Visual Studio 2008: Awesome
| Each week I read eWeek, which is owned by the same company that I work for, the same company who owns DevSource. And even though my coworkers create eWeek, that doesn't mean I always agree with them... |
When you work for a company staffed by journalists, you're likely to encounter some strong opinions. It's not uncommon to see two editors who work for the same company go at it with each other in their editorials, lively debating two sides of an issue. (And they actually seem to enjoy the debating.)
Each week I read eWeek, which is owned by the same company that I work for, the same company who owns DevSource. And even though my coworkers create eWeek, that doesn't mean I always agree with them, not by a long shot. Now I want to be clear on this: DevSource is sponsored in whole by Microsoft. However, what you're about to read is my honest opinion, the opinion of somebody who has been happily using Visual Studio for many years (long before I joined DevSource), and who has been eagerly keeping up with all the latest technology including .NET 3.5, C#, ASP.NET, Silverlight, the Dynamic Language Runtime, AJAX, and so on.
This week I took serious exception to an article that appeared in eWeek. This article was an extremely critical--no, unfairly critical--review of Visual Studio 2008. First, take a look at the article here (I'm not reproducing it on DevSource; this is on eWeek.com).
Okay, now that you've read it, ask yourself: How many people developing for Visual Studio are doing .NET and C# programming, VB.NET programming, and ASP.NET programming? Try most of us. These are the languages and technologies today's Visual Studio programmers use. Yes, C++ is still used a great deal, but by and large, most people developing with Visual Studio have moved on to these newer technologies. Yet in this review, the author is totally disappointed with Visual Studio for one reason and one reason only: There haven't been many big changes to the C++ tools. And as a result, the reviewer comes to the conclusion that Visual Studio 2008 has changed very little and won't be of much use, and even brushes off the majority of the programmers when he says:
"The reality is that Visual Studio 2008 introduces features that only a subset of its users can really appreciate, and, generally speaking, those features are targeted at developers that work within the .Net Framework. Except for users writing in C# or Visual Basic, or Web developers who use Active Server Pages (ASP.Net), there really isn't much reason to upgrade."
On the contrary! For the rest of us who use VB.NET and C#, Visual Studio 2008 has a huge set of offerings, most of which the reviewer didn't even bother mentioning (much less try). Here's a partial list:
- Full support for WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), including a completely visual XAML editor.
- Built in support for Office development. Microsoft is really pushing Office as more than just a tool but a complete developer platform. Now you can easily create software that interacts with Office in many different ways, including add-ins, much more easily than you could before.
- Huge C# and VB.NET enhancements. Sure, these aren't technically part of the IDE, but still, the languages have improved drastically. Can you say LINQ? Talk about a great new way to manipulate your data.
- Vista applications.
- AJAX and ASP.NET. Now ASP.NET has full support for AJAX. Many of us are web developers, and AJAX is the way of the future.
It seems to me that the reviewer only took a cursory look at Visual Studio 2008 (which he still calls by its codename, Orcas, which is no longer used), and didn't bother to seriously try out some of the heavy duty capabilities, such as those I just mentioned.
But I have. I, along with my authors, have written many articles in the past months that describe these features. I wrote one on LINQ, and the more I tried it, the more impressed I was. Rick Leinecker wrote an article about the new AJAX controls in ASP.NET. While I haven't personally used them much, Rick was very impressed with them.
The fact is, Visual Studio 2008 has many huge improvements over 2005, and another fact is that many of us have left behind our days of C++ for newer languages. (But that doesn't mean we don't know C++. I have a lot of experience in it and have written or co-written three books on it. I just prefer the newer languages.)
So I'm curious to hear from all of you on your thoughts. Comments are open!
Comments (6)
I've used Visual C++ since version 1.0, and previously the PWB (Programmer's WasteBasket), so I have been around for awhile also. My bread and butter is developing Windows desktop apps using C++/MFC, but I am moving into C# (both for desktop and ASP.NET). The gist is: those who are programming .NET love the latest Visual Studio, and those still working in C++ not so much.
I think your background is more enterprise/IT, and mine is more OEM shrink-wrap, and this reflects that you have long ago embraced .NET in the enterprise, and I am still developing fast, widely-deployed (in the millions of units in some cases) apps written in C++.
I don't want to get into a numbers game about who has more users, but there is room for both opinions. FWIW, Microsoft is claiming to really beef up C++ support in Orcas+1 (sometime in 2009 or 2010) I guess, so apparently they aren't quite as ready as you are to write off C++ devs.
-- David
Posted by David Ching | November 8, 2007 1:53 PM
That's a really good point, and yes, you nailed it -- I haven't worked in the shrink-wrap world in, oh, maybe 15 years or more. Most of my work has been writing internal software.
It'll be interesting to see what they do with C++ in the next few years, especially with the next official standard coming out in a couple years.
Posted by Jeff Cogswell | November 8, 2007 2:18 PM
I think the language and technology of choice should all be unified.
Today everybody is developing everything because others have it ;-). There is not much left and should allow time to pass by what has been developed. We should use it not once or twice but repeatedly.
New technology is developed because older one lacks something. How much time is the new technology new? So always new technology is a old technology. Better live with that for years say 10-12 years and come out with a paradigm shift that is totally new and everything learnt have to be unlearnt. Today we are just piling up and achieving nothing under the name of technology. Security vulnerability or any other threat still remains but has a new face.
Posted by Sesame | April 9, 2008 8:35 AM
I am still a heavy user of C/C++ and I agree with David. C/C++ is still the mainstay for high performance applications or cross platform development. When I first used C #and .Net, I was impressed by the capabilities of the languages, the ease in which I could whip up feature rich applications, but you cannot write a UNIX application in C# or .Net.
I think the reason why Microsoft placed little enfaces on C/C++ is because they are trying to push the blue pill. Eventually, everyone will only be interested in C #and .Net, those that developed in C/C++ will have faint memories of it, and we will all be pushing the blue pill. Maybe the universities will only teach C/C++ as a footnote in the near future.
Personally, I think that if Microsoft wants to push its languages it should port them to the other platforms.
Secondly, developing solid debugging technology and automation for C/C++ is just good business regardless of whether I take my code with modifications to develop on other platforms.
I hope that Microsoft gives similar attention to us avid C/C++ programmers. I think you all should take the red pill.
Posted by Walter E. Capers | July 22, 2008 3:05 PM
Hi Walter, thanks for your comment. For the most part I have no disagreement with what you're saying. The only thing is, remember the perspective of the original review that was published over at eWeek that I'm criticizing here.
The reviewer (in my opinion) almost acted like people who program in the non-C++ languages (his words: "C# or Visual Basic, or Web developers who use Active Server Pages (ASP.Net)") are a tiny, minuscule percentage of Visual Studio users, when in fact that's not true. The reviewer was dismissing the features used by a huge percentage of Visual Studio users and focusing on what are probably legitimate concerns, but ignoring the other huge improvements of the product.
But I agree that Microsoft has kind of pushed C++ by the wayside. If anyone has followed my book and article writings over the past 15 years, they can see that I myself have gone from avid C++ fan to somebody who barely uses it anymore; today I focus primarily on C#. And apparently that's what Microsoft wants, although I personally have moved towards C# simply because I find it easier and I like it better. (I like writing as little amount of code as possible to get the job done.) However, I also don't do any heavy-duty, mission-critical, real-time programming or anything like that; I'm more application-based, focusing mainly on Web development these days.
By the way, just a quick point about other platforms -- C# and .NET have been ported to Unix (through the Mono project) although I'm not sure how people feel about that. I've never used it myself.
Posted by Jeff | July 22, 2008 3:24 PM
I agree that Mono looks promising but they still have a ways to go on the platform support side. They are currently missing AIX, HP-UX, VMS, AS400, OSF, etc. I hope that Novell is successful. Personally, I think Microsoft should take the task on. I would switch to C# if I knew that it was everywhere.
Do not get me wrong, for C # and web programming purposes, I think that Microsoft has made leaps and bounds with Visual Studio 2008. I am just a little bent that we C/C++ people who built many of the killer apps that run in the Microsoft world, and still are today, appear to have been forgotten. Visual Studio is a multi-language IDE and as a multi-language IDE, improvements in functionality should reflect it. As a C/C++ developer, had I forked out the money for an upgrade out of my own pocket I would be peeved and as such, I would not recommend the new IDE for hardcore C/C++ developers. This is not to say that I think that the upgrade is not for everyone, just not C/C++ developers, they should save their money and stick with Visual Studio 2005.
Posted by Walter E. Capers | July 22, 2008 4:41 PM