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Introducing Bing Code Search for C#

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Re: Introducing Bing Code Search for C#

#161

Post by icefox »

dsuth wrote: post #70
icefox wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe ten years ago I would have said that, but these days it seems they are typing their "documents" into an email composer or a website form (be it a frontend for blogger, wiki, wordpress, etc).

You mustn't work in an office environment then. The only significant break from MS products I've seen has been Lotus Notes... which was significantly worse than Exchange. MS Office is the defacto file format for office work, and MS Office on non-Windows platforms (ie. Mac) is so bad as to appear intentionally crippled.

I work for an decent sized international company that not only has a presence on the web it also has factories and all of the complexities that go with that. I would indeed count where I work as an "office environment", I even have the cube, office badge and mailbox to prove it :)

Re: Introducing Bing Code Search for C#

#162

Post by eddieroger »

chrislomax wrote: post #12
maresca wrote: post #5

C# and .NET get a bad rap for being created by Microsoft. But one thing that can't be ignored is how polished their development tools are. I absolutely love coding in Visual Studio.

It pains me if I am honest. Our CMS is built on .NET and it's like an uphill battle selling it as it's on IIS and it's .NET. I have played around with the idea of reworking it into an open source language and open source database but I would miss Visual Studio and the language a lot. I don't get all the hate?

Not so much hate for me, but apathy. For your one CMS, there are dozens based in Rails, Django, Node based ones I've not even heard of, and same for Go. For any of those, I just need Sublime and a server of my choosing. Furthermore, I can do dev on my box (a Mac) with very little spin up time.

Contrast that to your scenario. First, I need Windows, which is fine for most, but not me. Then, my prod setup has to be Microsoft based. I've yet to find a $5/month IIS-based host with SQL Server (apathetically, I haven't looked much). Oh, and Visual Studio. I can probably get by with Express, but at some point I expect I'll find a wall that forces an upgrade.

Microsoft has come a long way, but when I started years ago, I couldn't swing a Microsoft-based environment. VS was prohibitively expensive, and my parents' crappy computer couldn't run it. But I could learn PHP for free, run it locally through XAMPP, and be off to the races. Microsoft's never won me back, and your CMS is paying that price.

Re: Introducing Bing Code Search for C#

#163

Post by eddieroger »

kevingadd wrote: post #148
guiomie wrote: post #126

Everytime something C# is posted it's all about MS and why some like or dislike C# or .Net, rarely are the comments related to the actual article. Personally, I think this new feature is cool, but I've come to realise that my visual studio freezes way more then initially, I think this might be because I've got a few addons installed (ex: Demon, Resharper ...etc) I wonder what will be the overall performance impact of…

ReSharper is an infamous hog. It makes VS freeze up, devours memory, and devours extra CPU cycles with background threads. It is at least a really useful add-on...

Unbelievably true. I installed it on a VS2010 dev VM and it slowed my near-instant loading to a minute or more. It's a standard tool at work, but my word is it a hog.

Re: Introducing Bing Code Search for C#

#164

Post by ykumar6 »

One problem with this approach is it requires a change in user behavior. Unless Visual Studio can get a developer to an answer every single time, it may not be sticky enough to form a habit.

Google search reliably produces an answer each time, regardless of what the question or problem is

This is why search is very sticky (and habit forming). MSDN (and even Stackoverflow or Github) suffer from this problem because they only have a subset of content that developers want/need. Google brings all these sources together into a single search.

Re: Introducing Bing Code Search for C#

#165

Post by curveship »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #154
curveship wrote: post #107

As someone who has recently been hiring .NET engineers, I have to admit that this inspires mixed feelings. On the one hand, I can see huge power from combining AI and search with the structured context of programming. On the other hand, a disappointing number of the people we interviewed weren't software engineers, they were IntelliSync engineers. We'd give them a problem, and their first instinct was to hit a period…

> We'd give them a problem, and their first instinct was to hit a period and start hunting through the method options that IntelliSync gave them to see if one got them closer to their goal. IntelliSense is like GPS for programming. When driving, do you prefer to plan your trip using a map or use the GPS instead? I guess there are still people in the former camp, but most younger people are in the latter. > Instead of…

But that's just the issue: IntelliSense isn't a GPS. Tell a GPS what your goal is and it will give you an explicit list of instructions to achieve it. IntelliSense can only tell you what your available next steps are. It's really more like a map -- give it your location (i.e. a type), and it will tell you what roads lead on from there (the type's methods). It won't, because it can't, tell you how to string those choices together into a solution. A GPS does, but not IntelliSense.

Don't get me wrong, I love IntelliSense. It digests a huge amount of information for you without forcing you to switch context, like having to look up library documentation or how a particular module was written. But it's only part of the puzzle. What I was seeing in our candidates was that they'd come to rely too heavily on IntelliSense and forgotten how to design. You need both.

Re: Introducing Bing Code Search for C#

#166

Post by louthy »

Tobani wrote: post #158
bottompair wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I want to be able to compile things from the command-line first and use the IDE to edit the code." You want a text editor, not an IDE.

Not true. I want still want the IDE compile, type check, and add type-safe completions (When using statically typed languages). I want the IDE to assist me in writing the code. I want my IDE to launch/attach to processes for debugging. Generally, I want the IDE to produce binaries yes, but mostly for my own consumption. I want to be able to access the compiler external from the IDE so I can automate builds/deployment…

msbuild

Re: Introducing Bing Code Search for C#

#167

Post by seanmcdirmid »

curveship wrote: post #165
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We'd give them a problem, and their first instinct was to hit a period and start hunting through the method options that IntelliSync gave them to see if one got them closer to their goal. IntelliSense is like GPS for programming. When driving, do you prefer to plan your trip using a map or use the GPS instead? I guess there are still people in the former camp, but most younger people are in the latter. > Instead of…

But that's just the issue: IntelliSense isn't a GPS. Tell a GPS what your goal is and it will give you an explicit list of instructions to achieve it. IntelliSense can only tell you what your available next steps are. It's really more like a map -- give it your location (i.e. a type), and it will tell you what roads lead on from there (the type's methods). It won't, because it can't, tell you how to string those choi…

GPS works with a small vision scope; i.e. "turn left in 100 meters." IntelliSense (and all other forms of code completion) is quite similar in the field of vision (small), but you are right that it differs in that the goal is not known by the system. Its not like a map because you don't see everything, just a focused little bit.

> What I was seeing in our candidates was that they'd come to rely too heavily on IntelliSense and forgotten how to design. You need both.

I think kids these days have evolved different ways of working given the tools they grew up with. IntelliSense (and code completion) wasn't even a thing before 1997, and many of us developed our core programming habits before that. The question is: are we biased against the process we are observing because it is so unlike our own, and are they arriving at the correct answer as or more efficiently than we would with older ways of doing it?

Design is quite orthogonal to API selection; if they aren't designing, then they should be succeeding on the problem UNLESS you gave them one that required little or no design; like writing some basic boilerplate code. You didn't specify if the candidates were failing on outcomes or not.

Re: Introducing Bing Code Search for C#

#168

Post by codereflection »

profquail wrote: post #113
codereflection wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish F# had first class support from ReSharper.

F# tooling has been improving like crazy over the last ~6 months; most of that work has been focused on refactoring tools, compiler-as-a-service (aka "Foslyn"), and compiler-development tools, so it's not totally out of the question that someone could implement an F# language service for ReSharper in the semi-near future.

What gets me is that CodeRush has had first class support for F# for years now, and JetBrains still hasn't given it any love in ReSharper. Perhaps it's already underway and JetBrains is just waiting to reveal.

Re: Introducing Bing Code Search for C#

#169

Post by 300bps »

Nate630 wrote: post #56
rkuykendall-com wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, it's because Microsoft development locks you in, and costs a lot of money. The OS costs money, the server OS costs money, the database costs money, the IDE costs money, everything costs money, and you have to use it, for the life of your app. To many young developers these days, and IIS server is the thing your company keeps in the closet to some sluggish legacy monstrosity which has been replaced for yea…

It is a lock in (most technology does lock you into certain dependencies) and it does cost money. But, it's all so easy to use now / saves you lots of time. You can roll out anything using PowerShell these days. Or just copy VMs with OS/IIS/SQL already set-up. Deploying everything can be one-click. VS even has git integration now. The old IIS is like you describe. But, the latest IIS is fast and easy.

The old IIS is like you describe. But, the latest IIS is fast and easy.

In all honesty this is what I find from most unknowledgeable Microsoft bashers. They tried out the MS development stack with Classic ASP, Visual Basic 6 and SourceSafe 15 years ago. Then in their head they're contrasting that to the latest RoR tools with github. Many are not even aware of ASP.NET MVC and how different it is from ASP.NET.

Now, this isn't to say there aren't knowledgeable Microsoft bashers but this is what I find from many of them that aren't knowledgeable.

Re: Introducing Bing Code Search for C#

#170

Post by ykumar6 »

ykumar6 wrote: post #164

One problem with this approach is it requires a change in user behavior. Unless Visual Studio can get a developer to an answer every single time, it may not be sticky enough to form a habit. Google search reliably produces an answer each time, regardless of what the question or problem is This is why search is very sticky (and habit forming). MSDN (and even Stackoverflow or Github) suffer from this problem because th…

On the other hand, sharing context could be powerful
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