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Visual Studio 2013 released to web

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Re: Visual Studio 2013 released to web

#41

Post by anton_gogolev »

coffeeaddicted wrote: post #28
DrJokepu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really not that bad. WiX is actually pretty decent, definitely not a “disaster”. It might look more frightening than InstallShield because you don’t get a nice UI that allows you to set up an installer with a few clicks, but I mean, we’re programmers here, surely editing textual configuration files is not an issue? It took me somethong like 30 minutes to replace our old InstallShield installer with WiX.

I gave it a shot for a day recently but found it way harder to use than InstallShield or NSIS. Part of it was probably the broken documentation where half the links just ended in nirvana. But I gave up when I learned you really have to add each single file one-by-one and the documentation even defended this as a feature.

Amen.

This can "kinda" be worked around with "heat.exe" (don't get me started on naming of tools in the toolchain), but even then you'll need to explicitly specify half a dozen command-line arguments (-ag -dr -cg -srd -scom -sreg -svb6 -sfrag) to make the thing work.

Re: Visual Studio 2013 released to web

#42

Post by anton_gogolev »

archon wrote: post #30
_pmf_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the problem here is that VS needs to satisfy the needs of many different types of developers No, it does not need to. Someone decided that it needs to pander to web monkeys instead of empowering users that have used VS for 10+ years.

> pander to web monkeys Really? How exactly does VS2012 pander to "web monkeys" at the expense of others?

It's not necessarily "monkeys", but, disturbingly, Microsoft developer tools are becoming more and more oriented towards "wizard-and-designer-clickety-clickery" type development.

There are a few exceptions to this rule (think EF Code-First), but that's a drop in the ocean.

Re: Visual Studio 2013 released to web

#43

Post by powertower »

coffeeaddicted wrote: post #28
DrJokepu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really not that bad. WiX is actually pretty decent, definitely not a “disaster”. It might look more frightening than InstallShield because you don’t get a nice UI that allows you to set up an installer with a few clicks, but I mean, we’re programmers here, surely editing textual configuration files is not an issue? It took me somethong like 30 minutes to replace our old InstallShield installer with WiX.

I gave it a shot for a day recently but found it way harder to use than InstallShield or NSIS. Part of it was probably the broken documentation where half the links just ended in nirvana. But I gave up when I learned you really have to add each single file one-by-one and the documentation even defended this as a feature.

So how would one deal with projects that contain 1000s of files?

Run a script to enumerate the files and populate a wix file? Zip up the different parts and have the installation process unzip them?

Re: Visual Studio 2013 released to web

#44

Post by mkohlmyr »

_pmf_ wrote: post #25
duiker101 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem here is that VS needs to satisfy the needs of many different types of developers and also try to appeal each ones personal preferences. Personally I am enjoying VS2012 a lot and it is really sad that there are hardly other IDEs this good.

> I think the problem here is that VS needs to satisfy the needs of many different types of developers No, it does not need to. Someone decided that it needs to pander to web monkeys instead of empowering users that have used VS for 10+ years.

"web monkeys" Cute. Meanwhile you're the one developing in VS on Windows.

Re: Visual Studio 2013 released to web

#45

Post by matwood »

anton_gogolev wrote: post #42
archon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pander to web monkeys Really? How exactly does VS2012 pander to "web monkeys" at the expense of others?

It's not necessarily "monkeys", but, disturbingly, Microsoft developer tools are becoming more and more oriented towards "wizard-and-designer-clickety-clickery" type development. There are a few exceptions to this rule (think EF Code-First), but that's a drop in the ocean.

Microsoft developer tools are becoming more and more oriented towards "wizard-and-designer-clickety-clickery" type development.

Maybe you are just now noticing, but MS dev tools have always had wizard clicky things. For example, see the original Visual Basics from the 90s.

Re: Visual Studio 2013 released to web

#46

Post by daigoba66 »

anton_gogolev wrote: post #42
archon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pander to web monkeys Really? How exactly does VS2012 pander to "web monkeys" at the expense of others?

It's not necessarily "monkeys", but, disturbingly, Microsoft developer tools are becoming more and more oriented towards "wizard-and-designer-clickety-clickery" type development. There are a few exceptions to this rule (think EF Code-First), but that's a drop in the ocean.

I kind of disagree with this sentiment. From my experience the tooling around editing source files (csharp, razor, javascript, css) has gotten a LOT of love in the past 2 years. You're probably correct in that more work has gone into web development use cases over traditional desktop software, but not much seems to have been added in terms of "visual" programming.

Re: Visual Studio 2013 released to web

#47

Post by anton_gogolev »

daigoba66 wrote: post #46
anton_gogolev wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not necessarily "monkeys", but, disturbingly, Microsoft developer tools are becoming more and more oriented towards "wizard-and-designer-clickety-clickery" type development. There are a few exceptions to this rule (think EF Code-First), but that's a drop in the ocean.

I kind of disagree with this sentiment. From my experience the tooling around editing source files (csharp, razor, javascript, css) has gotten a LOT of love in the past 2 years. You're probably correct in that more work has gone into web development use cases over traditional desktop software, but not much seems to have been added in terms of "visual" programming.

On the designer front I can think of Entity Framework designer and WWF designer, Build Template designer (or however this thing from TFS is called?) and possibly a couple more.

My biggest gripe are all kinds of wizards, most notably "New Project" ones. They do generate a lot of cruft I have to clean up later and pull way too many dependencies.

Re: Visual Studio 2013 released to web

#48

Post by robododo »

scrabble wrote: post #2

I'm still using VS 2010 at work. Can't seem to make a compelling case to upgrade for the cost, and it's just getting more frustrating. VS 2013 is looking like a really great product, especially in comparison to VS 2010.

Support for large projects/solutions was greatly improved. VS2012 added deferred loading for some items so you can open and get into code faster.

Of course, this is purely an artifact of overly large solutions. If you've inherited any of those, as I have, it's worth the upgrade for the improved performance, IMO.

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