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Inside Visual Studio 2005 Team System 156

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the all-kinds-of-i-in-team dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has posted a top 10 list of things you need to know about Visual Studio 2005 Team System. From the article: Everybody talks about collaborative development tools, and heaven knows you can't surf the major developers' for 10 minutes without getting hit by banners trumpeting the latest. We can't fault Microsoft for wanting a piece of that action; but we need more than just a collaborative environment."
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Inside Visual Studio 2005 Team System More

Inside Visual Studio 2005 Team System

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  • New here? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gridpoet ( 634171 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:06PM (#14101920)

    We can't fault Microsoft for wanting a piece of that action

    you must be new here...this is slashdot

    we can fault Microsoft for anything...

    • you must be new here...this is slashdot we can fault Microsoft for anything...

      Ain't that the truth, brother, all too often. If anyone can be accused of knee jerk reactions, its us. Let's give it a try, I'll give you a few words, you try this experiment, what is your reaction:

      1. Gates
      2. Stallman
      3. CEO
      4. Sun
      5. Microsoft
      6. OSS

      Ten to one, most SD'ers went into knee-jerk mode (one direction or the other) on each. Logic be damned.

  • Oh, I get it (Score:5, Funny)

    by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <tom@NoSPaM.thomasleecopeland.com> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:11PM (#14101960) Homepage
    Team System's response to this problem is a Logical Datacenter Designer, which integrates clients, Web servers, SQL Servers and any other servers into constrained, schema-driven models that permit solution architectures to truly embrace the big picture with proper attention to networking and its impact on interface with data sources. This concept is especially welcome as Web services become increasingly central to integrated application systems.
    Cool, OK, that clears it all up for me.

    • Re:Oh, I get it (Score:5, Funny)

      by gcaseye6677 ( 694805 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:16PM (#14102012)
      I suppose it also helps you leverage synergy to facilitate best-of-breed 21st century paradigm-shift enterprise solutions.
    • Me too. It's 100% fully buzzword compliant.
    • A home-run win-win transaction. Thank you TQM ... oh, is TQM passé yet?

    • OK, here goes: does anyone here actually work on an application that uses so-called web services? I've heard so much hype about these things in the past few months that anyone would think desktop applications or client-server over a network were dead. Given the high-tech city I work in, it's therefore slightly surprising that I've never encountered a genuine (as-in, not a toy, not a prototype) web service in use, other than possibly via a couple of Big Name Companies that could use any architecture they wan

      • That kind of depends on how you are defining "web services". I don't think the author is going for a strict definition, and is instead using the term to signify web apps, because I've never really seen any web services in real use either.
      • We are not "yet" using web services to expose functionality of our own apps, but the app I'm currently working on does make use of three (will be more) web services to access functionality/data from other systems.
      • In the past year, two of my clients have required a SOAP enabled web-service for various reasons - and not to be buzzword compliant either. One is a charity, the other is a smallish tech company.

        They're out there, it's not just a myth.

        Bob
      • does anyone here actually work on an application that uses so-called web services?

        Yes, in fact! I rarely get to answer that kind of question on slashdot...

        We use web services in our application to serve documents to several types of clients across the web (straight DHTML ASPX page, .Net application, and ActiveX control running in IE). Concievably, the customer could even use web services without our clientside code to roll their own, as it were. There are a few WTF moments, but it seems to work well enou
      • My employer's product uses SOAP to connect all of the features to the authentication engine.

        http://www.sci-s.com/id-management.htm [sci-s.com]

      • Re:A challenge (Score:3, Informative)

        by rocjoe71 ( 545053 )
        They're harder to see because web services are really a solution aimed at the business-to-business market so even when they get used, its use is overlooked because businesses are likelier to trumpet what the web service grants them to do rather than the use of the web service itself.

        For example, my favorite public-facing web service has got to be the USPS address correction web service [usps.com], but if a company were to exploit this API, any press they create for it would probably read "Company ABC in partnership wi

      • Actually, we're a small company ($30m revenue), and I've put together a couple of different web services for our outside partners to use. I'm also going to be working on a much bigger web services implemenation for a large data synchronization with one of our marketing vendors. That one will be a little crazy, but it will all be driven by web services (i.e. SOAP).

        I find them highly useful, and building functional web services with VS .NET 2003 is a snap for me, considering that I built previous ones by ha
      • Yes, practically every project I work on at my job depends on web services. Pretty much any time we want to expose internal capabilities or locally-stored data, we do it through a web service. Currently I am on a project to build a massive data management system with a Java Webstart user-side GUI (our "users" will be able to submit data into the system). The Java GUI posts the uploaded file and metadata to the management system by calling a web service. The GUI also discovers what types of data are supp

      • Re:A challenge (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Randolpho ( 628485 )
        Here's an example of a web service that as a /. geek you've probably heard about:

        Google maps API.

        Sure, it doesn't use .NET per se, but it's definitely a web service.

        And let's not forget the Google Ad Words API. And others, like specialized search services.

    • Re:Oh, I get it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ergo98 ( 9391 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @02:16PM (#14102547) Homepage Journal
      Cool, OK, that clears it all up for me.

      The submission article is TERRIBLE in every way. Loaded with buzzwords and nonsensical meaningless drivel, it was made for the sole purpose of getting hits. I wish I could mod down a front page story.

      View the presentation [microsoft.com] from the Launch 2005 event and you'll get much more useful information than the tripe submission.

      As one aside (quoted from the linked article): "There are far, far too many nuts-and-bolts geniuses out there who can rewrite DaVinci's Codex in T-SQL, but who think two-dimensional client-server architecture is good enough for Internet apps. To build decent apps today, and Internet apps in particular, you need more than an idea, more than good tools, more than an application-level design; you need an application architecture, a high-level framework that carefully addresses your applications' intended functionality within the context of your hardware, network, and data-source infrastructure -- and, worse yet, too many IT managers who know the buzzwords but don't yet really understand this. "

      I find this humorous, because many of the designs that have crashed and burned terribly are the over-designed, n-tier, architectural astronaut abortions that were pushed on an unsuspecting public. On flip side, many of the designs that have pervaded and succeeded at tremendous levels of scale could best be described as "some scripts that hit a database". Slashdot, for instance. Wikipedia...Digg...I could go on.

  • Team System is overkill bloat (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:12PM (#14101976)
    As Microsoft had already completely nailed collaborative development with Visual SourceSafe.
    • Our team uses Subversion in conjunction with http://www.edgewall.com/trac/ [edgewall.com] and I think it works great! It can be a little tricky to get setup the first time (at least on a mac) but it's well worth it.
      • Subversion is great, until it corrupts your repository so, that it cannot be recovered with the tools provided.
        Then you're glad you made daily backups of the repository, revert and continue as usual.
        • Are you using a Berkley back-end or FSFS? Switching to FSFS made a big difference for us (I'd say "no more corruptions", but that would be inviting a disaster). The only remaining problem is that VisualStudio hates the .svn folders and the alternate version of the Tortoise Windows client isn't a good enough solution.
          • The original that kept corrupting was on Berkley back-end.
            After the last failure, I restored the Berkley system, took complete dump, upgraded to latest version of svn, and loaded the dump to FSFS back-end.
            Haven't had any problems with the latest version yet, and hopefully won't have either.

        • And that is untrue of Visual SourceSafe, Rational ClearCase, CVS, or any other source control system how, exactly? If it stores in a DBMS of any sort (be it directories/files, a single monolithic file, or any other storage medium not composed of Magic Pixie Dust(tm) it can become corrupt. Heck, you could simply go old-school and tar up your project each day and run into corruption, causing you to have to roll back to a days-or-weeks-old backup.

          So let's take your statement and s/Subersion/SourceSafe:

          Sou

          • I haven't tried Subversion yet but do plan to but for a front end, unless you go all CLI, the GUI has a long way to go to catch up with Microsoft's VSS.

            If you havent tried it, then how can you comment on it? Use TortoiseSVN [tigris.org] as a GUI and it is excellent. Integrates with windows explorer, so every explorer window is completely aware of the subversion status of your files. Personally since most of my latest development involves eclipse I am using some SVN plugins for eclipse which are also excellent.

  • At least one thing is missing... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What about the plans for Microsoft Visual Studio 2007?! That one just has to be listed!
    • Everyone wants to know about that one, because it's the bugix for Visual Studio 2005!
    • Well as a matter of fact, it sounds like VS.Net 2007 is to be the bugfix for all the horrid bugs left unfixed before the VS.Net 2005 release earlier this month.

      I have been using it for around a month on and off, and boy, there are sub bad bugs. VS 2003 is much more stable. Unfortunately my client wants their web-applications coded in ASP.Net / .Net 2.0

      The 2.0 framework is fine, but VS 2005 has some SERIOUS usability issues. SP1 is scheduled for June, so VS 2005 is crippled till then.

      Me no likey.

      A

  • it's still a tool (Score:5, Funny)

    by snitmo ( 901312 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:26PM (#14102113)
    From TFA,

    To build decent apps today, and Internet apps in particular, you need more than an idea, more than good tools

    OK I need more than a tool.

    Team System is addressing this shortfall in its Team Edition for Software Architects with a tool called Application Designer, a graphical workhorse for solution architecture.

    So you give me a tool.

    Huh?

  • Failed Miserably on Test-Driven Development (Score:5, Insightful)

    by under_score ( 65824 ) <mishkin@berteig. c o m> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:27PM (#14102128) Homepage
    Check out Microsoft Takes it on the Chin Over Test-Driven Development [codebetter.com]. For comparison, check out Wikipedia on Test-Driven Development [wikipedia.org]. This is particularly ironic given the recent Slashdot article about Microsoft adopting Scrum [slashdot.org], one of the agile methodologies which, along with Extreme Programming [extremeprogramming.org], is instrumental in promoting Test-Driven Development as a core software engineering practice. I've also got a very brief article on my blog about the Qualities of an Ideal Test [agileadvice.com].
    • So there now three editions: Architect, that makes code from powerpoint-like sketches, Developer that has the PPT-tool without the code generation, and Tester. Which means that testers arent allowed to design things, architects cant test and developers get to do a bit of neither, but not very well.

      What kind of organisation does this represent? I guess it reflect's microsoft world view. But it doesnt match that of OSS applications.

      • Re:Yeah, and splits architects from testers (Score:4, Funny)

        by Otter ( 3800 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @02:23PM (#14102610) Journal
        What kind of organisation does this represent? I guess it reflect's microsoft world view. But it doesnt match that of OSS applications.

        Yup, in that scheme Developer gets gcc, CVS and eleven text editors, while Architect and Tester are eliminated in favor of Noisy Fanboy, who just gets a web browser.

      • While funny, your comment is inaccurate.

        Architect has all the features of Developer and Tester as well as the extra tools for architects to use. And while they may LOOK powerpoint-like, they're far more powerful.

        Developer has all that Tester has and all that a developer needs, including the ability to SEE but not CHANGE the architecture of the project they are working on. Developers don't need to change the architecture, so they don't get the tools to do so.

        Finally, Tester is just that, one meant fo

        • OK, I didnt know that.

          All I knew was that MSDN Universal sent me a note telling me I had one to choose between the three, my time had expired the previous week with no warning and that I was going to get professional by default.

          if architect is the superset, then I dont see why I shouldnt have been given that.

          Regarding your tester comment, yes, they are undervalued. And making them run tests and record results is part of the reason, that is grunt work for which machines can do themselves. Everyone should be
    • Couldn't a .NET developer use NUnit [nunit.org] and TestDriven [testdriven.net] to accomplish many of the test-driven development tasks?
    • It should be known that this was a MSDN publication that got it wrong, not anything about Team System in particular. As I predicted, that article eventually got pulled. I would also agree that Team System Test was not geared towards TDD, but I have been successful in using it for TDD with only a couple of minor annoyances.

  • Bulky? Loaded? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ashtophoenix ( 929197 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:28PM (#14102133) Homepage Journal
    So this new collaborative development environment, isn't it going to be as bulky, loaded and lacking in a basic concept as all other MS products? Take for example Visio. Some of the errors it gives me simply don't make any sense and get fixed by restarting it. Or MS Word, that hasn't been able to figure out yet, how to do numbering. Or maybe its way too advanced for us backward users, so it takes control and numbers my document on its own! I think Eclipse is a very well thought over IDE and the I would be happy with being provided something extremely lightweight for starts for which people would develop plugins that I could download install on a need-basis.
    • This is why I think firefox is a good browser. It mostly contains the minimum, and doesn't try to include everything under the sun. If you want extra features, you can download and install extensions which provide the functionality you want. The same thing work work very well in the IDE or Word Processor system, which 90% of the features go unused by most of the users. The program would be much easier to master if it only contained the features you need.
    • I would be happy with being provided something extremely lightweight for starts for which people would develop plugins that I could download install on a need-basis.

      So you would be happy with emacs? Me, I'm a Vi person.
    • Or MS Word, that hasn't been able to figure out yet, how to do numbering.

      Looks like your grammar checker is broken also.
    • Well I find the numbering in word works fine for me. You get to a certain stage through your thesis where it all clicks and seems to work. There is a correct way of doing things that is slightly illogical I'd have to agree. If you wanted to complain about something being broken in word pick on image placement. The way images seemingly jump at random around the document baffles me completely.

      But more seriously I agree and disagree with your main point about the bloatedness of IDEs. I'm a huge fan of Eclipse

  • unification theories disproved (Score:4, Interesting)

    by micromuncher ( 171881 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:32PM (#14102159) Homepage
    Microsoft had an old saying... I have it on a mug honest... "One company does it all." Its true in everything Microsoft does, whether it be desktop os and app integration, the convergence around entertainment systems, or development tools.

    I think the problem is that no unification theory holds. I software development, from a team perspective, from design to implementation to testing... regardless of what model you follow... the development team is most effective when they are not constrained by a tool.

    In my current work environment, the company tried to standardize on one web server, one IDE, one OR mapper... it failed miserably. The reality is we have 4 web servers, a multitude of IDEs, and tons of different technologies that are fitting specific needs. Even on the Microsoft platform.

    I do not doubt that the team tools are cool for collaboration. But they are going to be pushed into organizations that already have team tools, or ways of doing stuff.

    Right tools for the right job? Most Rose managed projects I know fail. Who uses all the lifecycle stuff in JBuilder 2005? Is anyone tired of development environments that take gigs?

  • Superfluous! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ObsessiveMathsFreak ( 773371 ) <obsessivemathsfr ... om.net minus bsd> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:36PM (#14102185) Homepage Journal
    It's all superfluous it tell you! The best collaborative development tool is the low lying cubical partition! All else pales to it's abilites to facilitate a tight dev team. Oh and emails.

    All this rubbish cruft in Visual studio these days. It's from the people that broght you Visual SourceSafe-Studio integration. Windows only, MS centric, homogenous coding standards, catering to the lowest common denominator of programmer in an effort to make coding more quantifyable for management. Basically, it's all just tools for making windows developers even more lazy than they already are, and to make project managers think they're more in control of their projects because of all the shiny graphs, network tools and printed reports.

    Expect coding standards to drop in line with their usage.
    • I'm sure low lying cubical partitions are great when you aren't also working around a couple of non-programmers who tend to sit around, bullshit, yick-yack all day long, which can be really distracting (at least for me).

    • Re:Superfluous! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tshak ( 173364 )
      It's all superfluous it tell you! The best collaborative development tool is the low lying cubical partition! All else pales to it's abilites to facilitate a tight dev team.

      It must be nice working on a small team. Even then, since when was bug tracking, requirements tracking, or iteration task tracking superflous? Working on teams with dozens of people located in multiple locations around the world these features are almost critical.
    • So I assume you're the one behind the push to house all linux kernel coders inside a cube farm office?

      Perhaps you'd like to think about what you're saying slightly before you post it. Bug/Work Item tracking, project management, EVM, teams working at different locations, team members working from home are all extremely good reasons to want these collaboration tools.

      And then you saddle your post with a pile of anti-MS rhetoric to make it sound authoritative. Yes VSS is a pile of junk. Strangely it is Windows
      • But like it or not there is a definite need for this type of software.

        There's a need, but is it being met by the current software products? Are all these project managment tools really work all the effort it takes to aquire, implement and learn to use them? In a lot of cases, you may be a lot better off if you simply stick with email. See Linus and the Linux Kernel.

        More importantly, should these tools be integrated? Are you then simply fitting the tool around what you already accept are broken development p

  • Scary Reading! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Darius Jedburgh ( 920018 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:36PM (#14102187)
    Here I am, developing software for a living. I know C++ (and all the latest C++ techniques, or so I thought), how to use g++ (and CL) and how to write a Makefile. Collaboration is easy: I share a filesystem and perforce repository with my colleagues. And I talk to them, sometimes using a whiteboard.

    But I looked at that web page: Codex, T-SQL, inscrutable jokes about woodpeckers, meta-models, Da Vinci, Biztalk Server 2004, Visio and text whose individual words I understand and yet whose sentences I can't grasp. I must be some kind of dinosaur ('dragon' if you live in Kansas) from an age gone by. Uh...uh...uh...>panic!...I've no clue what they're talking about. Does that mean I'm not collaborating properly? I didn't even realize. This is so awful. What can I do? Obviously just talking to people isn't enough.

    • Re:Scary Reading! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Brave Guy ( 457657 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:56PM (#14102364)

      Ah, I understand. My friend, I was once like you. Then I discovered that it's not talking to others that matters. It's what you say that counts! Fortunately, the web is a wonderful thing, and people like these [bullshitbingo.net] have kindly provided resources to help you navigate this troublesome area more successfully. Good luck to you.

    • Obviously just talking to people isn't enough.
      Sure it is, if you live in Banglore and can whip up a mean curry.

    • Re:Scary Reading! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Azarael ( 896715 )
      Sadly friend, all that marketing mumbo-jubo was not meant for you. It was meant for those managers who are incharge of a group of devs who are in the ineviable position of having little say on what tools they will use. I work in a room with the rest of my team. Our desks face each others. When I need to colaborate, I say hey you, "..". If you are in a situation where you can't break up your team enough to make this work then you probably have bigger problems then what colaboration software to use. You prob

    • Re:Scary Reading! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mpfife ( 655916 )
      I don't know what's scarier, this article or the MS Dev 2005 launch party I just attended that was full of the exact same stuff. I'm also a dev that knows good C++/design patterns/cross-platform linux/win development and helped develop such flagships at Macromedia's Studio suite (parts of the engine not web apps) I kept wondering when it was we were going to learn about how to write a real *app*. The guy just kept scrunching together wizard after wizard to build his web 'solution'. At one point someone a

  • Problem with the "Sophisticated Tools" paradigm (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sbenj ( 843008 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:41PM (#14102225)
    Read through the article, sounds like a nice tool. I agree with the author's assertion about the lack of architecture in most development efforts.

    That being said...

    I've seen a fair number of high-power tools offerred that do everything from soup to nuts, UML, Code generation, integrated testing, etc, etc, etc. It's been my sense that to fully leverage these tools you kind of have to buy in all the way, you can use their architect tools, but you need to put a fair amount of effort into learning the tool, and then you're not developing in C# or whatever, but in the tool. You're then also locked into the constraints imposed by the tool.

    Every sophisticated tool I mess with these days seems like it has this issue, and I guess it's structural- you have a simple core surrounded by proprietary extensions that in theory offer a lot of power and in practice require a huge buy in of time to leverage the extensions. For example, most java application servers have all kinds of built-in goodies (e.g. Jboss) but whenever I've worked with them I've seen almost no use of the proprietary stuff. Same for web frameworks, most projects I've seen don't leverage the frameworks nearly as well as they could. This indicates to me that the learning curve is too high and that in practice it's not realistic to expect that people can master and fully utilize proprietary tools in addition to languages, patterns, and other necassary knowledge.

    To be fair, I don't work in the Microsoft universe, and it may be a bit more realistic to expect tool buy-in in a world where there's one major tool vendor.

  • The problem is... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Brave Guy ( 457657 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:42PM (#14102232)

    ...as long as the underlying system for a single guy at his desk isn't up to scratch, it doesn't really matter how good the collaboration aspects and high-level funkiness are.

    We've been working with VC++2005 since the early betas, and it's been very hit and miss. On some systems it runs fine, but on others ("possibly those without hyperthreading processors" is the closest we've got to a pattern so far) it can go into a trance for literally minutes while it faffs around updating all that clever Intellisense it does on-the-fly these days.

    Add to that a debugger that really does run code orders of magnitude slower than a properly compiled version when you step through it, and you've got a serious problem with the two main tools in VC++. Worse, these are things that were fine back in VC++ 6, and rapidly went downhill when MS started relying on .Net and a multi-language framework for the dev tools a few years ago, which isn't exactly a great recommendation for all this new technology MS want us to use.

    In other words, the TS stuff is all very well, but until the fundamental problems with the single-user everyday stuff are fixed, it's rather academic at this point. Several of my colleagues never "upgraded" from VC++6 to any of the earlier .Net versions because the basic functionality wasn't up to the job, and the same is in danger of happening this time, too.

    • I remember having to go from VB 6, with the ability to pause durning debug, write some code, or change some code, and then go again FROM THE SAME PLACE! No restart needed. It was great. Then .Net hit and now you have to restart the damn thing any time you make a change. Blow.
      • In C# (I don't do VB anymore - thank f*** for that) "edit-and-continue" is working fine for me. Only meta-data changes require a restart, and that was pretty much the case with VB6 too, if I remember correctly.
    • These tales from the trenches are why I read Slashdot.

      I am also still using VS 6. I have code to ship, I don't have time to futz around with compilers that have more bugs than I do.

      It was always said that Visual Studio C++ is bullet-proof because that's what MS uses to build their own products. If they're not using VS.NET to build the Windows operating system itself, then it will never be as solid.

  • Two days ago I got a free copy of Visual Studio 2005 beta 2 (4 DVDs in one box), delivered by DHL directly to my door. Because Microsoft charges $20 for delivery (based on what other trials cost), and, say, $5 for CDs, they spend $25 on a guy who hates them as much as possible.
    The funniest thing is that I wanted to switch to Windows back from Ubuntu (seriously!). But now that evil idea is gone...

  • GForge? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So basically they've recreated http://www.gforge.org/ [gforge.org] out of proprietary components.

  • JBuilder (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ricochet81 ( 707864 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:55PM (#14102361)
    Borland's JBuilder 2006 has a pretty neat p2p feature, so you can pass a token around for editing, or watch the editing in follow mode. I found it very helpful and quick. I believe it uses the jabber protocol, and even works with google talk.

  • A Java mindset? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by peterdaly ( 123554 ) <petedaly@@@ix...netcom...com> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:55PM (#14102363)
    Maybe it's just because I'm a Java programmer, but it seems to me that many of the items in the top 10 list have been considered best practices for quite some time. Examples include 3-tier architecture, datasource management, and Integrated testing.

    It's probably actually a good thing that MS is including it. That being said, "it's about time" went throught my mind more than once while reading the article.

    -Pete
    • All of that has existed in the .NET world, but as third party tools (mostly clones of java tools, like junit->nunit, etc). This is MS making an "official" version built into VS.

  • Channel 9 (Score:3, Informative)

    by ChaserPnk ( 183094 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @02:01PM (#14102416)
    I've really been enjoying some of the videos being posted on Channel 9--part of MSDN. It's great to see what real MS engineers are working and thinking on. Just the other day, they posted a video covering Visual Studio TFS. [msdn.com]

    I'm surprised at myself for liking these videos. I keep going to Chan.9 more than once a day. It's great to get a peek behind the scenes at MS development.

  • Say what you will about the Team System feature (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheSkepticalOptimist ( 898384 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @02:13PM (#14102517)
    But VS is still the best development tool around.

    I don't know why some people are complaining about this software, its the best MS has come out with yet. Intellisense in any version takes a big hit on performance, the bottom line is, would you build a house with a hammer or a shoe. I can't understand why anybody would develop software for a living with an underpowered system! Complaints about VS underperforming can easily be resoled by simply upgrading to an Athlon64 or Opteron system.

    I've noticed only a few minor usability issues, but these are things that have plagued every release of a VS product, little gaffs which may be annoying, but are infrequent and do not interrupt productivity.

    Overall, the environment is much more streamlined, even menu items seemed to be intuitively placed within easy reach for quick access. They finally implemented region support within C++ files, so you can micro manage large classes by separating chunks of related code into sections that can be hidden, and finally outlining preserves its state when you save and reload the file.

    When it comes to intellisense, NO OTHER development tool comes close to the speed that VS does. Sure, your CPU usage might spike to 100% for the first few minutes after openning up a project, but a list of class methods and members always pops up instantly when you type a . or -> and text completion is fast. When I was playing around with XCode, I though that it didn't have ANY intellisense like functionality until one day I just happen to notice it took about 10 - 20 seconds for XCODE to show a list of object methods or offer a suggestion for word completion.

    The Team collaboration is the buzz word of the day for MS. It is their major focus to get people to upgrade to VS2005. I honestly can't see us using it. Its a small office and we are a pretty tight development team. At most, the Community menu item that appears allows you to bitch to MS about software bugs and feature requests.

    But why anybody wouldn't upgrade to 2005 is beyond me. VS2002 was clearly a beta and VS2003 was its patch, but VS2005 is altogether a markedly improved and mature product, finally integrating tight ANSI and ISO C++ standards along with at least recognizing insecure standard library calls and dramatically improved STL support with better debugging support of STL objects. Within the first week, we found numerous minor bugs that could cause the odd random crash in our software simply by compiling the software with VS2005. We also came across multithreading issues due to better optimization of the compiled code allowing for faster program execution that caused race conditions or deadlocks. Something VS2002 or VS6 wasn't making us aware of.

    In any regards, if you develop Windows software for a living, not using VS is a detrement. Sure there may be other decent tools if you develop cross platform apps, but using a 3rd party development suite to develop Windows tools only shows your not serious about Windows software development. We are already looking at XAML and Windows Presentation Layer development because we can get the latest beta tools directly from the horses mouth, other development systems are only guessing what XAML will actually become and making a half assed attempt at offering a retail package before Vista is released.

    Finally, MS integrated embedded device development in the IDE that allows you to emulate the device virtually, complete with a skin to look like a phone or PDA screen. They have had these tools in some external install, but integration in the IDE is key to getting more and better software written for mobile platforms. I may even get a PocketPC to start learning how to develop for the mobile platform.

    Say what you will about MS, Windows, an their other software, but they actually know how to write a decent development platform.

    • Assuming you're referring to things like my post earlier in the discussion when you talk about underperforming Intellisense, please allow me to clarify. If your IDE locks up for several seconds on a 3+ GHz machine with 2+ GB of RAM and a fast hard drive, then your IDE is broken. I don't care how clever the Intellisense is, if it takes so long to use it that my productivity goes below that of a cheap text editor.

      If the "little gaffs" include things like removing the browse toolbar they had in VC++ 6, then

      • I do most of my development work in VC6, mostly because I'm responsible for a product that must still be compiled with MSDev97. I use VS.Net 2003 for debugging and a couple of C# products I work on. VS.Net is a far better debugger to the point it's worth using even though VC6 is doing the building and development. I also have to debug scripts due to using embedded IE, as well as debugging through C++ on the client, the server and right in to the T-SQL in the database, and for this, VS.Net is the best ans
    • When I was playing around with XCode, I though that it didn't have ANY intellisense like functionality until one day I just happen to notice it took about 10 - 20 seconds for XCODE to show a list of object methods or offer a suggestion for word completion.

      First of all, doesn't your proclamation to use the fastest computer apply equally to macs?

      Now secondly (and far more importantly) what makes you think the delay is the computers fault? XCode has, in preferences, a way to set a delay before suggestion. Th
  • If collabware is the next big thing, why are the collabware startups all run by lone CEOs instead of a collaboration?
  • First, the uninstaller is broken. Plan on reformatting before you play with this beast. Also, plan on 2GB+ of RAM. The 1GB minimum is a lie even for a single user. Also, if your source repository is larger than 4GB, you'll need SQL Server 2005. It's demanding on the clients also. Plan on generous RAM & CPU speed.

    I can't migrate my company's Visual SourceSafe repository. The built-in analyze tools to repair corruption lock up before they do anything useful. VSS corrupts by nature. Since my repository is

  • Cost? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PsychoKiller ( 20824 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @02:19PM (#14102565) Homepage
    How much does the new suite cost per developer?
  • I had to use GCC to return actual errors in my code because the only thing MSVC++ compiler would tell me is Internal Compiler Error (ICE) over and over again. Seriously, M$ cannot get a compiler right, it cannot get a text file right (why use ^M\n instead of just \n? ..a source of many headaches), and yet they claim to innovate technology which has been available for 5+years on other systems/os's. People eat their crap up left and right and you just increase M$ end objective M$$$$$ for terrible software.
  • Take that, feeble Visual Studio user!

    Oh, Ned, you are a vi man!
  • The source control module in VS series has been pretty crap for ages. (Something called Visual Sourcesafe but I have never been involved.) As the major devlopment platform under windows, I wonder why they ignored the most important parts of VS. how developers of MS use VS for their team development?

    • Re:I am curious (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Saige ( 53303 )
      The new source control system in Team System is much, much better than Visual SourceSafe. Not anywhere even close to that old system.

      In fact, I believe that the source control in VSTS is actually based off of the internal source control system that's been in use in Microsoft in a while - similar with the bug/work item tracking portion of VSTS. These two tools already have had significant work and lifetime, just as internal tools so far. So having them as V1 is a little misleading.

      The work item tracking s

      • The new source control system in Team System is much, much better than Visual SourceSafe.

        That's a lot like saying that the new source control system is better than printing out your source code and storing the paper in a big pile to be retyped every morning. I should hope that the new system is better than SourceSafe. Visual Studio is a pretty slick environment, but linking it into VSS is just embarrassing. It's like having a really nice house and a well maintained yard and then putting Astroturf on

    • If you've never been involved in working with Visual Sourcesafe, how can you assert with great authority that it 'has been pretty crap for ages'? Were you just hoping for a karma-boost by making an MS-bashing post?
      • If you've never been involved in working with Visual Sourcesafe, how can you assert with great authority that it 'has been pretty crap for ages'?
        Maybe the GP can't, but I can and so do. Visual SourceSafe is crap, has always been crap, and doesn't show any signs of uncrapping. On the other hand, StarTeam is crappier. My current employer, thankfully, uses CVS.
  • Look at the banner on the VS/TS site. One, those sexy fashion model nouveau boys are using a CRT. Two the CRT is on a glass table. Three team system is so good that they have to use pencil and paper.

    Now that is some cutting edge software company.
  • What are these 'woodpecker jokes' the article talks about? Can't say I've heard of one and googled and found nothing but stuff about housing development and woodpecker habitat stuff.

    Clue me please!
  • CVS + Sourceforge (including forums). Ta-da! :D
  • Visual Studio 8 has so many problems right now that it's not worth trying to use. Unless you use .NET, there is very little you stand to upgrade. So many outstanding problems were not fixed. It is quite obvious that Microsoft spent all their time on the new .NET and web features but almost no time with updates to the core standard C++ language.

    Broken compiler
    - Complicated floating-point code will many times result in bad code generation without warning. Sometimes, the x87 register allocation algorithm f

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