>> At uni, we used both Borland JBuilder and VisualStudio J++. Both of 
>> them were ludicrously slow. Stuff like
>>
>> - Start the program: 45 seconds.
>> - Wait for autocomplete to appear: 20 seconds.
> 
> So the computer was to blame then? I used Borland C++ Builder (I got it 
> free on a magazine cover disk) extensively at colleg and Uni on my 
> moderate home PC and it ran fine, nothing like you mention above.

Well, all the other programs seemed to run just fine. (E.g., starting up 
Word didn't take very long.) I will admit Netscape Navigator always 
seemed to take a long time to start - but it would *run* just fine, it 
just took a while to start.

>> If you decide you want to rename a class... forget it. This confuses 
>> VS beyond belief.
> 
> Did you try to do it manually, or use the Rename command?  If you tried 
> to do it manually then I can understand things going wrong.

IIRC, I used the rename option in VS.

>> Trying to add source files that weren't created using VS is near 
>> impossible.
> 
> Ermm, Project -> Add Existing Item works perfectly every time for me.  
> What went wrong?

Well, first of all, you have to find the project folder on the harddrive 
and dig twenty-five million subfolders down into it to find where the 
actual source code is stored. Then you copy the files there. Then you 
spend half an hour trying to figure out how to make VS realise the files 
exist. And, if you're lucky, it works.

(Recall that Java isn't like C; the source files have to have particular 
names, and have to be located in particular folders, and so on.)

>> Then VS insists on trying to incorrectly format your code (e.g., put 
>> the open bracket on the same line as the method declaration, rather 
>> than the line below it).
> 
> You can do either, and you can choose whether it will indent the 
> brackets or not if you put them on their own line.

I seem to recall spending a long time tweaking the "style" settings of 
the code editor, and I never did get it to work correctly. In the end I 
had to spend lots of time undoing all the autoformatting the editor put 
in just because I couldn't figure out which exact combination of 
settings makes it lay out the code correctly to start with.

>> Trying to tell it which file is the runnable program is unecessarily 
>> difficult.
> 
> I've never made any multi-file projects, but I would be very surprised 
> if you couldn't set what is run.  And even if you couldn't you just add 
> a post-build event to run the executable you want.

Oh, you could set it, it was just unecessarily difficult to do.

(As I stated above, Java *requires* all nontrivial programs to be in 
multiple source files.)

>> You had to jump through hoops to make it create an empty project 
>> rather than a project already stuffed with boilerplate code you don't 
>> need or want.
> 
> Sounds to me like someone just didn't know how to do it the correct way.

Well, it's not like anybody showed us how to use the software...

As far as I could tell, the only thing that VS gives you that Notepad 
doesn't have is the ability to press a button and have it compile 
everything. Sure, it also had that autocomplete thing, but honestly, it 
seemed to get in the way more than actually help. (Aside from being very 
slow and constantly out of date anyway.) You either had to take your 
hand off the keyboard to use the mouse to click the item you wanted, or 
you could select the item with the keyboard and hit return - but then it 
inserted a return into the source. >_<

It did also have a little tree view showing you what files are in your 
project, and one below it showing you the properties of the current 
class - methods, fields, etc. But that seemed to be permanently out of 
date. A nice little feature, but not especially useful.

In summary, I did most of my work with Notepad. It's so much easier to 
get the job done.

Who knows? Perhaps in the 7 years since then, VS has become actually 
useful in some way. But I doubt it...

Post a reply to this message