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Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)

charlespetzold.com

91–100 of 122 posts

Re: Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)

#91
post #77
post #63

> I’m prevented from ever achieving a fluid coding style because the coding is not coming entirely from my head. My coding has become a constant dialog with IntelliSense. This. Code should live in your head. You shouldn't need intellisense to see that a property doesn't exist in an object. I hate code completion, most of the time it gets in the way of your thought process. Even if it can gain you a little speed incre…

>I wrote many bug free codebases with it, that's my experience. Prove it. You seem to be claiming to be qualitatively superior to most developers, since most developers use an IDE or tool of some sort, so let's see an example of this nontrivial bug free code you've written.

Especially the tests should prove it. In almost none of the comments I see thorough testing is taken into consideration. No IDE can replace good tests today AFAIK.

Re: Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)

#92
post #91
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wrote many bug free codebases with it, that's my experience. Prove it. You seem to be claiming to be qualitatively superior to most developers, since most developers use an IDE or tool of some sort, so let's see an example of this nontrivial bug free code you've written.

Especially the tests should prove it. In almost none of the comments I see thorough testing is taken into consideration. No IDE can replace good tests today AFAIK.

Without types you need more tests to have confidence though.

Re: Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)

#93

I enjoyed the article, but I really want to hear the 1991 talk that he gave at the Boston Computer Society meeting re: early Windows development, OS/2, and the Microsoft/IBM split. I'm sure it's lost to the mists of time, sadly. I had no luck finding it doing some quick searching.

His email address is on his website... Maybe you should drop him a line. He might still have slides or notes.

Slides back then were acetates on an overhead projector ;)

Re: Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)

#95
post #63

> I’m prevented from ever achieving a fluid coding style because the coding is not coming entirely from my head. My coding has become a constant dialog with IntelliSense. This. Code should live in your head. You shouldn't need intellisense to see that a property doesn't exist in an object. I hate code completion, most of the time it gets in the way of your thought process. Even if it can gain you a little speed incre…

I genuinely cannot tell if this is supposed to be satire or not.

As a sidenote: Did you know about Poe's law? :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Re: Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)

#96

On the contrary. For me, good intellisense just makes coding flow better. If you're just getting your feet wet with the API, auto complete greatly helps you discovering the API. If you're already a veteran, coding just flows at lightning speed as long as intellisense correctly predicts what you want, which is the case "most" of the time.

It’s been a few years, but for c++ on a large codebase I vastly prefer qtcreator. Intelligence regularly hung while doing some background rescan. It was infuriating.

Re: Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every couple of years I take another look at WPF but it always feels like wading through treacle for me. I'm so much more productive in WinForms. Perhaps if I dedicated a year to it I might come out the other side a productive WPF programmer but I have my doubts.

I'm in the same boat as you. The windows forms designer is such a joy to use. But as soon as you need to add special behavior to some controls it can get quite hairy. I've never encountered a complete roadblock, but we have a ton of code for windows forms controls which look more like workarounds or cheap hacks. But hey, it works. I also like the consistency of windows forms. This is awesome for administrative and bu…

Have you ever tried any of the Metro styled WinForms component kits?

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=metro+styling+for+winf...

Styling WinForms to look the way you want is certainly possible, but I would agree that it's even more of a black art than designing a WPF UI.

Re: Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)

#98

This kind of mind rotting is everywhere - lists for a few shopping items, using GPS for a simple route you should be able to remember after looking at a map, reminders for important dates, using a calculator for a simple sum. I'm sure humanities over reliance on mental aids will increase Alzheimers like mental deficiencies as we age.

Until the Butlerian Jihad my friend

Re: Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)

#99

On the contrary. For me, good intellisense just makes coding flow better. If you're just getting your feet wet with the API, auto complete greatly helps you discovering the API. If you're already a veteran, coding just flows at lightning speed as long as intellisense correctly predicts what you want, which is the case "most" of the time.

It’s been a few years, but for c++ on a large codebase I vastly prefer qtcreator. Intelligence regularly hung while doing some background rescan. It was infuriating.

Yeah, Visual Studio is more of a C# IDE than a C++ IDE I think; I don't code in C++ but if I did I'd never pick VS; Of course C++ is a vastly harder language to parse compared to C#;

Re: Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)

#100
post #38
post #35

"Twenty years ago, in November 1985, Windows 1.0 debuted with approximately 400 documented function calls.5 Ten years later, Windows 95 had well over a thousand.6 Today we are ready for the official release of the .NET Framework 2.0. Tabulating only MSCORLIB.DLL and those assemblies that begin with word System, we have over 5,000 public classes that include over 45,000 public methods and 15,000 public properties..."…

Arguably, we're already past the point where it's impossible for a single human brain to retain all knowledge needed to build today's society, or even to fully dominate a field right physics, biology or genetics? Complexity isn't "bad" - complexity is a property of all evolving things, from code to life. In sciences, it just means we're collectively learning more, faster and better. Complexity is beautiful!

It's not even arguable. I mean, think about, say, databases. I've worked with people who have far deeper knowledge about them than I ever will. A few old timers working at Oracle know more about database keys than anyone else ever will, and that expertise is necessary to build a modern system.

And that's just one thing, databases. There are way more technologies out there. Even building my metal coffee cup requires deep expertise in metallurgy, manufacturing, industrial design, product design, supply chains, etc. etc. etc.

I think it's past the point for a single human brain to retain all knowledge about databases, unless they're a profound genius (don't underestimate how much there is to know), and that is one tiny thing that humans do.

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