For the Windoze haters - VS2005

Be warned, dont use after 6 beers either. When overriding base methods it inserts all the method parameters and braces etc. IT takes a few moments to realise all the code you needed to type has just magically appeared.

I'm still using VS6, but you have tempted me into looking at the trial.

Do you know if it sits alongside VS6 happily?

I am still a heavy VC6 user, mainly cause thats what most people want in AU, although it is rapidly changing now.

I have been using VS2003 with VS6 for some time now with no dramas at all. I have also had a pre release beta verson of 2005 installed with no impact on either of the other two versions.

Be warned however, if you are a c++ developer, updating the SDK's may cause you greif. I always install in a different directory as a precaution now. I am not sure how this affects managed languages.

I think it will be hard for c and c++ developers to move to c#, it is surprising how much you abuse pointers and #defines ect. I guess you get spoiled using such a low level language. The other thing that gets me is the fact that I cant do a if(!) or an DebugAssert(). Oh well, i will get used to it.

Strange idea.

Most electronics CAD needs Windows.

Graham

It does for me. The thing that gets me though is, that you can not distribut C++ code as a simple binary because Windows XP has not the correct libraries installed. So even if all you want to do is put "Hello World" in a little box, you must distribute your app with 1.2MB worth of libraries, packed inside an installer.

So this is what I do: use the VS2005 setup to develop the app and debug. Once it is running well, I recompile the release version on VC6 and distribute that. And my clients are happy that my files are tiny and run on WIndows ME, 2000 and XP without any installation process at all.

Is the final C# application a compiled .exe, or is it a Java-like thing that needs a runtime system? What all files/libraries/dll's would an application involve, as delivered to an end-user?

I've done a couple of Win gui apps using PowerBasic Forms, and it took me a lot less than 8 hours from dead start to do something useful (a fully functional app, not just the window dressing!) and it does produce a single, small, clean, and fast true .exe file.

As others have noted, most engineers must use Windows, as much as we hate it.

John

Your post screams for a top-posted response.

This crap doesn't belong on this board

D> Whilst I know most Engineers avoid MS, I have just started writing

So why bother with VS2005 at all?

Why not? Most engineers need to write programs, too. And it's valuable if programming is "accessable" to occasional programmers like us, people who haven't the time or inclination to be fulltime Windows API jocks.

In the DOS days, anybody could hack out a GW Basic program with minimal training, in a few minutes. Microsoft is increasingly putting programming out of our reach. So I, for one, am interested in any "accessable" programming techniques.

John

It is compiled to an exe, but that it aint. IT is similar to java from what I can gather and is 'Just In Time' compiled. There is a tool supplied with the .net framework called NGEN that will compile it to a native executable. Most of the libraries are supplied/installed/registered with the dotnet framework. If you use any Win API's, the same thing applies with previous MS stuff, ie ship the dll. In saying that, the version 2 of the framework seems to be pretty complete, including a comms port class which MS exlcuded in V1.0 and 1.1.

Im all fairness to MS, i have not really done much c#, so this is all a big learning curve for me. What has impressed me is that the lurning curve is very quick. The 8 hours i had spent on it were trying to cram every single control into an app and make it do something. Today i did a little comm port app to throw some dirty packets into a fibre network.

Today i started finding some of the more annoying features, such as intellisense automagically putting stuff into your code where you dont want it. That and the fact that when i press backspace it goes back one space, rather than a tab when i have tabbed in. But these little quirks are outweighed by the productivty gains and simplicity of developing a full featured app.

I just kinda got the feeling that most here hated windows and were pro linux.

I see your point..... So most engineers use cars, so auto subjects should be discussed here, etc....

I pretty much spend my days writing apps for engineers, and writing the software that goes onto embedded devices, so I felt that it was relevent too.

For the limited Windows programming that I do, I find Borland C++ Builder fine. It does the clever windows stuff for me, leaves me to program what I want, there are lots of noble- hearted individuals out there who have written useful little extras for it. Of course, though it's still available, development has stopped, but that's markets for you.

Paul Burke

The VS2005 compiler is much better and finds a lot of bugs at compile time and run time (for example, use of an uninitialized variable) that VC6 would never catch. Also, the IDE provides the long missed project wide text search and replace function.

So if my app compiles without warnings and runs without errors on 2005, it'll be cleaner for VC6 as well.

That last sentence is not true. The latest version has been delivered as part of Borland Developer Studio 2006, in November last year, update 1 was delivered around the start of January, and I believe a second update is being prepared.

'Tis true, and even the standalone product is still available. I thought they'd dumped it when they started on Kylix. Downside is, it used to be a $200 product, now it's $1000+.

You can get C++ BuilderX, whatever that is, for $50 though, under their "Classic products".

Paul Burke

Pitfalls are the "throw everything into one bloated program with many threads" design paradigm so favoured by MS and Java people (because process creation SUCK on those platforms) and the infestation of windows-only- or GUI-isms into the application code .

When I write something, I split it in two/more parts:

1) An engine part that performs commands and returns results. 2) A gui part that create commands and presents the results

Usually runs over XML-RPC (socket) or maybe even command line (which sucks on windos). In all cases, alternative configuration files and options can be fed on the command line.

This makes testing possible - driving a GUI from a test tool never works I.M.E. And I do not really *need* Windows - it is a dumb-ish terminal really.

I strongly prefer text protocols so I do not have to write tools just to see what goes on - almost all other forms of IPC suck!

Worse than that: I do not care about it, I do not need to. IT-"services" deal with it.

Excuses and Explanations are for the weak. ;-)

Python puts accessibility right back to you:

Free - as in do what you like license - Simple syntax and with a very rich set of libraries including SQL database support, XML support, internet protocols, unit testing and regular expressions to name a few. The windows version installs, uninstalls and run cleanly on windows with no fiddling about just as it should.

If you have programmed before you can learn the language in 2 weeks - the libraries take much longer ;-)

"Frithiof Andreas Jensen" schreef in bericht news:dsa8hj$q83$ snipped-for-privacy@news.al.sw.ericsson.se...

For very simple and limited stuff, a great choice.

--
Thanks, Frank.
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