VS 2010

[VectraMan]

Anybody using it?

I've been trying out VS 2010 C++ Express on a plan B project that doesn't need anything more than Express. There's a lot of good things: intellisense works more often than not for one, and I've made pleanty of use of the new C++ auto and shared_ptr features, but overall it's S L O W.

And by slow I don't mean slow to compile, or slow to load, or anything you might expect. It's the text editor that's slow. It randomy pauses in the middle of doing things, and often feels like the screen update is half a second behind what you're typing. I guess for people that program by drag and drop it's not such a big deal (they work at glacial speed anyway), but for those of us that like to type things it's infuriating.

How can they go to all this effort and fail at the single most basic requirement of an IDE: to be able to edit code. Grrrr.

Turning off all the intelligent squiggly underline type stuff makes no difference. Has anyone been through the pain and found a way of speeding it up? Otherwise it looks like I'll be back to VS2005 and defining my iterators the hard way.

[eek]

I think its a general problem in anything from MS with 2010 in the title.

Visio and Word have the same issues if you leave them for a few minutes.

[lilelvis2000]

This article seems to state that all these problems should have been worked out before release. hmmm Slow performance may have triggered Visual Studio 2010 delay | Software News - Betanews

[futurix]

What kind of PC are you using it on? I have absolutely no delays on my dev PC (x64 OS, dual core CPU, 8GB RAM) - in fact VS2008 was slower for me.

[Jaws]

I've been using it a fair bit lately at home for a project I've been working on and I haven't noticed any delays, this is on a 4GB budget machine (~£300) I bought a couple of months ago. Haven't used it for C++ yet, just C#.

My version is the ultimate edition - so it may not be the best comparison.

I have to say it is by far the best version I've used, the code generation side of things is a real time saver.

[VectraMan]

I've turned off the automatic updating of the database (i.e. intellisense) option and that seems better, which loses all the squigglies, and now intellisense shrugs its shoulders more than before.

The other thing I've noticed is that it seems dependent on the number of files you have open. I tend to just open everything willy nilly, and with the workspace reloading everything I end up with 100s of source files open - which isn't a problem with pleanty of RAM in VS2005, but it does seem to affect VS2010 considerably.

Maybe it's doing something really stupid like updaing all the hidden windows every time you modify the one active window.

I remember VS2008 being slow and clunky like this using C#, but not using C++. I guess now they've "improved" the intellisense for C++ they've dragged it down to the level of C#.

This is on my 2GHz dual core 4GB Windows 7 x64 laptop, so I'm not exactly running it on a 386. I'm sure this is subjective to a large degree, and the people who say it's "fine" are actually suffering the same problem and not noticing.

[d000hg]

I think its a general problem in anything from MS with 2010 in the title.

Visio and Word have the same issues if you leave them for a few minutes.

Please try not to talk about things you don't understand. The moment anyone states an opinion with "anything by MS" they just look like an idiot.


VS2010 should run well on a modern PC however it's the first version to be built on top of WPF, the modern Windows GUI system which replaces Winforms (and before that, GDI+ and GDI). They definitely had problems with this during development but these were reported fixed. One thing that WPF might benefit from is a better graphics card, since it uses hardware acceleration.

I suggest you find a MS support forum and post your machine spec and specific details; there seem to be a couple on here: MSDN Forums

[d000hg]

The other thing I've noticed is that it seems dependent on the number of files you have open. I tend to just open everything willy nilly, and with the workspace reloading everything I end up with 100s of source files open - which isn't a problem with pleanty of RAM in VS2005, but it does seem to affect VS2010 considerably.

Hundreds of files open at once, sounds like a nightmare to work with. I can't remember having more than 20 files open even after a whole day's coding... when it gets to that stage I close them all not for performance but so I can find the ones I'm actually working on. I don't know if hidden windows are updated at all but it sounds a specific issue you should raise on the forums.

This is on my 2GHz dual core 4GB Windows 7 x64 laptop, so I'm not exactly running it on a 386. I'm sure this is subjective to a large degree, and the people who say it's "fine" are actually suffering the same problem and not noticing.

That PC spec sounds OK. I installed the express version on something similar (though it was XP 32bit with 2GB) and don't remember such problems but I barely used it yet... I'll try to remember to look next week.
What's your graphics card?

[VectraMan]

Hundreds of files open at once, sounds like a nightmare to work with.

Why? There's nothing to be gained by closing them. I just let everything stay open, and usually use Ctrl+TAB to switch between files, which shows 50-odd in the order I've used them if I need to go back that far.

That PC spec sounds OK. I installed the express version on something similar (though it was XP 32bit with 2GB) and don't remember such problems but I barely used it yet... I'll try to remember to look next week.
What's your graphics card?

The laptop has an onboard crappy graphics card with shared memory, but I've tried it on my desktop too, which has an Nvidia something or other (a 3 year old one).

I don't think it's as simple as the graphics speed as it's inconsistent. Sometimes it's fine, and that wouldn't happen if it was a case of getting the character to the screen taking too long. What's obviously happening is something is updating "in the background" but blocking the GUI thread whilst it's doing it.

[d000hg]

I'd definitely report a bug or post on their dedicated forums then - MS do release fixes and so on for their products so complaining could make a difference, even if no MVP can suggest a fix.