install. Endless fiddling with more registry entries, removing selected .NET components: finally RTM installs, but will show, on first launch, when I try to create a Windows Forms solution, a dialog telling me it can't "create the compiler." If I then ignore this dialog, and create a second solution; I end up with a viable solution that will build and run (!), but which will not allow me to access to the Design view, of any Form or UserControl :) I bet you've seen that window with deep blue on top, and a yellow panel top-side, that usually appears when you have done some kind of messing around with the Designer.cs file in a WinForms project. I'd estimate I have now spent nearly twenty hours of my life, over the last five days, unable to use Visual Studio 2012, trying to get the RTM to work, and now trying to get it un-installed. That's major withdrawal syndrome for me, because: using VS is a favorite past-time, and I like to answer QA questions here, checking my answers by coding in 2012, before posting them, to make sure they are correct. Some of the help files I've be
I get an email whenever there's an error on my webapps. We recently initiated a service to do Red-Siren testing (a term I came up with...); e.g., testing for any security issues. (Now, I know this is .NET reporting the error, and I do know what the error is about... but the funny part is the actual error message, truncated that it is...) Got an error message recently. Of most interest, and danged funny at that, is the unedited (albeit truncated) verbatim "Error Message" from Microsoft's lovely .NET Framework ... (emphasis added) URL: https : / / www.RedactedWebSite.com /SomeWebApp/ThatLoginPage.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fSomeWebApp%2fDefault.aspx%3faction%3dppr&action=ppr%3CScript%20%3Ealert(%22HelloSIG%22)%3C/Script%3E Error Date: [redacted] Error Message: A potentially dangerous Request.QueryString value was detected from the client (action="ppr<Script >alert("Hell..." Albeit a little late (going on 7+ years of .NET programming...), thanks for the warning Microsoft!
