Tamir Khason – Just code

Visual Studio Face-to-Face battle

Yesterday Visual Studio 2010 was released. This is very exciting, however from the moment I played with very first preview versions I had concerns regarding the performance of it code editor. So today I had some time to perform small face-to-face battle between different versions of Visual Studio – 2005, 2008 and 2010 (Sorry, I did not found VS2002 to test).

Environment

I used very slow machine with 256Mb of RAM running Windows XP as a reference for comparison. First of all I installed each one of those programs. I used customized installation to install only C# programming modules.

Then I tested cold start (first application start) and hot start (average of 5 forecoming starts), creation and opening of new console application project. And finally the real world test. Typing in, compilation and run of “Hello World” sample. This includes opening of context menus, tools and options.

I used “Hello World” sample from MSDN for type-in experience. Just for reference, I used small program I wrote to calculate typing speed (this takes into account that most of text is generated by the same macros and shortcuts e.g. “cw”)

Comparison

* Can anybody from DevDiv, please, explain me why when I want to install only C# (this is the only checkbox marked during custom installation), you install for me:

Conclusion

There are some new and pretty eye-candies for VS2010, also support for newer compilers and interpreter. However, my final verdict is “I disappointed”…

I feel a big degradation of productivity between following versions of Visual Studio. In terms of speed, responsiveness and ability to perform everyday developers’ tasks. That’s right, that there are new features, but we should remember that the main purpose of this program is to support writing code.

I hope that MS DevDiv will take this into account and review it understanding of how development environment should be. I, personally, stay with VS2008 without .NET 4.0 (I have my special opinion about this version of .NET, which worse separate post)

If you old enough, you should remember HomeSite. It was beaten by editor named Notepad.exe (or it variants and alternatives) for HTML developers because of it unresponsiveness and unnecessary cumbersomeness of this program. Running after features killed the main purpose – write effective code fast and correct. This how I forecast the future of Visual Studio. Pity me…

P.S. Sorry, I did not write here for a while. This because of a lot of exiting things I did for the last two years. I promise to write more. Frankly! I swear, I will try to!

UPD 14-Apr: For all people have comments about my production environment and a validity of my measurements there, please see how it looks on my work machine (E8400, 8Gb RAM and NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT)

April 13th, 2010 · Comments (16)

TechEd is over – last TechEd related post

I know, that I made you tired of all those TechEd related posts. So this is the last one (I’ll post full presentation and demo sources later), I promise. Unfortunately, I’ll be unable to attend bloggers’ lunch (my flight is at 8:20 pm), so I want to tell thank to all bloggers, that rapidly posted TechEd related stuff, to all those who worked hard to prepare such event, to all presenters and visitors (do not forget to fill the survey). The event was good. I’d give it 9 of 10. The point missing point for some, who worked not hard enough to prepare and lectures’ start and end punctuality of some presenters. Overall experience was great. You did it! Thank you and see you on next event.

April 8th, 2008 · Comments (0)

TechEd Eilat 08 – It’s turns better

Referring my last post. TechEd turns to be better for me. It seemed, like I simple choose wrong sessions. Last one I attended was really great 9-9. It returns me to the original idea, that I have really serious competitors for my session See you there tomorrow 10:45@Hilton.

April 6th, 2008 · Comments (0)

TechEd Eilat – Day two – I DISAPPOINTED!

TechEd, Eilat, Day two and I’m very disappointed of what’s going on here. I cannot give more, then five of ten to any session I attended. I DISAPPOINTED! I do not want to tell the names of those sessions, however it looks like nether of presenters worked too hard to prepare it. I DISAPPOINTED. I worked more then two weeks to prepare my presentation (incl. repetitions, rewriting, fixing and touching), I have to work two hours more to prepare it finally and I do not know today why I did and will do it. I DISAPPOINTED.

The other huge problem, that neither of sessions stared and finished in time and there are voices in coridors about leaving TechEd today… I DISAPPOINTED DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED.

April 6th, 2008 · Comments (6)

TechEd day 1 – keynotes – nice presentation, in spite of some bugs

I’m in Eilat, in TechEd event. First impression – very good arrangements. Upon by arrival, the room was ready and it was big and clean. First I couch by some of partners and friends. Then, I was in bloggers meeting, where received some  nice toys to play with. Now, let’s speak about first significant event – the keynotes. Yochai was good, in spite of some technical problem. However, the most problematic one was the fact, that he completely forgot about our promo. Actually, I understand him – 3.5 hours. Second thing in his presentation was IIS7. I have some problem with this stuff. One of them is how it works on Windows Vista (see the live image about how real TechEd Vista looks like)

Now to our presentation. Actually, after more then 3 days of working to make IIS on Vista work fluently, I was very disappointed and thus, just recompile IIS asapi filter for Apache on Linux. Do not believe me? Come to see it live.

So by now, I’m going to business center to sit with some partners. If you want to, you’re welcome to catch me there for next hour. See ya and wait for upcoming updates.

April 5th, 2008 · Comments (0)

VS2005 SP1 update for Vista is rather pity

I was rather disappointed by the new patch for Visual Studio 2005 SP1 for Windows Vista. WTF, the most significant problems such as re-rendering, JIT and elevated account requirement were addressed, but not solved. So what the patch is really for?

March 7th, 2007 · Comments (2)

Good Icons editor

Lack of VS icon editor? You are not alone. Recently I looked for freeware program to create and edit icons and I found one. Let me introduce IcoFX. Sufficient features and useful interface. I was disappointed, that the program has installer, but it can run from Disk-On-Key as well (either open msi and pick it out or install-copy exe-uninstall)

Here is the list of this soft features:

• Vista support
• Alpha channel support
• Bach processing
• Some effects (not really useful)
• Support for icons upto 255X255X32bit
• Import/Export (from assemblies as well with transparency support)
• Blur or Sharp brush edges (this one is extremely important for icons creation)
• Rotatings
• File types conversion (with PNG support)

The really missing future – stroke, but anyhow, the program is great. Download and use it

March 1st, 2007 · Comments (0)