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Anybody played with them. I realize there are relatively few on here who
actually like MS products, but I want to hear other peoples opinions of
MS's free versions of their dev tools.
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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Anybody played with them. I realize there are relatively few on here who
> actually like MS products, but I want to hear other peoples opinions of
> MS's free versions of their dev tools.
about as shitty as their commercial offerings, only even more limited
and buggy. ;)
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nemesis wrote:
> about as shitty as their commercial offerings, only even more limited
> and buggy. ;)
Limited? yes. But, not terribly so. Buggy? Less so than prior versions.
Has some nice features. I sort of got forced into writing something for
VC# express because a library supplied by a vendor was using generics,
and we're still using ancient VS.NET. (Which is quite bug-ridden)
Their license is quite nice, the ability to just use it without having
to keep myself within the realm of "personal use only" is very nice.
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Mike Raiford escribió:
> Anybody played with them. I realize there are relatively few on here who
> actually like MS products, but I want to hear other peoples opinions of
> MS's free versions of their dev tools.
I once tried it. Couldn't do anything useful with it during a whole
hour. I uninstalled it. Of course, despite recommendations made by
Microsoft itself to other developers, the uninstaller didn't remove
everything that was installed. I was months with lots of filetypes (like
.c) still associated to VS express.
I use gvim and a bash shell (yes, in Windows) for all my development
needs. Except for POV-Ray, where I use the internal editor, and for
Java, where I use Eclipse. MinGW as C compiler.
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Mike Raiford escribió:
> Has some nice features. I sort of got forced into writing something for
> VC# express because a library supplied by a vendor was using generics,
> and we're still using ancient VS.NET. (Which is quite bug-ridden)
Ah, .not. I stay away from that. Even though some things look tempting.
But hey, Vista screenshots with Aero are tempting too (that's the whole
idea of marketing), and no way in hell I'll downgrade to it.
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"Mike Raiford" <mra### [at] hotmail com> wrote in message
news:47a0c3a7$1@news.povray.org...
> Anybody played with them. I realize there are relatively few on here who
> actually like MS products, but I want to hear other peoples opinions of
> MS's free versions of their dev tools.
I've used SQL Express, VS Express C# and web. They're fine for small
development projects. I wouldn't use them in a massive team on a large
commercial project, but for playing around or for smaller things, they're
fine.
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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Anybody played with them. I realize there are relatively few on here who
> actually like MS products, but I want to hear other peoples opinions of
> MS's free versions of their dev tools.
I installed VS C++ 2005, and immediately found that I could not set it
to assume that all strings were ASCII strings; I had to specifically
call the API function that is decorated with 'A' to specify that;
Bloodshed and OpenWatcom allow you to specify the string type with one
compiler setting, and the compiler automagically decorates them for you.
After editing all of the sources to put in what the compiler will not
let me assume, it then failed to recognize another API call during the
link phase.
I already have two C++ compilers that work just fine (Bloodshed and
OpenWatcom), so getting MS to work is just too much trouble.
Regards,
John
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Mike Raiford wrote:
> Anybody played with them. I realize there are relatively few on here who
> actually like MS products, but I want to hear other peoples opinions of
> MS's free versions of their dev tools.
I used to like it, until I had a chance to see the professional version
in action. For whatever reason, the free version is crippled beyond
belief, speed-wise. It would literally take more than ten times as long
to open, load projects, or compile them. The output would be identical,
though, so if you're OK with the wait, go for it.
--
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com
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Gail Shaw wrote:
> I've used SQL Express, VS Express C# and web. They're fine for small
> development projects. I wouldn't use them in a massive team on a large
> commercial project, but for playing around or for smaller things, they're
> fine.
What she said. If it's a one-person project, it's sufficient. Once you
start wanting source code control, automatic testing, etc., you'll want
the for-fee version. (Which, really, isn't that expensive. If your
employer can't afford a half-day of your pay to get you the tools you
need, you should be shopping your resume around.)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
On what day did God create the body thetans?
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John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> I installed VS C++ 2005, and immediately found that I could not set it
> to assume that all strings were ASCII strings
Really? There's a setting in the project properties for this.
--
- Warp
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Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> I used to like it, until I had a chance to see the professional version
> in action. For whatever reason, the free version is crippled beyond
> belief, speed-wise. It would literally take more than ten times as long
> to open, load projects, or compile them.
Strange. I haven't noticed this. I have used both the express version
and the commercial one of VS 2005.
--
- Warp
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Mike Raiford <mra### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Anybody played with them. I realize there are relatively few on here who
> actually like MS products, but I want to hear other peoples opinions of
> MS's free versions of their dev tools.
I have used it and it seems ok.
Perhaps a bit strangely at least the express version is not a
"download, install, use" package. Besides downloading and installing
the express version, you have to separately download and install the
Windows Platform SDK and manually configure VS to use it (there doesn't
seem to be any way to make it automatically detect that you have the SDK
installed and to use it properly). If you do anything that needs DirectX,
you need to download and install the DirectX SDK and manually configure
VS to use it (again, it doesn't seem to detect this automatically). All
this can be a real pain, especially since it doesn't seem to be documented
anywhere. Without precise instructions on how to do this, it can be next
to impossible to figure it out.
(I have only experience with VS 2005 Express. I don't know if they
have improved this with VS 2008.)
Once you have succeeded in installing and configuring everything,
it seem to work ok, though.
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Perhaps a bit strangely at least the express version is not a
> "download, install, use" package. Besides downloading and installing
> the express version, you have to separately download and install the
> Windows Platform SDK and manually configure VS to use it (there doesn't
> seem to be any way to make it automatically detect that you have the SDK
> installed and to use it properly). If you do anything that needs DirectX,
> you need to download and install the DirectX SDK and manually configure
> VS to use it (again, it doesn't seem to detect this automatically). All
> this can be a real pain, especially since it doesn't seem to be documented
> anywhere. Without precise instructions on how to do this, it can be next
> to impossible to figure it out.
I found this a little odd also. And a little frustrating, because my
experience with dev tools like this is *very* limited (i.e., this and
XCode), so I wasn't even sure if I was doing the right thing. In light
of Nicolas' post, this process took me rather longer than one hour, and
I hadn't even managed to compile anything yet. But, as you say, once
it's working, seems to be OK.
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Warp wrote:
> VS to use it (again, it doesn't seem to detect this automatically). All
> this can be a real pain, especially since it doesn't seem to be documented
> anywhere. Without precise instructions on how to do this, it can be next
> to impossible to figure it out.
There's a link from the download page to instructions on how to do this.
At least, there was when I tried it, but that was over a year ago, so
things may have changed :/
--
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com
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Warp wrote:
> John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> I installed VS C++ 2005, and immediately found that I could not set it
>> to assume that all strings were ASCII strings
>
> Really? There's a setting in the project properties for this.
Maybe; but since I already have two compilers that work fine--and worked
fine out of the box without having to be set for it--why bother meddling
with a third?
And anyway, once the source was edited to compile, I went on to find
that the linker did not recognize some of the API calls, and I didn't
feel like diagnosing the cause.
Regards,
John
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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Ah, .not. I stay away from that. Even though some things look tempting.
> But hey, Vista screenshots with Aero are tempting too (that's the whole
> idea of marketing), and no way in hell I'll downgrade to it.
Yeah, that's the true evil of it though... Once you get a taste, it's
hard to go back. Wife's computer has the super-fancy version of Vista.
I'll have to say, I don't think I've ever used the 3D, roll through the
windows feature they kept showing when they were promoting vista, But
the translucent windows are kind of neat, sure it's eye candy ... But
it's nice eye candy. I'm also quite happy to see they added the ability
to change the color the windows title bars. Which I sort of missed in XP.
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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> I once tried it. Couldn't do anything useful with it during a whole
> hour. I uninstalled it. Of course, despite recommendations made by
> Microsoft itself to other developers, the uninstaller didn't remove
> everything that was installed. I was months with lots of filetypes (like
> .c) still associated to VS express.
Hmm, VC++ express is somewhat limited, You can do useful things with it,
but you have to be prepared to program to straight Win32, which, to say
the least is painful. MFC helps in this regards. Though, you can use
Managed C++, which has the .NET framework available. I admit, I haven't
really done anything in Managed C++, preferring to use C# for .net
development.
> I use gvim and a bash shell (yes, in Windows) for all my development
> needs. Except for POV-Ray, where I use the internal editor, and for
> Java, where I use Eclipse. MinGW as C compiler.
I used to have a suite of POSIX tools for Windows. Eclipse was a nice
editor, but I never really got into Java development. (Which may seem
strange, seeing as I really like C#, now.)
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Warp wrote:
> Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
>> I used to like it, until I had a chance to see the professional version
>> in action. For whatever reason, the free version is crippled beyond
>> belief, speed-wise. It would literally take more than ten times as long
>> to open, load projects, or compile them.
>
> Strange. I haven't noticed this. I have used both the express version
> and the commercial one of VS 2005.
>
I haven't noticed any speed reductions, either. The one thing I do
really miss, though is the lack of support for Visual Assist, which is
a plug-in that enhances some of the IDE's built-in features. Mainly
because it's member list can be filtered by properties, methods, etc...
and allows searches based on partial words (i.e. I can type Event, and
I'll see MouseEventArgs, EventArgs, PaintEventArgs, etc...)
lack of source control is another biggie. C++ lacking MFC is also a
drawback, given a lot of the C++ development we do uses MFC.
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Mike Raiford escribió:
> Yeah, that's the true evil of it though... Once you get a taste, it's
> hard to go back. Wife's computer has the super-fancy version of Vista.
> I'll have to say, I don't think I've ever used the 3D, roll through the
> windows feature they kept showing when they were promoting vista, But
> the translucent windows are kind of neat, sure it's eye candy ... But
> it's nice eye candy.
It has been possible to make the whole window transparent, since Windows
2000. There's just no UI for it, so you need some 3rd party app like
PowerMenu. Also, there's obviously no blurred transparency. I have found
this is really useful to avoid getting distracted by whatever is on the
background.
I wrote my own program that covers the whole desktop and draws an image,
then draws a second image only in areas covered by transparent windows.
So I make the second image be the same as the first image, but blurred
(I couldn't be bothered to make my program blur it automatically).
http://stuff.povaddict.com.ar/blur.png
http://stuff.povaddict.com.ar/blur_wp.png
Also, did you see the eye candy of Compiz? Way more effects than Vista
(and in fact a Flip3D-like plugin already exists for it). And written in
plain C (not even C++!), instead of needing .NET for writing new effects...
> I'm also quite happy to see they added the ability
> to change the color the windows title bars. Which I sort of missed in XP.
I never run Windows on its default skin anyway. uxtheme patch ftw. My
current look:
http://stuff.povaddict.com.ar/lunaelement5.png (LE5 also available in black)
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Mike Raiford escribió:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> I once tried it. Couldn't do anything useful with it during a whole
>> hour. I uninstalled it. Of course, despite recommendations made by
>> Microsoft itself to other developers, the uninstaller didn't remove
>> everything that was installed. I was months with lots of filetypes
>> (like .c) still associated to VS express.
>
> Hmm, VC++ express is somewhat limited, You can do useful things with it,
> but you have to be prepared to program to straight Win32, which, to say
> the least is painful. MFC helps in this regards.
All I wanted at that point was getting POV-Ray compiled, unmodified! And
some other app I don't remember now...
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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> It has been possible to make the whole window transparent, since Windows
> 2000. There's just no UI for it, so you need some 3rd party app like
> PowerMenu. Also, there's obviously no blurred transparency. I have found
> this is really useful to avoid getting distracted by whatever is on the
> background.
Yep, I've played with the transparency in 2000, usually wound up hating
it enough that I'd turn off whatever add-on allowed me to do it. :)
>
> http://stuff.povaddict.com.ar/blur.png
> http://stuff.povaddict.com.ar/blur_wp.png
That's the effect. That's what I call translucent, different from
transparent in my mind. Transparent infers no diffusion of the object
underlying.
> Also, did you see the eye candy of Compiz? Way more effects than Vista
> (and in fact a Flip3D-like plugin already exists for it). And written in
> plain C (not even C++!), instead of needing .NET for writing new effects...
>
>> I'm also quite happy to see they added the ability to change the color
>> the windows title bars. Which I sort of missed in XP.
>
> I never run Windows on its default skin anyway. uxtheme patch ftw. My
> current look:
> http://stuff.povaddict.com.ar/lunaelement5.png (LE5 also available in
> black)
Looks very similar to Vista. Still, you have to swap themes in order to
adjust the colors.
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Mike Raiford <mra### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Hmm, VC++ express is somewhat limited, You can do useful things with it,
> but you have to be prepared to program to straight Win32, which, to say
> the least is painful.
You don't have to if you use the proper library.
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
>
> You don't have to if you use the proper library.
>
What libraries to simplify win32 programming are available that don't
have license restrictions (which rules out most open source solutions)?
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