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Visual Studio for Mac

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Re: Visual Studio for Mac

#241

Post by xrisk »

Kipters wrote: post #190
xrisk wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, now they can use the touch bar to show those functions depending on context. Isn't that better overall for usability rather than having to remember keybinds for every action?

I usually don't have to _remember_ keybindings, I use them out of muscle memory and feeling the actual keys with my fingers, using the larger cracks in desktop keyboard between the function keys to find the right way quickly without averting my eyes from the screen. No touch bar can replace that kind of efficiency.

Maybe, but for the average user who doesn't have keybinds committed to muscle memory, the touch bar is going to be a real boon.

Re: Visual Studio for Mac

#242

Post by josephg »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #182
ubernostrum wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is a typical example of "If it suits me, it must suit everybody." 99.9%+ of criticism of the new MBP has been of the form "Without ever interacting with one, I can tell it is unsuitable for me and therefore is unsuitable for anyone, anywhere, in any professional purpose, ever". no-true-Scotsman-fallacy of "Noone who _really_ used it dislikes it." More like "people are pre-emptively concluding, without ev…

I don't care about the touch bar and while I'm miffed about the magsafe I can deal with shelling out extra for accidental damage insurance. Personally my disappointment is with the specs which no time with the machine will change. The mac I'm currently using was purchased 3 years with 16GB of RAM and if I replace it I will be stuck with the same capacity. I imagine there are a lot of "Pro" market segments that are we…

I've spent the last 4 years doing development from a 2012 macbook air with 8 gigs of ram. Its been totally fine, except when I've got a million chrome tabs open. (Declaring bankrupcy and closing them all at once feels great though.)

The posted article is about a mac version of visual studio. Coincidentally, visual studio only runs in 32 bit mode and hence can only make use of 4 gigs of ram total: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2015/12/29/revisiting...

The article is worth reading. They (correctly) have kept asking "why does VS need more ram than that?" and just optimize the code when the footprint grows bigger.

And I'm genuinely confused by all these people complaining about 16 gigs of ram not being enough. If you have a laptop today with 16 gigs of ram, have a look. Do you actually run out of ram while working? (And if so, what on earth are you running?). It looks like its genuinely hard to fill 16 gigs without chrome or slack running. Look at all the stuff you can fit in that much ram: https://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=6355

I'm also a big fan of pushing app developers to fix their cruft. Maybe in 2016 its not ok to have apps that suck up as much ram as possible. Maybe app developers shouldn't write super inefficient software just because next year we'll have bigger computers anyway. Maybe if you're writing software (any kind of software) that really does need more than 16 gigs of ram to work effectively you should fix your shitty code instead of demanding everyone buy new computers. The atari 2600 had 128 bytes of RAM, and played all sorts of cool games. The original X-Box had 64MB of ram and ran Halo. Maybe its not apple's fault that your fancy 3d graphics program can't work properly in 'only' 16 gigabytes of ram. (Especially given there's 2 gigabytes/second of SSD bandwidth available on those new machines. Yummy!)

I love the fact that the new machines are small and portable. The hardware is more than capable of doing everything I need it to do. The only barrier to all day battery life now is crappy software.

Re: Visual Studio for Mac

#243

Post by draw_down »

SiVal wrote: post #17

So Microsoft is treating the Mac more seriously as a professional platform while Apple is treating it less seriously? I'm not saying this in a snarky way; I mean it literally as a change of corporate strategies in both companies. Microsoft seems to be saying, If you are a pro mainly using the Mac for professional work, we want to do a better job of empowering you, and Apple seems to be saying, If you are a pro mainly…

Um, Apple also makes an IDE.

Re: Visual Studio for Mac

#244

Post by oceanswave »

cm2187 wrote: post #25
SiVal wrote: post #17

So Microsoft is treating the Mac more seriously as a professional platform while Apple is treating it less seriously? I'm not saying this in a snarky way; I mean it literally as a change of corporate strategies in both companies. Microsoft seems to be saying, If you are a pro mainly using the Mac for professional work, we want to do a better job of empowering you, and Apple seems to be saying, If you are a pro mainly…

People aren't going to do development on a tablet or a smartphone anytime soon.

Funny you mention that: http://praeclarum.org/post/147003028753/continuous-c-and-f-i...

Re: Visual Studio for Mac

#245

Post by pjmlp »

delegate wrote: post #188

This is nice of course, but without C++ support it has very little appeal to me. I don't want to learn C# to write iOS apps. I might learn it just for fun, but I will continue writing the iOS apps with Swift/Objective-C and C++. C++ support is the weak spot of Xcode and so far I haven't found a suitable IDE for C++, except maybe Qt Creator and several IntelliJ-based IDEs, which are ok but not on par with Visual Studi…

> I haven't found a suitable IDE for C++,

I like to use Eclipse CDT or Netbeans when I am on UNIX.

Re: Visual Studio for Mac

#246

Post by JonnieCache »

7Z7 wrote: post #223
intoverflow2 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly from your list software developers are the only ones the New MBP can serve. It's got plenty of power to run XCode or a web dev environment. Engineers, CAD, musicians, 3D artists all need more power than it provides and increasingly need CUDA cores.

>..musicians,.. I'm running a Logic set up on my 2012 MBP, and I've never felt limited by its capabilities. I've been running Macs for music production for almost 20 years, and in my experience they have all at some point not had quite enough in the bag to let me do what I wanted of them. This is the first one (now fours years old) that has stayed ahead of my needs. I can run multiple copies of Massive, and rows of W…

The people who make film/game soundtracks need a LOT of ram, and fast disks, because they're using terabytes of samples in each project. Also massive has pretty low requirements.

The main gripe musicians have with apple is the new OSX breaking their setup every year. The sandboxing in el capitan was particularly disastrous.

Re: Visual Studio for Mac

#247

Post by pjmlp »

willtim wrote: post #14
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #10

For a moment I got all excited and thought they had ported WPF to OS/X.

I get the impression that WPF is pretty much on life support.

Not really.

WPF is based on XAML and XAML is the future of UWP.

Just because the API is a little different it doesn't make it in life support, also there were updates on .NET 4.6.

As for Windows Forms, it is officially on life support as communicated at BUILD 2014.

Re: Visual Studio for Mac

#248

Post by erikbye »

Clane wrote: post #119
badminton1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does it support reverse debugging yet?

What I want to know as somebody trying to learn C/C++, is Xcode good for somebody who is wanting to try their hand at bare metal stuff? I always hear how bad it is outside of app dev. but can it help me be productive compared to CLI environment or just using a text editor with nifty add-ons?

Xcode is not your only IDE option on macOS for C/C++. Decent ones: Eclipse CDT, Qt Creator, CLion.

Re: Visual Studio for Mac

#249

Post by pjmlp »

mrweasel wrote: post #231
willtim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the impression that WPF is pretty much on life support.

It is my belief that Windows Forms will outlive WPF and/or XAML. Currently WPF is still the "modern" way to doing Windows applications, but at some point Microsoft will come up with some new scheme, and all the WPF developer will jump onto that. The developers that have still not abandoned WinForms will not jump shit when the next thing hits either. To keep the huge group of WinForms developers happy, Microsoft will…

Except that WinForms doesn't work on UWP applications other than via Project Centipede and is officially on support as it was communicated at BUILD 2014.

Re: Visual Studio for Mac

#250

Post by gutnor »

Steeeve wrote: post #83
coldtea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WRONG. The removal of a dozen keys from an already gimped keyboard is decidedly anti-developer. I am a developer and I could not care less about function keys. Why the duck would developers need function keys? Even for Vim, the age-old advice is to remap Esc so that you keep your hands on the home row. A flexible multi-touch strip of context-aware keys can do much more things -- e.g. map debugger step moves when I'…

More than a few developers have spoken up on the issue here on HN. The escape key is commonly used, as are many other function keys. Other vendors have rolled out similar gadgets to apple and they've been rejected by the development community at large - which apple would have known because they don't implement things like that willy nilly.

> they've been rejected by the development community at large

I remember the time when everybody was getting one of these: https://elitekeyboards.com/products.php?sub=pfu_keyboards,hh...

Apple tinkering with the function keys has allowed the development community to recongratulate themselves with IDE it seems.

Seems also that people confidently touch type debugger instruction, despite the key that you want being literally squeezed between 2 keys that will ruin you debugging session and make you lose the next 10 minutes.

I think the developer community at large is more prone to overreaction.

Note that I think people are going to be impacted. I think the touchbar is a downgrade for people that needs to use Windows either in the VM or Bootcamp. Some IDE are especially F-keys happy like Eclipse will be slightly worst of.

I still type on an old MBP with physical F-keys and they are actually awful for touch typing. They are smaller, evenly spaced (no grouped) and not aligned with the lower key rows. If you are serious about touch typing potentially workflow ruining key combination like debugger ones, you must use an external keyboard already.

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