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Underwhelm by VS2005

CMM
Let me preface by saying that I like VS2005. It improves on many things
lacking in VS 2003 and takes pretty much nothing away. Having said that, I
am a little underwhelmed by it.

Despite a couple of some new controls, there is still a dearth of quality
controls to build even a rudimentary "Windows" app. For instance, MDI is a
technology that was deemed passe in 1995 by Microsoft itself (11 years
ago!!!)... yet we have to build tons of code or resort to a third party
solution to get some sort of decent tabbed SDI/MDI Window management (where
MDI Children appear as tabs) solution like that found in the Visual Studio
IDE itself or apps like FrontPage, FireFox, etc. Why is this? Isn't it about
time for heaven's sake?

Although the Dataset now contains *some* neat improvements, I can't fathom
the rationale for some of the stuff Microsoft spent time on. The whole great
thing about Datasets is that they were completely decoupled from a
"database" and only tied together using a discrete (and optional)
DataAdapter (together with it's extremely useful TableMappings feature).
What we should have gotten in VS 2005 was a better more pretty wysiwig (drag
and drop) editor for mapping db columns to Dataset elements. Instead we get
the rather useless TableAdapter feature that blows many ideas of physical
separation of layers out of the water (in remoted physically n-tiered
distributed apps at least). I mean, it doesn't even really support
transactions (without kludging). In time, I think this "new" feature will
prove as useless as the CommandBuilder.

Why can't MSDN be installed and run from a network share? (It can't even be
run from the disc) That seems ridiculous to me. Also, the "Online" MSDN
integration is gee-whiz neat... but kinda useless because it lacks an Index
and browsable Contents.

Lots of other things just seem like change for the sake of change... for
instance:

Why move the "View Code"/"View Designer" buttons in the Solution
Explorer?... and with no option to move it back to where it used to be! This
button had been in that exact location for the last 10+ years (in old VB at
least)... what was the point of moving it now? Every time I (reflexively)
click where it used to be, I get the "Properties" window. Why?!!!! In fact,
"Properties" is something that after years of experience is intiuitevly
associated with the right-click context menu. The whole idea of that button
being on the bar is dubious let alone it being the FIRST button on the bar.
Nov 22 '05 #1
49 1932
CMM,

When I started to read your message I got the idea, CMM will be reach with
what he can make as additions to Visual Studio.

However be aware that there is no guarantee that the behaviour as it is now
will stay the same, Rome was not build in one day.

In addition to the last, I thought how does CMM want to introduce new
things for users, even the slightest change in th place of a button is for
him/her difficult to accept.

Just my thought,

Cor
Nov 22 '05 #2
"Cor Ligthert [MVP]" <no************@planet.nl> schrieb:
However be aware that there is no guarantee that the behaviour as it is
now will stay the same, Rome was not build in one day.


Well, if behavior changes too often it's like building houses on sand. It's
better to look for a more stable base for building the house.

--
M S Herfried K. Wagner
M V P <URL:http://dotnet.mvps.org/>
V B <URL:http://classicvb.org/petition/>

Nov 22 '05 #3
CMM
I don't really want the "place of a button" that I have been using for what
seems like the last 10 years to change without at least having the ability
to put it back to where it was. It's like putting the button for the Lobby
in my elevator all the way at the top.

It might seem like a minor issue... but, really it's just an indication of a
"downhill" decline of an application. While VS 2002 and 2003 seem to have
been developed with a reverence for the IDE's of years past (and an
improvement on them), the loock and feel of VS 2005 seems to have been done
using the multitude of horrible Java IDE's as a template (complete with non
standard and ugly toolbox tabs that seem to have been developed by a junior
programmer instead of a GUI graphics expert).

"Cor Ligthert [MVP]" <no************@planet.nl> wrote in message
news:%2****************@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
CMM,

When I started to read your message I got the idea, CMM will be reach with
what he can make as additions to Visual Studio.

However be aware that there is no guarantee that the behaviour as it is
now will stay the same, Rome was not build in one day.

In addition to the last, I thought how does CMM want to introduce new
things for users, even the slightest change in th place of a button is for
him/her difficult to accept.

Just my thought,

Cor

Nov 22 '05 #4
I think this is a huge step forward in relation to how we handle data.
I am not familiar wiht everything yet and had a couple false steps
yesterday. But I am loving how SQL and VS work together. This
datagridview control is very awesome. Kudos to the development team(s)
that worked on this project.

You always have the option of coding your own controls. So what if you
have to write some code. For many of us, that is the fun part (yeah I
know we got to curtail that instinct). In some respects MS is making it
to easy on us. But I do appreciate the efforts.

The MSDN and the button issue is .....not to be rude but would you like
some cheese with that wine? I am just kidding of course but cmon you
will adjust in time.

If there is one issue I have I have been hearing rumblings that the
life cycle of this product will only go into late 2006. Then we will
need another VS to deal with Vista. That is what I am reading that is
all.

Thanks for letting me say my piece.
CMM wrote:
Let me preface by saying that I like VS2005. It improves on many things
lacking in VS 2003 and takes pretty much nothing away. Having said that, I
am a little underwhelmed by it.

Despite a couple of some new controls, there is still a dearth of quality
controls to build even a rudimentary "Windows" app. For instance, MDI is a
technology that was deemed passe in 1995 by Microsoft itself (11 years
ago!!!)... yet we have to build tons of code or resort to a third party
solution to get some sort of decent tabbed SDI/MDI Window management (where
MDI Children appear as tabs) solution like that found in the Visual Studio
IDE itself or apps like FrontPage, FireFox, etc. Why is this? Isn't it about
time for heaven's sake?

Although the Dataset now contains *some* neat improvements, I can't fathom
the rationale for some of the stuff Microsoft spent time on. The whole great
thing about Datasets is that they were completely decoupled from a
"database" and only tied together using a discrete (and optional)
DataAdapter (together with it's extremely useful TableMappings feature).
What we should have gotten in VS 2005 was a better more pretty wysiwig (drag
and drop) editor for mapping db columns to Dataset elements. Instead we get
the rather useless TableAdapter feature that blows many ideas of physical
separation of layers out of the water (in remoted physically n-tiered
distributed apps at least). I mean, it doesn't even really support
transactions (without kludging). In time, I think this "new" feature will
prove as useless as the CommandBuilder.

Why can't MSDN be installed and run from a network share? (It can't even be
run from the disc) That seems ridiculous to me. Also, the "Online" MSDN
integration is gee-whiz neat... but kinda useless because it lacks an Index
and browsable Contents.

Lots of other things just seem like change for the sake of change... for
instance:

Why move the "View Code"/"View Designer" buttons in the Solution
Explorer?... and with no option to move it back to where it used to be! This
button had been in that exact location for the last 10+ years (in old VB at
least)... what was the point of moving it now? Every time I (reflexively)
click where it used to be, I get the "Properties" window. Why?!!!! In fact,
"Properties" is something that after years of experience is intiuitevly
associated with the right-click context menu. The whole idea of that button
being on the bar is dubious let alone it being the FIRST button on the bar.


Nov 22 '05 #5
"CMM" <cm*@nospam.com> schrieb:
Why move the "View Code"/"View Designer" buttons in the Solution
Explorer?...


That's not the only issue with this buttons. In the German .NET groups
there is currently a discussion going on where people report that these
buttons do not even always work as they should.

--
M S Herfried K. Wagner
M V P <URL:http://dotnet.mvps.org/>
V B <URL:http://classicvb.org/petition/>

Nov 22 '05 #6
Herfried,

Well, if behavior changes too often it's like building houses on sand.
It's better to look for a more stable base for building the house.

Are you sure about what you write, Amsterdam is an old city. However as long
not as old as Rome. AFAIK is Rome build on sand (seven hills). A pity is
that Amsterdam is build on a swamp.

It has wooden pillars until the sand, however building very high buildings
is not as easy as in most places of the world.

It is of course not as Austria where a lot of buildings are build on rocks.
Although I am not sure of that is as well for citys build on the border of
the Donau.

:-)

Cor
Nov 22 '05 #7
Many of the UI changes were made from focus groups, primarily watching how
people work with the product. I do not agree with some, but it is likely
that it is familiarity that dictates my dislike, not that one idea is any
better or worse. The next version of Office will be a greater shock to many
people's system. :-)

The entire thrust of Visual Studio is more drag and drop, less code. While
this sounds bad, at first, it frees up developers to spend time solving the
problem rather than coding the solution. This should, in theory, both speed
development and create higher quality software. I dislike it, myself, but I
am slowly having a change of heart as I learn to start using the
productivity bits on the lower tiers; it is actually kind of cool.

I am still not fond of wrapping the entire data access in a single object,
as it leads to a solution where business and data layers are tightly
coupled, if not contained, in the UI. Great for prototypes, but I am not
sure I will ever like the DataSource objects. But, they do have a niche out
there.

--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP; MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA

***********************************************
Think Outside the Box!
***********************************************
"CMM" <cm*@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:On**************@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
Let me preface by saying that I like VS2005. It improves on many things
lacking in VS 2003 and takes pretty much nothing away. Having said that, I
am a little underwhelmed by it.

Despite a couple of some new controls, there is still a dearth of quality
controls to build even a rudimentary "Windows" app. For instance, MDI is a
technology that was deemed passe in 1995 by Microsoft itself (11 years
ago!!!)... yet we have to build tons of code or resort to a third party
solution to get some sort of decent tabbed SDI/MDI Window management
(where MDI Children appear as tabs) solution like that found in the Visual
Studio IDE itself or apps like FrontPage, FireFox, etc. Why is this? Isn't
it about time for heaven's sake?

Although the Dataset now contains *some* neat improvements, I can't fathom
the rationale for some of the stuff Microsoft spent time on. The whole
great thing about Datasets is that they were completely decoupled from a
"database" and only tied together using a discrete (and optional)
DataAdapter (together with it's extremely useful TableMappings feature).
What we should have gotten in VS 2005 was a better more pretty wysiwig
(drag and drop) editor for mapping db columns to Dataset elements. Instead
we get the rather useless TableAdapter feature that blows many ideas of
physical separation of layers out of the water (in remoted physically
n-tiered distributed apps at least). I mean, it doesn't even really
support transactions (without kludging). In time, I think this "new"
feature will prove as useless as the CommandBuilder.

Why can't MSDN be installed and run from a network share? (It can't even
be run from the disc) That seems ridiculous to me. Also, the "Online" MSDN
integration is gee-whiz neat... but kinda useless because it lacks an
Index and browsable Contents.

Lots of other things just seem like change for the sake of change... for
instance:

Why move the "View Code"/"View Designer" buttons in the Solution
Explorer?... and with no option to move it back to where it used to be!
This button had been in that exact location for the last 10+ years (in old
VB at least)... what was the point of moving it now? Every time I
(reflexively) click where it used to be, I get the "Properties" window.
Why?!!!! In fact, "Properties" is something that after years of experience
is intiuitevly associated with the right-click context menu. The whole
idea of that button being on the bar is dubious let alone it being the
FIRST button on the bar.

Nov 22 '05 #8
>!!!)... yet we have to build tons of code or resort to a third party
solution to get some sort of decent tabbed SDI/MDI Window management
Sometimes knowing where to find the information you need helps. See:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...plications.asp
What we should have gotten in VS 2005 was a better more pretty wysiwig
(drag and drop) editor for mapping db columns to Dataset elements. Instead
we get the rather useless TableAdapter feature that blows many ideas of
physical separation of layers out of the water (in remoted physically
n-tiered distributed apps at least). I mean, it doesn't even really
support transactions (without kludging). In time, I think this "new"
feature will prove as useless as the CommandBuilder.
This sort of GUI tool (that is, a GUI tool for developing business
components) is primarily for beginners. Advanced users may make use of it,
but what you refer to as "kludging" is simply the process of tweaking
auto-generated code for specific purposes. When an advanced user uses such a
tool (and I know of very few that do, in the case of GUI tools for
developing business components), they only expect a starting point for their
coding, a "jump-start" if you will

Beginners will use the heck out of these, which results in very poorly
optimized code. As Microsoft is well aware that beginners don't know much
about logical separation of tiers, transactions, et al, they designed the
GUI tools to prevent as many possible errors that beginning-level developers
might cause by such ignorant usage. Thus, yes, it is not pretty straight out
of the box. But again, an advanced user will generally write his/her own
business and/or data layer, optimize his/her code, and use GUI tools for the
sort of things that they are best for, which is creating Graphic User
Interface components. Even then, an advanced developer will not simply
accept the machine-generated code, but will tweak it manually afterwards.
Why can't MSDN be installed and run from a network share? (It can't even
be run from the disc) That seems ridiculous to me.
I don't know that "ridiculous" is a good characterization of this. It is a
feature that does not exist. Admittedly, it may be useful to some to have.
The absence may be due to licensing issues, but I doubt it. I would suggest
making a suggestion to add this feature to Microsoft.
Also, the "Online" MSDN integration is gee-whiz neat... but kinda useless
because it lacks an Index and browsable Contents.
An index and browsable contents for an Internet search engine? I wonder why
Google hasn't thought of that...
Why move the "View Code"/"View Designer" buttons in the Solution
Explorer?... and with no option to move it back to where it used to be!
This is another "feature design" issue. That is, it is not about something
that "should" or "should not" exist; it is a matter of personal preference.
I must admit I don't know the reasons that this was changed. However, again,
you may always make a suggestion about this feature to Microsoft. They do
pay attention.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
If you push something hard enough,
it will fall over.
- Fudd's First Law of Opposition

"CMM" <cm*@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:On**************@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl... Let me preface by saying that I like VS2005. It improves on many things
lacking in VS 2003 and takes pretty much nothing away. Having said that, I
am a little underwhelmed by it.

Despite a couple of some new controls, there is still a dearth of quality
controls to build even a rudimentary "Windows" app. For instance, MDI is a
technology that was deemed passe in 1995 by Microsoft itself (11 years
ago!!!)... yet we have to build tons of code or resort to a third party
solution to get some sort of decent tabbed SDI/MDI Window management
(where MDI Children appear as tabs) solution like that found in the Visual
Studio IDE itself or apps like FrontPage, FireFox, etc. Why is this? Isn't
it about time for heaven's sake?

Although the Dataset now contains *some* neat improvements, I can't fathom
the rationale for some of the stuff Microsoft spent time on. The whole
great thing about Datasets is that they were completely decoupled from a
"database" and only tied together using a discrete (and optional)
DataAdapter (together with it's extremely useful TableMappings feature).
What we should have gotten in VS 2005 was a better more pretty wysiwig
(drag and drop) editor for mapping db columns to Dataset elements. Instead
we get the rather useless TableAdapter feature that blows many ideas of
physical separation of layers out of the water (in remoted physically
n-tiered distributed apps at least). I mean, it doesn't even really
support transactions (without kludging). In time, I think this "new"
feature will prove as useless as the CommandBuilder.

Why can't MSDN be installed and run from a network share? (It can't even
be run from the disc) That seems ridiculous to me. Also, the "Online" MSDN
integration is gee-whiz neat... but kinda useless because it lacks an
Index and browsable Contents.

Lots of other things just seem like change for the sake of change... for
instance:

Why move the "View Code"/"View Designer" buttons in the Solution
Explorer?... and with no option to move it back to where it used to be!
This button had been in that exact location for the last 10+ years (in old
VB at least)... what was the point of moving it now? Every time I
(reflexively) click where it used to be, I get the "Properties" window.
Why?!!!! In fact, "Properties" is something that after years of experience
is intiuitevly associated with the right-click context menu. The whole
idea of that button being on the bar is dubious let alone it being the
FIRST button on the bar.

Nov 22 '05 #9
> there is currently a discussion going on where people report that these
buttons do not even always work as they should.


I think that I have seen that from time to time, the View Code button not
working (or maybe it was the View Designer button) and you have to use the
context menu. Is that what they are discussing?

--

Best regards,

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio .NET, VB6, VB5 and VBA
You can code, design and document much faster.
Free resources for add-in developers:
http://www.mztools.com
Nov 22 '05 #10
Cmm,
I don't really want the "place of a button" that I have been using for what
seems like the last 10 years to change without at least having the ability
to put it back to where it was. It's like putting the button for the Lobby
in my elevator all the way at the top.

It might seem like a minor issue... but, really it's just an indication of
a "downhill" decline of an application. While VS 2002 and 2003 seem to
have been developed with a reverence for the IDE's of years past (and an
improvement on them), the loock and feel of VS 2005 seems to have been
done using the multitude of horrible Java IDE's as a template (complete
with non standard and ugly toolbox tabs that seem to have been developed
by a junior programmer instead of a GUI graphics expert).


That is why I wrote about Rome, there is not every building more in Rome
that has exist.

Some of the bad ones are gone and some of the good ones are gone.

However the good constructive or designed ones (I don't mean the reason for
use), have stayed much longer than the bad ones.

They bad onces (see my sentence before) where not build with as reason to
build a bad constructive or designed building.

Cor
Nov 22 '05 #11
"Carlos J. Quintero [VB MVP]" <ca*****@NOSPAMsogecable.com> schrieb:
there is currently a discussion going on where people report that these
buttons do not even always work as they should.


I think that I have seen that from time to time, the View Code button not
working (or maybe it was the View Designer button) and you have to use the
context menu. Is that what they are discussing?


Yes.

--
M S Herfried K. Wagner
M V P <URL:http://dotnet.mvps.org/>
V B <URL:http://classicvb.org/petition/>

Nov 22 '05 #12
On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 20:40:08 -0500, CMM wrote:
In time, I think this "new" feature will
prove as useless as the CommandBuilder.


CommandBuilder useless? I think not. I have several apps that use it to
transform a dynamically built SELECT statement into the appropriate INSERT
or UPDATE statement ... saved me a lot of code writing.

True, dynamically built SQL isn't usually a good thing, as Joe Celko would
say, er, pound into my head with a nailgun, if he read this group.
Nov 22 '05 #13
Hi Scorpion,

"scorpion53061" <ad***@kjmsolutions.com> schreef in bericht
news:11**********************@f14g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com...
I think this is a huge step forward in relation to how we handle data.
I am not familiar wiht everything yet and had a couple false steps
yesterday. But I am loving how SQL and VS work together. This
datagridview control is very awesome. Kudos to the development team(s)
that worked on this project.

You always have the option of coding your own controls. So what if you
have to write some code. For many of us, that is the fun part (yeah I
know we got to curtail that instinct). In some respects MS is making it
to easy on us. But I do appreciate the efforts.
What controls do you mean? I can code my own controls now, without VS7.1.
The MSDN and the button issue is .....not to be rude but would you like
some cheese with that wine? I am just kidding of course but cmon you
will adjust in time.


I have got to admit that I still miss some things from VS6 and I'm already
coding .NET for about two years now. These things bug you and keep doing it
because they seem like a step backward and not forward.

One of the thing that bugs me for instance is that when you specify a
handler for an event of a UI control that the focus changes to the code
file. Horrible. Perhaps there is a setting that disables this behaviour, but
I haven't found it (yet :)) in VS7.1.

I must say that other things are better than before.

Kind regards,
--
Tom Tempelaere.
Nov 22 '05 #14
Eeek,

"TT (Tom Tempelaere)" </\/_0_$P@/\/\titi____AThotmailD.Tcom/\/\@P$_0_/\/>
schreef in bericht news:tf*********************@phobos.telenet-ops.be...
What controls do you mean? I can code my own controls now, without VS7.1.


s/without/with

TT
Nov 22 '05 #15
CMM
> Sometimes knowing where to find the information you need helps. See:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...plications.asp


Um, I know how to create MDI apps. I also know why they're discouraged and
deprecated. I was referring to the lack of a good Tabbed MDI (...or TDI if
you will... though some would mistakenly refer to them as SDI)
implementation from Microsoft for years now. I totally expected VS 2005 to
address this.

Visual Studio itself: TDI
FireFox: TDI
Internet Explorer: SDI
Word: SDI
Excel: MDI (that very badly mimics an SDI interface)
"Kevin Spencer" <ke***@DIESPAMMERSDIEtakempis.com> wrote in message
news:eM****************@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
!!!)... yet we have to build tons of code or resort to a third party
solution to get some sort of decent tabbed SDI/MDI Window management


Sometimes knowing where to find the information you need helps. See:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...plications.asp
What we should have gotten in VS 2005 was a better more pretty wysiwig
(drag and drop) editor for mapping db columns to Dataset elements.
Instead we get the rather useless TableAdapter feature that blows many
ideas of physical separation of layers out of the water (in remoted
physically n-tiered distributed apps at least). I mean, it doesn't even
really support transactions (without kludging). In time, I think this
"new" feature will prove as useless as the CommandBuilder.


This sort of GUI tool (that is, a GUI tool for developing business
components) is primarily for beginners. Advanced users may make use of it,
but what you refer to as "kludging" is simply the process of tweaking
auto-generated code for specific purposes. When an advanced user uses such
a tool (and I know of very few that do, in the case of GUI tools for
developing business components), they only expect a starting point for
their coding, a "jump-start" if you will

Beginners will use the heck out of these, which results in very poorly
optimized code. As Microsoft is well aware that beginners don't know much
about logical separation of tiers, transactions, et al, they designed the
GUI tools to prevent as many possible errors that beginning-level
developers might cause by such ignorant usage. Thus, yes, it is not pretty
straight out of the box. But again, an advanced user will generally write
his/her own business and/or data layer, optimize his/her code, and use GUI
tools for the sort of things that they are best for, which is creating
Graphic User Interface components. Even then, an advanced developer will
not simply accept the machine-generated code, but will tweak it manually
afterwards.
Why can't MSDN be installed and run from a network share? (It can't even
be run from the disc) That seems ridiculous to me.


I don't know that "ridiculous" is a good characterization of this. It is a
feature that does not exist. Admittedly, it may be useful to some to have.
The absence may be due to licensing issues, but I doubt it. I would
suggest making a suggestion to add this feature to Microsoft.
Also, the "Online" MSDN integration is gee-whiz neat... but kinda useless
because it lacks an Index and browsable Contents.


An index and browsable contents for an Internet search engine? I wonder
why Google hasn't thought of that...
Why move the "View Code"/"View Designer" buttons in the Solution
Explorer?... and with no option to move it back to where it used to be!


This is another "feature design" issue. That is, it is not about something
that "should" or "should not" exist; it is a matter of personal
preference. I must admit I don't know the reasons that this was changed.
However, again, you may always make a suggestion about this feature to
Microsoft. They do pay attention.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
.Net Developer
If you push something hard enough,
it will fall over.
- Fudd's First Law of Opposition

"CMM" <cm*@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:On**************@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
Let me preface by saying that I like VS2005. It improves on many things
lacking in VS 2003 and takes pretty much nothing away. Having said that,
I am a little underwhelmed by it.

Despite a couple of some new controls, there is still a dearth of quality
controls to build even a rudimentary "Windows" app. For instance, MDI is
a technology that was deemed passe in 1995 by Microsoft itself (11 years
ago!!!)... yet we have to build tons of code or resort to a third party
solution to get some sort of decent tabbed SDI/MDI Window management
(where MDI Children appear as tabs) solution like that found in the
Visual Studio IDE itself or apps like FrontPage, FireFox, etc. Why is
this? Isn't it about time for heaven's sake?

Although the Dataset now contains *some* neat improvements, I can't
fathom the rationale for some of the stuff Microsoft spent time on. The
whole great thing about Datasets is that they were completely decoupled
from a "database" and only tied together using a discrete (and optional)
DataAdapter (together with it's extremely useful TableMappings feature).
What we should have gotten in VS 2005 was a better more pretty wysiwig
(drag and drop) editor for mapping db columns to Dataset elements.
Instead we get the rather useless TableAdapter feature that blows many
ideas of physical separation of layers out of the water (in remoted
physically n-tiered distributed apps at least). I mean, it doesn't even
really support transactions (without kludging). In time, I think this
"new" feature will prove as useless as the CommandBuilder.

Why can't MSDN be installed and run from a network share? (It can't even
be run from the disc) That seems ridiculous to me. Also, the "Online"
MSDN integration is gee-whiz neat... but kinda useless because it lacks
an Index and browsable Contents.

Lots of other things just seem like change for the sake of change... for
instance:

Why move the "View Code"/"View Designer" buttons in the Solution
Explorer?... and with no option to move it back to where it used to be!
This button had been in that exact location for the last 10+ years (in
old VB at least)... what was the point of moving it now? Every time I
(reflexively) click where it used to be, I get the "Properties" window.
Why?!!!! In fact, "Properties" is something that after years of
experience is intiuitevly associated with the right-click context menu.
The whole idea of that button being on the bar is dubious let alone it
being the FIRST button on the bar.


Nov 22 '05 #16
CMM
I know I was nitpicking... I love VS.... I just don't see the great leap
forward that everyone expected... the hype, I mean. We still don't have a
good pure Remoting infrastructure (c'mon a prebuilt Template at least!) that
doesn't rely on IIS or DCOM (I know, I know, wait for Vista). We finally get
real XP Themed capable controls (why did it take 4 years???). But, we still
can't create a solid Windows app without 3rd party controls.

I mean... for sheesh-sake... masked edit control just made their appearance.
Ooooh. Ahhh. These guys have been around since Windows 3.1.

I guess that's what the 3rd party market is for... I guess. Though some
things just seem to me to be so rudimentary that they should be available
out-the-box. Fancy spreadsheet-Excel-grids... sure, good candidate for a 3rd
party control. Masked edit box... no way!

"Cowboy (Gregory A. Beamer)" <No************@comcast.netNoSpamM> wrote in
message news:%2****************@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
Many of the UI changes were made from focus groups, primarily watching how
people work with the product. I do not agree with some, but it is likely
that it is familiarity that dictates my dislike, not that one idea is any
better or worse. The next version of Office will be a greater shock to
many people's system. :-)

The entire thrust of Visual Studio is more drag and drop, less code. While
this sounds bad, at first, it frees up developers to spend time solving
the problem rather than coding the solution. This should, in theory, both
speed development and create higher quality software. I dislike it,
myself, but I am slowly having a change of heart as I learn to start using
the productivity bits on the lower tiers; it is actually kind of cool.

I am still not fond of wrapping the entire data access in a single object,
as it leads to a solution where business and data layers are tightly
coupled, if not contained, in the UI. Great for prototypes, but I am not
sure I will ever like the DataSource objects. But, they do have a niche
out there.

--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP; MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA

***********************************************
Think Outside the Box!
***********************************************
"CMM" <cm*@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:On**************@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
Let me preface by saying that I like VS2005. It improves on many things
lacking in VS 2003 and takes pretty much nothing away. Having said that,
I am a little underwhelmed by it.

Despite a couple of some new controls, there is still a dearth of quality
controls to build even a rudimentary "Windows" app. For instance, MDI is
a technology that was deemed passe in 1995 by Microsoft itself (11 years
ago!!!)... yet we have to build tons of code or resort to a third party
solution to get some sort of decent tabbed SDI/MDI Window management
(where MDI Children appear as tabs) solution like that found in the
Visual Studio IDE itself or apps like FrontPage, FireFox, etc. Why is
this? Isn't it about time for heaven's sake?

Although the Dataset now contains *some* neat improvements, I can't
fathom the rationale for some of the stuff Microsoft spent time on. The
whole great thing about Datasets is that they were completely decoupled
from a "database" and only tied together using a discrete (and optional)
DataAdapter (together with it's extremely useful TableMappings feature).
What we should have gotten in VS 2005 was a better more pretty wysiwig
(drag and drop) editor for mapping db columns to Dataset elements.
Instead we get the rather useless TableAdapter feature that blows many
ideas of physical separation of layers out of the water (in remoted
physically n-tiered distributed apps at least). I mean, it doesn't even
really support transactions (without kludging). In time, I think this
"new" feature will prove as useless as the CommandBuilder.

Why can't MSDN be installed and run from a network share? (It can't even
be run from the disc) That seems ridiculous to me. Also, the "Online"
MSDN integration is gee-whiz neat... but kinda useless because it lacks
an Index and browsable Contents.

Lots of other things just seem like change for the sake of change... for
instance:

Why move the "View Code"/"View Designer" buttons in the Solution
Explorer?... and with no option to move it back to where it used to be!
This button had been in that exact location for the last 10+ years (in
old VB at least)... what was the point of moving it now? Every time I
(reflexively) click where it used to be, I get the "Properties" window.
Why?!!!! In fact, "Properties" is something that after years of
experience is intiuitevly associated with the right-click context menu.
The whole idea of that button being on the bar is dubious let alone it
being the FIRST button on the bar.


Nov 22 '05 #17

Joe Celko...now there's a guy who scared me into learning how to do
things right!! :). But of course he was right.

Kelly

"rp******@gmail.com" <rp******@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:15****************@rosspresser.dyndns.org:
On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 20:40:08 -0500, CMM wrote:
In time, I think this "new" feature will
prove as useless as the CommandBuilder.


CommandBuilder useless? I think not. I have several apps that use it to
transform a dynamically built SELECT statement into the appropriate INSERT
or UPDATE statement ... saved me a lot of code writing.

True, dynamically built SQL isn't usually a good thing, as Joe Celko would
say, er, pound into my head with a nailgun, if he read this group.


Nov 22 '05 #18
CMM
"scorpion53061" <ad***@kjmsolutions.com> wrote in message
news:11**********************@f14g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com...
<snip>
The MSDN and the button issue is .....not to be rude but would you like
some cheese with that wine? I am just kidding of course but cmon you
will adjust in time.


I'm not lamentating that the feature hasn't been implemented... I'm
complaining that it was taken away. Every few months when a new MSDN Library
is released, we will now have to install a 2-3gb help system on EACH of our
developer's machines (a 15 to 20 minute process on EACH machine) when before
we could just install it on a central fileserver and just install the
minimal interface on the developer's machine (a 10 second process on each
machine).

Also, this has nothing to do with "Licensing" as the MSDN *Library* has been
sharable in an entire organization with just one subscription for many years
now.
Nov 22 '05 #19
CMM
OK... maybe it's not entirely useless. I can see where it might come in
handy sometimes. If the DataAdapter code generator is like the Windows
shutdown button, then the CommandBuilder is like the hardwired power button
(rude-shutdown) on your computer. Sure, you might need it sometimes, but
only when the circumstances are dire.
Now there's an anology! ;-)

"Ross Presser" <rp******@NOSPAMgmail.com.invalid> wrote in message
news:15****************@rosspresser.dyndns.org...
On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 20:40:08 -0500, CMM wrote:
In time, I think this "new" feature will
prove as useless as the CommandBuilder.


CommandBuilder useless? I think not. I have several apps that use it to
transform a dynamically built SELECT statement into the appropriate INSERT
or UPDATE statement ... saved me a lot of code writing.

True, dynamically built SQL isn't usually a good thing, as Joe Celko would
say, er, pound into my head with a nailgun, if he read this group.

Nov 22 '05 #20
CMM
I just really had high expectations for this release. A fellow developer
that I work with made sense of it... Microsoft has virtually ZERO
competition in the desktop development arena (Win32). But they have much
resistance in the web app arena. This is why ASP.NET has matured by leaps
and bounds and WinForms seems stuck in the VB3 Windows 3.1 days.
"Cor Ligthert [MVP]" <no************@planet.nl> wrote in message
news:%2****************@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
CMM,

When I started to read your message I got the idea, CMM will be reach with
what he can make as additions to Visual Studio.

However be aware that there is no guarantee that the behaviour as it is
now will stay the same, Rome was not build in one day.

In addition to the last, I thought how does CMM want to introduce new
things for users, even the slightest change in th place of a button is for
him/her difficult to accept.

Just my thought,

Cor

Nov 22 '05 #21
CMM wrote:
Excel: MDI (that very badly mimics an SDI interface)


Should read:

Excel: ??? (wretched turd of an unusable interface)
Nov 22 '05 #22
CMM
Well, I wouldn't go that far. I think Excel is unbelievably useful... and
for the most part its UI is straightforward... albeit nothing extraordinary
(it basically hasn't evolved at all since 1994). I just hate its BS SDI
implementation. So many times I click the X on the upper-right hand of the
window only to find that I have closed every Workbook open on my desktop! It
LITERALLY is a Windows.Classic MDI app masquerading as an SDI app (Word on
the other hand gets it right).

"Peter Franks" <no**@none.com> wrote in message
news:AO1ff.169$qw.63@fed1read07...
CMM wrote:
Excel: MDI (that very badly mimics an SDI interface)


Should read:

Excel: ??? (wretched turd of an unusable interface)

Nov 22 '05 #23
CMM wrote:
Well, I wouldn't go that far. I think Excel is unbelievably useful... and
for the most part its UI is straightforward... albeit nothing extraordinary
(it basically hasn't evolved at all since 1994). I just hate its BS SDI
implementation. So many times I click the X on the upper-right hand of the
window only to find that I have closed every Workbook open on my desktop! It
LITERALLY is a Windows.Classic MDI app masquerading as an SDI app (Word on
the other hand gets it right).


Dude, it is a wretched document interface. Have you tried a
side-by-side comparison? Completely unusable except for the most
trivial comparisons.

I think Excel is a piece of junk.

MS + no competition = garbage.
Nov 22 '05 #24
CMM <cm*@nospam.com> wrote:
I don't really want the "place of a button" that I have been using for what
seems like the last 10 years to change without at least having the ability
to put it back to where it was. It's like putting the button for the Lobby
in my elevator all the way at the top.

It might seem like a minor issue... but, really it's just an indication of a
"downhill" decline of an application. While VS 2002 and 2003 seem to have
been developed with a reverence for the IDE's of years past (and an
improvement on them), the loock and feel of VS 2005 seems to have been done
using the multitude of horrible Java IDE's as a template (complete with non
standard and ugly toolbox tabs that seem to have been developed by a junior
programmer instead of a GUI graphics expert).


Whereas to my mind, the pity is that they didn't take *more* from the
utterly outstanding Java IDEs which are available. You know, more
actually *useful* features such as more comprehensive refactoring,
better navigation, the "organise imports" feature of Eclipse, unit
testing nicely integrated into *free* IDEs rather than only the "top
tier" ones, etc.

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too
Nov 22 '05 #25
On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 22:26:42 -0000, Jon Skeet [C# MVP] wrote:
CMM <cm*@nospam.com> wrote:
I don't really want the "place of a button" that I have been using for what
seems like the last 10 years to change without at least having the ability
to put it back to where it was. It's like putting the button for the Lobby
in my elevator all the way at the top.

It might seem like a minor issue... but, really it's just an indication of a
"downhill" decline of an application. While VS 2002 and 2003 seem to have
been developed with a reverence for the IDE's of years past (and an
improvement on them), the loock and feel of VS 2005 seems to have been done
using the multitude of horrible Java IDE's as a template (complete with non
standard and ugly toolbox tabs that seem to have been developed by a junior
programmer instead of a GUI graphics expert).


Whereas to my mind, the pity is that they didn't take *more* from the
utterly outstanding Java IDEs which are available. You know, more
actually *useful* features such as more comprehensive refactoring,
better navigation, the "organise imports" feature of Eclipse, unit
testing nicely integrated into *free* IDEs rather than only the "top
tier" ones, etc.


Just give it time. We'll all be using OS IDE's and paying for "support"
instead of tools.
Nov 22 '05 #26
BobF <rN***********@charter.net> wrote:
Whereas to my mind, the pity is that they didn't take *more* from the
utterly outstanding Java IDEs which are available. You know, more
actually *useful* features such as more comprehensive refactoring,
better navigation, the "organise imports" feature of Eclipse, unit
testing nicely integrated into *free* IDEs rather than only the "top
tier" ones, etc.


Just give it time. We'll all be using OS IDE's and paying for "support"
instead of tools.


I've never paid anything for support in Eclipse, which I've been using
for several years now. I dare say there are some people who do (and
there are some who pay for some plugins, as we may well do in order to
use Team System from Eclipse) but that doesn't mean everyone has to.

(The Eclipse support is excellent, in fact. I've reported various bugs
or feature requests, and often had them fixed/implemented by the next
milestone release.)

I wonder how many people who use Apache have ever had to pay for
support?

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too
Nov 22 '05 #27
Jon,

Sorry, I had a smile on my face
(The Eclipse support is excellent, in fact. I've reported various bugs
or feature requests, and often had them fixed/implemented by the next
milestone release.)


:-)

Cor
Nov 23 '05 #28
Cor Ligthert [MVP] <no************@planet.nl> wrote:
Sorry, I had a smile on my face
(The Eclipse support is excellent, in fact. I've reported various bugs
or feature requests, and often had them fixed/implemented by the next
milestone release.)


:-)


I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here. It's certainly
something which *doesn't* occur with VS.NET - and that's definitely not
because the same level of bugs/scope for feature requests isn't
present!

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too
Nov 23 '05 #29
>>
> (The Eclipse support is excellent, in fact. I've reported various bugs
> or feature requests, and often had them fixed/implemented by the next
> milestone release.)


:-)


I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here. It's certainly
something which *doesn't* occur with VS.NET - and that's definitely not
because the same level of bugs/scope for feature requests isn't
present!

You know that I can not give any opinion about that. However, the way you
described it gave me the idea that it is an enormous amount (probably not
true). Therefore I had to smile, friendly of course and only positive.

:-)

Cor

Nov 23 '05 #30
"Jon Skeet [C# MVP]" <sk***@pobox.com> schrieb:
I don't really want the "place of a button" that I have been using for
what
seems like the last 10 years to change without at least having the
ability
to put it back to where it was. It's like putting the button for the
Lobby
in my elevator all the way at the top.

It might seem like a minor issue... but, really it's just an indication
of a
"downhill" decline of an application. While VS 2002 and 2003 seem to have
been developed with a reverence for the IDE's of years past (and an
improvement on them), the loock and feel of VS 2005 seems to have been
done
using the multitude of horrible Java IDE's as a template (complete with
non
standard and ugly toolbox tabs that seem to have been developed by a
junior
programmer instead of a GUI graphics expert).


Whereas to my mind, the pity is that they didn't take *more* from the
utterly outstanding Java IDEs which are available. You know, more
actually *useful* features such as more comprehensive refactoring,
better navigation, the "organise imports" feature of Eclipse, unit
testing nicely integrated into *free* IDEs rather than only the "top
tier" ones, etc.


Mhm... Microsoft employees who spent hours in developing VS.NET have
families etc. and need to earn money! I believe it's completely legitimate
to sell enterprise editions for professional use for money instead of giving
them away for free. It's incredibly hard to get good support, even
commercial support, for open source products and products which are
available for free, because the manufacturers often offer support for their
commercially available editions only. Well, it's not only Microsoft who
needs to earn money to bring things forward.

--
M S Herfried K. Wagner
M V P <URL:http://dotnet.mvps.org/>
V B <URL:http://classicvb.org/petition/>

Nov 23 '05 #31
"Jon Skeet [C# MVP]" <sk***@pobox.com> schrieb:
I wonder how many people who use Apache have ever had to pay for
support?


When comparing the high number of patches for Apache to those available for
IIS6, using the commercially availabe product might be less costly than
using the "free" product including "free" support.

--
M S Herfried K. Wagner
M V P <URL:http://dotnet.mvps.org/>
V B <URL:http://classicvb.org/petition/>

Nov 23 '05 #32
Herfried K. Wagner [MVP] <hi***************@gmx.at> wrote:
Whereas to my mind, the pity is that they didn't take *more* from the
utterly outstanding Java IDEs which are available. You know, more
actually *useful* features such as more comprehensive refactoring,
better navigation, the "organise imports" feature of Eclipse, unit
testing nicely integrated into *free* IDEs rather than only the "top
tier" ones, etc.
Mhm... Microsoft employees who spent hours in developing VS.NET have
families etc. and need to earn money! I believe it's completely legitimate
to sell enterprise editions for professional use for money instead of giving
them away for free. It's incredibly hard to get good support, even
commercial support, for open source products and products which are
available for free, because the manufacturers often offer support for their
commercially available editions only.


My experience with Eclipse is otherwise - and likewise for other Open
Source products. My general experience with Open Source software is
that the support is excellent. There are exceptions, of course, just as
there are with commercial software. The difference is that if the Open
Source software needs a change, I may well be able to make the change
myself - something which has happened a few times.
Well, it's not only Microsoft who
needs to earn money to bring things forward.


Sure. I have no objection to MS selling VS.NET. I just wish they could
make it a better IDE than the free ones available for Java.

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too
Nov 23 '05 #33
Herfried K. Wagner [MVP] <hi***************@gmx.at> wrote:
"Jon Skeet [C# MVP]" <sk***@pobox.com> schrieb:
I wonder how many people who use Apache have ever had to pay for
support?


When comparing the high number of patches for Apache to those available for
IIS6, using the commercially availabe product might be less costly than
using the "free" product including "free" support.


That's the way open source tends to work - plenty of patches fixing
problems in a timely manner, rather than hoping no-one will start
abusing holes before the next big service pack.

The patches are generally easy to install though...

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too
Nov 23 '05 #34
<he*@40th.com> wrote:
JS [Thu, 17 Nov 2005 23:57:47 -0000]:
>I wonder how many people who use Apache have ever had to pay for support?


If your business model is based on that, I'm
sure Apache hopes many will. When you give
away the binary and you give away the source
code -- wait, that's a business model? There's
a trick or two in there somewhere. Gottabe.


No - Apache just isn't a business (or at least, isn't primarily a
business). The point of giving Apache away wasn't to make money - it
was to improve the general quality of the web server.

Basically, a bunch of admins who had no interest in selling web servers
all improved the same codebase, and decided to bundle all these patches
together - hence the name, "A patchy server". And so Apache was born...

When you have no interest in making money from a change you've made -
you've made it to scratch your own itch - why not give it away to help
other people? (I've done likewise with a few projects, including Ant
and EasyMock.NET.)

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too
Nov 23 '05 #35
Cor Ligthert [MVP] <no************@planet.nl> wrote:
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here. It's certainly
something which *doesn't* occur with VS.NET - and that's definitely not
because the same level of bugs/scope for feature requests isn't
present!

You know that I can not give any opinion about that. However, the way you
described it gave me the idea that it is an enormous amount (probably not
true). Therefore I had to smile, friendly of course and only positive.


There haven't been *very* many - probably about 10 in all. Enough to
count as "various". The important thing is that usually within a couple
of months, there's been a build with a fix in. How many people could
say that about VS?

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too
Nov 23 '05 #36
Jon,
Well, it's not only Microsoft who
needs to earn money to bring things forward.


Sure. I have no objection to MS selling VS.NET. I just wish they could
make it a better IDE than the free ones available for Java.

Regulars here know how you make programs and what you like and not.

A lot of effort in VS is in by instance the Visual part and for VB Net
especial the debugger and the background compilation plus of course the
integrated WebDesign and code behind.

Is your opinion that Eclipse is better in those things than VS as well?

Cor
Nov 23 '05 #37
"Cor Ligthert [MVP]" <no************@planet.nl> schrieb:
A lot of effort in VS is in by instance the Visual part and for VB Net
especial the debugger and the background compilation plus of course the
integrated WebDesign and code behind.


You forgot another important point:

VS supports VB.NET, Ecplise doesn't. This is a big plus for VS :-).

--
M S Herfried K. Wagner
M V P <URL:http://dotnet.mvps.org/>
V B <URL:http://classicvb.org/petition/>
Nov 23 '05 #38
CMM
I think this thread has gone way OT. My experience with Java IDE's is dated
and I didn't mean to imply that they weren't useful or innovative in their
own ways.... only that they (and Java apps in general) tend to lack a
"polished" consistent "Windows Standards" quality. But, then again so do
many of the corporate apps created in VB that I've had the pleasure of
upgrading. ;-)

I wouldn't trade VS 2003 or 2005 for Eclipse. I just lament that 2005 wasn't
as revolutionary (in IDE usability terms) as I expected after 2 to 3 years
of development by Microsoft.. and indeed seems to have taken a couple of
small steps back in the usability department.
"Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]" <hi***************@gmx.at> wrote in message
news:uz*************@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
"Cor Ligthert [MVP]" <no************@planet.nl> schrieb:
A lot of effort in VS is in by instance the Visual part and for VB Net
especial the debugger and the background compilation plus of course the
integrated WebDesign and code behind.


You forgot another important point:

VS supports VB.NET, Ecplise doesn't. This is a big plus for VS :-).

--
M S Herfried K. Wagner
M V P <URL:http://dotnet.mvps.org/>
V B <URL:http://classicvb.org/petition/>

Nov 23 '05 #39
"CMM" <cm*@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:e7**************@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
I know I was nitpicking... I love VS.... I just don't see the great leap
forward that everyone expected... the hype, I mean. We still don't have a
good pure Remoting infrastructure (c'mon a prebuilt Template at least!)
that doesn't rely on IIS or DCOM (I know, I know, wait for Vista). We
finally get real XP Themed capable controls (why did it take 4 years???).
But, we still can't create a solid Windows app without 3rd party controls.

I mean... for sheesh-sake... masked edit control just made their
appearance. Ooooh. Ahhh. These guys have been around since Windows 3.1.

I guess that's what the 3rd party market is for... I guess. Though some
things just seem to me to be so rudimentary that they should be available
out-the-box. Fancy spreadsheet-Excel-grids... sure, good candidate for a
3rd party control. Masked edit box... no way!


I totally agree with that! There are too many controls that should be
standard, but aren't...
Think of the DataGrid that improved nopw with the DataGridView, but the
DataGridView still is a very limited product. Even worse: They used degraded
versions of the combobox, pictures, and buttons for their column styles.

Does this mean that they actually did an effort to make things worse???????
Nov 23 '05 #40
Herfried K. Wagner [MVP] <hi***************@gmx.at> wrote:
"Cor Ligthert [MVP]" <no************@planet.nl> schrieb:
A lot of effort in VS is in by instance the Visual part and for VB Net
especial the debugger and the background compilation plus of course the
integrated WebDesign and code behind.


You forgot another important point:

VS supports VB.NET, Ecplise doesn't. This is a big plus for VS :-).


Well, it is for VB.NET programmers. On the other hand, VS *doesn't*
support Java (real Java, not J#), which gives Eclipse a big "plus" when
I'm writing Java, obviously...

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too
Nov 23 '05 #41
Cor Ligthert [MVP] <no************@planet.nl> wrote:
Sure. I have no objection to MS selling VS.NET. I just wish they could
make it a better IDE than the free ones available for Java.

Regulars here know how you make programs and what you like and not.

A lot of effort in VS is in by instance the Visual part and for VB Net
especial the debugger and the background compilation plus of course the
integrated WebDesign and code behind.

Is your opinion that Eclipse is better in those things than VS as well?


Eclipse is *fabulous* at incremental compilation. It compiles every
time you hit save, as well as performing a lot of checking on-the-fly.
It also has a lot of "quick fixes" which just do the right thing -
creating methods that you've used but not actually written yet, etc.
It's got *brilliant* auto-completion, for instance if I write
foo.setName( and hit ctrl-space, and I've got an incoming method
parameter or local variable with the right type, it'll suggest that as
the parameter for the setName call, favouring variables with close
names to "name".

It will also generate getters and setters for you, along with
contructors which populate member variables, taking into account your
own personal preference for variable naming, etc.

Its refactoring is way ahead of VS 2005.

Its navigation is way ahead of VS 2005 - really simple things like
holding down control and clicking on virtually anything (a type name,
method name, variable name etc) to get to the declaration. Can't easily
find the file a particular type is in? Ctrl-Shift-T, start typing in
the name, and you're there. Can't find a particular resource? Ctrl-
Shift-R.

It's got unit testing built-in (and really nicely integrated) which is
more than can be said for VS 2005, unfortunately. (From what I've seen
of Team System, the Eclipse UI is rather nicer anyway - why no
red/green bar in VS?)

I can't remember the last time I had to type in a Java import
statement, as Organize Imports works so well. (Other than for static
imports - there's some work to do there. I've registered a feature
request though, so it shouldn't be too long.)

It's really painful coming back to VS.NET 2003 after using Eclipse.
It'll be better when we use VS 2005, but I'll still miss many of the
features that make *plain old coding* so much easier.

I haven't used it for web design or UI design, and frankly I prefer to
do those without designers anyway, so as to get maintainable code, but
I suspect that's where more work has gone into VS. I know that there
*is* now a UI designer in Eclipse which can work with different back-
ends (to generate SWT code, Swing code etc) but I wouldn't like to
comment on the quality, not having used it.

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too
Nov 23 '05 #42
<he*@40th.com> wrote:
Why not sell it to help other people. This way you
can stick around and keep on keeping on. If you
give it away, you give (it) up -- and nearly all who
do, do just that. Hopefully, someone else will take
it on for the next year or so, and so on it goes.
I can tell you the reason -- because it's a lot easier
to give something away than to sell it. haha


It takes effort to sell something, yes. A company which sells content
security products (as the one I work for does) isn't in the business of
mock object libraries, or build tools, or anything like that - why
would we want to lose focus trying to sell that instead of selling what
we know how to sell, and giving away code that we don't need to sell
but which will help other people.

And yes, sometimes people do lose interest - and someone else takes
things on. I was a committer in the Ant project for a while, I then
didn't do any Java development for a couple of years, and now I'm back
working with Ant. I haven't submitted any patches yet, but I may well
do so in the future. I couldn't possibly sell my individual
contributions - do you think I should just keep them to myself?

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too
Nov 23 '05 #43

I have shifted from using DataSets to using in memory XML documents.

XPathQuery gives me far greater search within the 'dataset' than the
DataReader.

CMM wrote:
Although the Dataset now contains *some* neat improvements, I can't fathom
the rationale for some of the stuff Microsoft spent time on. The whole great
thing about Datasets is that they were completely decoupled from a
"database" and only tied together using a discrete (and optional)
DataAdapter (together with it's extremely useful TableMappings feature).
What we should have gotten in VS 2005 was a better more pretty wysiwig (drag
and drop) editor for mapping db columns to Dataset elements. Instead we get
the rather useless TableAdapter feature that blows many ideas of physical
separation of layers out of the water (in remoted physically n-tiered
distributed apps at least). I mean, it doesn't even really support
transactions (without kludging). In time, I think this "new" feature will
prove as useless as the CommandBuilder.

Nov 23 '05 #44

Also, most developers write 1000x more ASP.NET than winForms.

And, in that arena there is high competition from technologies such as
AJAX, php, apache, tomcat, eclipse and so on.

CMM wrote:
I just really had high expectations for this release. A fellow developer
that I work with made sense of it... Microsoft has virtually ZERO
competition in the desktop development arena (Win32). But they have much
resistance in the web app arena. This is why ASP.NET has matured by leaps
and bounds and WinForms seems stuck in the VB3 Windows 3.1 days.

Nov 23 '05 #45
<he*@40th.com> wrote:
JS- [Mon, 21 Nov 2005 23:16:31 -0000]:
>contributions - do you think I should just keep them to myself?


I, like practically everyone else in this universe,
don't care what you do with it. If it's not any
good, then yes, you should tuck it away on a CD
somewhere. If it is any good, you should sell it.
At least make the effort. Lots and lots of bad
stuff is already out there. Why add to it?


Why do you assume that anything which is given away for free is bad? By
not putting effort into selling it, I can put more effort into making
the software good to start with.

Furthermore, by releasing it with an open source licence, others can
improve it still further.

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too
Nov 23 '05 #46
Jon,
> A lot of effort in VS is in by instance the Visual part and for VB Net
> especial the debugger and the background compilation plus of course the
> integrated WebDesign and code behind.


You forgot another important point:

VS supports VB.NET, Ecplise doesn't. This is a big plus for VS :-).


Well, it is for VB.NET programmers. On the other hand, VS *doesn't*
support Java (real Java, not J#), which gives Eclipse a big "plus" when
I'm writing Java, obviously...


Good catch on Herfrieds one, however that was not mine (although I agree
with him of course).

:-)

Cor

Nov 23 '05 #47
"Kevin Spencer" wrote:
This sort of GUI tool (that is, a GUI tool for developing business
components) is primarily for beginners. Advanced users may make use of it,
but what you refer to as "kludging" is simply the process of tweaking
auto-generated code for specific purposes. When an advanced user uses such a


The problem with tweaking that code is that it looks as it was designed by a
VB.NET guy with zero-flat knowledge about how things work in C#... and
without taking a look at how similar problems were solved in the form
designer.

I mean:

1- The constructor for a table adapter now belongs to the auto-generated
code. This makes too hard to make any sensible change to the class from a
partial class fragment. The Windows Forms designer generates an
InitializeComponent, but the constructor is located in the class fragment
that the programmer can modify.

2- Think what happens now if you want to hook an event handler to some table
or column event: hard, isn't it? Why? Because the designer of this "feature"
was thinking in the VB.NET "handles" clause for autowiring event handlers.

3- The whole concept is hostile to multitier applications, since you have to
carry on with the SQL access code even when you're writing the presentation
layer. Of course, you could ignore those SQL classes, but then...

4- If you move type datasets and table adapters to a separate project, you
loose the ability of drag&dropping data source parts into a form designer,
which was the best thing about this whole class framework.

Problems, indeed, can be traced to the very notion of data-source: a design
time concept with no direct equivalent at run time. This is a strange turn
from one of the most important ideas in .NET: pervasive reflection.

But then, things get worse: as you said, this was intended to be used by
beginners, isn't it? Then, why did they hide SqlDataAdapter and the like from
the programmer? Actually, I have read in a blog from one of the authors that
they decided to hide the all classes to "protect" programmers from the old
klunky programming style. Oh, my, how sweet and caring...

Ian
Nov 25 '05 #48
CMM
I'm a "VB.NET" guy, but I agree with your comments about the new datasets.
They're almost worthless. It's like they took the whole (great) idea of the
standalone, db-agnostic, multi-tier friendly dataset and took 8 years worth
of steps backwards to the ol' DAO/ADO recordsets paradigm.

Truth be told however... not many people "got" datasets. Not many people
really understood the notion that a dataset has nothing to do with a
"database." You don't need a database to use them... and if you do, the
datasets don't even have to "look" like the database tables that fill them.
That's what the DataAdapter and its mapping classes are for. Thus the whole
"argument" about DataSets vs. Entity Objects. DataSets ARE "Entity
Objects".... or rather a full-featured "Collection" of EntityObjects!

These new DataSets and TableAdapter objects will encourage the same lazy and
horrible and dumb "2-tiered" db coding practices that gave VB.Classic a bad
reputation.

Alas....

"ianm" <ia**@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:63**********************************@microsof t.com...
"Kevin Spencer" wrote:
This sort of GUI tool (that is, a GUI tool for developing business
components) is primarily for beginners. Advanced users may make use of
it,
but what you refer to as "kludging" is simply the process of tweaking
auto-generated code for specific purposes. When an advanced user uses
such a


The problem with tweaking that code is that it looks as it was designed by
a
VB.NET guy with zero-flat knowledge about how things work in C#... and
without taking a look at how similar problems were solved in the form
designer.

I mean:

1- The constructor for a table adapter now belongs to the auto-generated
code. This makes too hard to make any sensible change to the class from a
partial class fragment. The Windows Forms designer generates an
InitializeComponent, but the constructor is located in the class fragment
that the programmer can modify.

2- Think what happens now if you want to hook an event handler to some
table
or column event: hard, isn't it? Why? Because the designer of this
"feature"
was thinking in the VB.NET "handles" clause for autowiring event handlers.

3- The whole concept is hostile to multitier applications, since you have
to
carry on with the SQL access code even when you're writing the
presentation
layer. Of course, you could ignore those SQL classes, but then...

4- If you move type datasets and table adapters to a separate project, you
loose the ability of drag&dropping data source parts into a form designer,
which was the best thing about this whole class framework.

Problems, indeed, can be traced to the very notion of data-source: a
design
time concept with no direct equivalent at run time. This is a strange turn
from one of the most important ideas in .NET: pervasive reflection.

But then, things get worse: as you said, this was intended to be used by
beginners, isn't it? Then, why did they hide SqlDataAdapter and the like
from
the programmer? Actually, I have read in a blog from one of the authors
that
they decided to hide the all classes to "protect" programmers from the old
klunky programming style. Oh, my, how sweet and caring...

Ian

Nov 25 '05 #49
> I'm a "VB.NET" guy, but I agree with your comments about the new datasets.
Pardon me if it sounded offensive, it was not my intention :) My point was:
when you are responsible of the design of a class library for .NET, you
should understand at least two of the major programming languages, let's say,
VB.NET & C#.
Thus the whole "argument" about DataSets vs. Entity Objects. DataSets ARE "Entity
Objects".... or rather a full-featured "Collection" of EntityObjects!

Absolutely right. And, as you said in the root message, I should add that I
really like VS2k5 and .NET 2.0 too.

Ian
Nov 25 '05 #50

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