MS Dev Tooling
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I was introduced to VS early on in college, and using any IDE afterwards just felt, "meh." VS just has a nice feel to it. Thankfully, I get to use it professionally, and make a point to use it for hobby projects. Another IDE I like, though mostly for tinkering, is Spyder, though it's not as pretty or user-friendly imo.
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Spyder looks decent from the screenshot. SharpDevelop wasn't too bad, but became mostly obsolete when the free VS Community Edition became available. MonoDevelop doesn't look too bad either.
I used MonoDevelop a few years ago for some small Unity projects, and it did the job well, but I still know little about it. At some point, I made the transition to using VS for Unity. Just looked up MD's screenshots, and I kinda miss that UI. Might have to give it another whirl.
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Well, you have to keep releasing new versions to make more money ;) I think there is also a culture in software development that you always have to have new versions with more and better features, when sometimes that isn't necessary. Like you said, it happens that products get worse by 'overdoing' it.
Jacquers wrote:
I think there is also a culture in software development that you always have to have new versions with more and better features
I fight this all the time, especially with web (ASP.Net) development. If I had my druthers, I'd keep it all at .NET 4.0 using only native components. I still prefer VS 2010 over the newer versions mostly since it seems faster for builds/debugging. Lately, I've been forced to upgrade due to a slew of widgets we bought a couple of years ago, mostly for the reporting tools...but they only work on .net 4.6 and better. It's not uncommon at all for me to have VS 6, VS 2010, 2017, and 2019 all running at the same time. :)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I was introduced to VS early on in college, and using any IDE afterwards just felt, "meh." VS just has a nice feel to it. Thankfully, I get to use it professionally, and make a point to use it for hobby projects. Another IDE I like, though mostly for tinkering, is Spyder, though it's not as pretty or user-friendly imo.
It's incredible how experiences vary, I started with random IDEs and then tried Android Studio and I was amazed, now that I'm writing c# I can't not use Rider, VS feels slow, when I used it for the first few weeks by itself and it was constantly hanging. Now I kinda use them both, because Rider has a lot less features, obviously ones that are used less frequently, so I write in Rider and edit configs, dependencies and such from VS. I hope the JetBrains guys will try to achieve feature parity but... yeah, that's going to take a while, assuming they're aiming for it and they don't intend it to be use like I do
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Bash MS all you like, but their development tooling is much easier easier to use than most. Recently I wanted to test something in Java, so I downloaded a JDK and Eclipse. It's a lot less intuitive to use (for a beginner?) than Visual Studio and I didn't didn't it easy to use at all. I finally tried IntelliJ - it's better and I got the code sample working. Still not on the same level as VS. MS has made the development experience easier than most other companies imo.
I've been using Visual Studio for 23 years (it was called Visual C++ 4.0 back then), and it did have its issues, and it's still far from perfect. But it's the best software development experience I as a professional software engineer can imagine.
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Bash MS all you like, but their development tooling is much easier easier to use than most. Recently I wanted to test something in Java, so I downloaded a JDK and Eclipse. It's a lot less intuitive to use (for a beginner?) than Visual Studio and I didn't didn't it easy to use at all. I finally tried IntelliJ - it's better and I got the code sample working. Still not on the same level as VS. MS has made the development experience easier than most other companies imo.
I've been using VS since it was called Visual Interdev when it was introduced to the UK in 1997 (I was at the launch event in London). I use it full time for web development. Then it was VB, then WebForms (big mistake) and now C# and Razor. The one thing that's REALLY hacked me off with it, despite bringing it up time and time again with MS is the fact you cannot totally switch off code formatting. It is definitely the case that I expend more key strokes correcting it's auto-formatting than I do writing code. It's such a pity. I think it's probably to do with the fact that Razor files contain multiple languages (HTML, C#, JS and poss CSS). Even simply cutting and pasting a piece of SASS, or JS or C# in file ends up with the whole file reformatted. Luckily Ctrl+z corrects it and then you can do what you wanted originally with it. I think MS assume we all write code from scratch so their formatting is fine. But if you're constantly dipping in and out of loads of projects from all over the place, all with different formatting then you want to do it yourself. If any MS devs are reading this, PLEASE SORT THIS OUT. I have no respect for people that just rush onto the next eye-catcher that(let's be honest) hardly anyone uses, when you don't sort the basics out that effects everybody. I feel better now ;)
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It's incredible how experiences vary, I started with random IDEs and then tried Android Studio and I was amazed, now that I'm writing c# I can't not use Rider, VS feels slow, when I used it for the first few weeks by itself and it was constantly hanging. Now I kinda use them both, because Rider has a lot less features, obviously ones that are used less frequently, so I write in Rider and edit configs, dependencies and such from VS. I hope the JetBrains guys will try to achieve feature parity but... yeah, that's going to take a while, assuming they're aiming for it and they don't intend it to be use like I do
I used AS for one semester for an Android App, and my biggest complaint (that may or not be the fault of AS explicitly) was that the emulators just never functioned correctly. Debugging just became this giant rodeo and a nuisance. Once I found out that I could debug from my own personal android device, things went much, much smoother. My disdain for it might also be partly because that semester was supposed to be a group project, and it largely became a, "my" project. :^)
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Jacquers wrote:
I think there is also a culture in software development that you always have to have new versions with more and better features
I fight this all the time, especially with web (ASP.Net) development. If I had my druthers, I'd keep it all at .NET 4.0 using only native components. I still prefer VS 2010 over the newer versions mostly since it seems faster for builds/debugging. Lately, I've been forced to upgrade due to a slew of widgets we bought a couple of years ago, mostly for the reporting tools...but they only work on .net 4.6 and better. It's not uncommon at all for me to have VS 6, VS 2010, 2017, and 2019 all running at the same time. :)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
Me too! I have VS6, VS2015, and VS2017 going. VS2017 loads and runs my solution just fine and it loads faster. But whatever happened to the "Bookmarks" feature? Is it there and I just don't know how to activate it? If you know, please reply/comment.
Member of the Evil Empire since 1976.
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I used AS for one semester for an Android App, and my biggest complaint (that may or not be the fault of AS explicitly) was that the emulators just never functioned correctly. Debugging just became this giant rodeo and a nuisance. Once I found out that I could debug from my own personal android device, things went much, much smoother. My disdain for it might also be partly because that semester was supposed to be a group project, and it largely became a, "my" project. :^)
I can absolutely relate to the "group" project part, sadly I didn't use the Android emulator very much, since I was developing Flutter apps on a mac and the iOS emulator was so much better
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I've been using VS since it was called Visual Interdev when it was introduced to the UK in 1997 (I was at the launch event in London). I use it full time for web development. Then it was VB, then WebForms (big mistake) and now C# and Razor. The one thing that's REALLY hacked me off with it, despite bringing it up time and time again with MS is the fact you cannot totally switch off code formatting. It is definitely the case that I expend more key strokes correcting it's auto-formatting than I do writing code. It's such a pity. I think it's probably to do with the fact that Razor files contain multiple languages (HTML, C#, JS and poss CSS). Even simply cutting and pasting a piece of SASS, or JS or C# in file ends up with the whole file reformatted. Luckily Ctrl+z corrects it and then you can do what you wanted originally with it. I think MS assume we all write code from scratch so their formatting is fine. But if you're constantly dipping in and out of loads of projects from all over the place, all with different formatting then you want to do it yourself. If any MS devs are reading this, PLEASE SORT THIS OUT. I have no respect for people that just rush onto the next eye-catcher that(let's be honest) hardly anyone uses, when you don't sort the basics out that effects everybody. I feel better now ;)
Here here!! While I generally agree VS is a top tier IDE. I want a moment on the soapbox.. How about bring back temporary projects. I got very spoiled with that feature and then they dropped it in vs2019. They claimed it was dropped because useage metrics deemed no one used it.. yet it immediately got feedback. I called out what usage metrics they could have possibly gotten to make this determination (unless VS phones home your every click??). What probably happened is temp projects doesnt fit the way they implemented the new start screen, which I find actually a bit clunky to spin up new projects than the old way. It was handy to spin up a console app, tinker with a snippet of code, and discard. No neee to save to a Temp folder and remember to clear it out. For that I still open VS2017 instances. I'll step off the soapbox now before I go on about their recent trend extensions.
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I've been using VS since it was called Visual Interdev when it was introduced to the UK in 1997 (I was at the launch event in London). I use it full time for web development. Then it was VB, then WebForms (big mistake) and now C# and Razor. The one thing that's REALLY hacked me off with it, despite bringing it up time and time again with MS is the fact you cannot totally switch off code formatting. It is definitely the case that I expend more key strokes correcting it's auto-formatting than I do writing code. It's such a pity. I think it's probably to do with the fact that Razor files contain multiple languages (HTML, C#, JS and poss CSS). Even simply cutting and pasting a piece of SASS, or JS or C# in file ends up with the whole file reformatted. Luckily Ctrl+z corrects it and then you can do what you wanted originally with it. I think MS assume we all write code from scratch so their formatting is fine. But if you're constantly dipping in and out of loads of projects from all over the place, all with different formatting then you want to do it yourself. If any MS devs are reading this, PLEASE SORT THIS OUT. I have no respect for people that just rush onto the next eye-catcher that(let's be honest) hardly anyone uses, when you don't sort the basics out that effects everybody. I feel better now ;)
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Me too! I have VS6, VS2015, and VS2017 going. VS2017 loads and runs my solution just fine and it loads faster. But whatever happened to the "Bookmarks" feature? Is it there and I just don't know how to activate it? If you know, please reply/comment.
Member of the Evil Empire since 1976.
I too run many versions of IDE: VC6, VS 2013, and VS 2017. Would love to eliminate VC6. It is tricky to install under Windows 10 (See: https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1191047/Install-Visual-Studio-on-Windows). The VC6 debugger is also an issue under Windows-10. Unfortunately, the project won't compile on newer versions. It includes a Microsoft module that is now obsolete and unsupported.
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Me too! I have VS6, VS2015, and VS2017 going. VS2017 loads and runs my solution just fine and it loads faster. But whatever happened to the "Bookmarks" feature? Is it there and I just don't know how to activate it? If you know, please reply/comment.
Member of the Evil Empire since 1976.
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Here here!! While I generally agree VS is a top tier IDE. I want a moment on the soapbox.. How about bring back temporary projects. I got very spoiled with that feature and then they dropped it in vs2019. They claimed it was dropped because useage metrics deemed no one used it.. yet it immediately got feedback. I called out what usage metrics they could have possibly gotten to make this determination (unless VS phones home your every click??). What probably happened is temp projects doesnt fit the way they implemented the new start screen, which I find actually a bit clunky to spin up new projects than the old way. It was handy to spin up a console app, tinker with a snippet of code, and discard. No neee to save to a Temp folder and remember to clear it out. For that I still open VS2017 instances. I'll step off the soapbox now before I go on about their recent trend extensions.
I remember being in a launch presentation when temporary projects was touted as the big new thing that was going to be really useful, and yeah, it was. So why drop it? I just recently threw out the set of manuals that came with Visual C++ 1.0 that I bought with my own money. Those were the days
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I just checked both VS 2017 and 2019 and the Bookmarks are there under the Edit menu. I've never used them, but after understanding what they are, probably will in the future. :thumbsup:
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
Yes. I googled them for 2017 and found out they were moved from where the had been from VS6 thru VS2015, on the bar under the menu to the edit dropdown on the menu. :-O :-O :mad: I have been trying it out but I am not sure if I like it there or not. Still it is immensely useful.
Old Geezer
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I just checked both VS 2017 and 2019 and the Bookmarks are there under the Edit menu. I've never used them, but after understanding what they are, probably will in the future. :thumbsup:
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
Visual Studio bookmarks are very useful, I use em every day. Whenever I know I'm going to have to do some exploring to figure out what to do, I set a bookmark on the code I'm working on, and no matter how far I have to go I can get back by hitting F2 .
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Bash MS all you like, but their development tooling is much easier easier to use than most. Recently I wanted to test something in Java, so I downloaded a JDK and Eclipse. It's a lot less intuitive to use (for a beginner?) than Visual Studio and I didn't didn't it easy to use at all. I finally tried IntelliJ - it's better and I got the code sample working. Still not on the same level as VS. MS has made the development experience easier than most other companies imo.
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Bash MS all you like, but their development tooling is much easier easier to use than most. Recently I wanted to test something in Java, so I downloaded a JDK and Eclipse. It's a lot less intuitive to use (for a beginner?) than Visual Studio and I didn't didn't it easy to use at all. I finally tried IntelliJ - it's better and I got the code sample working. Still not on the same level as VS. MS has made the development experience easier than most other companies imo.
Eh, it is all what you get used to... I personally find Eclipse to work the best for me and flounder around in Visual Studio.
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Eh, it is all what you get used to... I personally find Eclipse to work the best for me and flounder around in Visual Studio.