Visual Studio Express - 2008 or 2010?

[vetran]

Real men use these

MPLAB Integrated Development Environment

Arduino - Software

2008 will stuff any 2005 versions if sql manager is anything to go by. 2010 will probably accelerate global warmng.

[AtW]

Use 2008 - sadly idiots at MSFT decided to prove the world that WPF is ready for serious production software and re-implemented very nice, very fast IDE in WPF - the result speaks for itself: utter failure that even some new nice features in .NET 4.0 can't hide.

[d000hg]

VS6 all the way. It's like notepad with a compiler but it runs fairly well on modern hardware.

Except it can't compile modern C++ code which can be a problem I actually have a soft spot for VC++6 but it's crap by comparison.


If you're working in C++, 2010 might have an advantage actually, because 2005/2008 both use assemblies and side-by-side visual C++ redists which means if you simply copy your EXE onto another PC, it probably won't work. I'm not sure if 2010 fixes this entirely but it sounded like it was at least improved.

[VectraMan]

Except it can't compile modern C++ code which can be a problem I actually have a soft spot for VC++6 but it's crap by comparison.

I did a short term gig a month ago where I had to use VC6. I used it for years, but it is miles behind the more modern versions both in look and feel and features. You don't even get unicode.

If you're working in C++, 2010 might have an advantage actually, because 2005/2008 both use assemblies and side-by-side visual C++ redists which means if you simply copy your EXE onto another PC, it probably won't work. I'm not sure if 2010 fixes this entirely but it sounded like it was at least improved.

VS2010 is the only one with the lastest C++0x features, so if you're a C++'er like me it's inevitable really. Permie Co are still on VS2005, but are upgrading soon, but that means buying a third party add on to do intellisense because for VS2010 MS have decided to leave out intellisense for C++ .NET projects, even though it was in 2008.

What annoyed me most when I was using VS2010 was just the slowness of the text editor. Not the build, or any fancy features, just simple typing was extremely slow and clunky. It's hard to believe that after all these years they could cock up a simple text editor, but it does seem they've managed it.

[Clever Hans]

Visual c# 2010 Express (I haven't installed the other languages/web developer) has been ok for me so far on my little netbook.

Except the help files haven't been installed, and there is not an obvious way to do it, so I'm having to look up the error codes on MSDN. I seem to remember I had a similar issue on 2008 though.

[AtW]

What annoyed me most when I was using VS2010 was just the slowness of the text editor. Not the build, or any fancy features, just simple typing was extremely slow and clunky. It's hard to believe that after all these years they could cock up a simple text editor, but it does seem they've managed it.

They used tulipy WPF to rewrite IDE - the command line stuff is ok, but they totally shafted IDE.

[d000hg]

I tried C++ 2010 Express briefly and didn't see any problem with the IDE, certainly not of the level described here. Probably better to try and see, especially making sure to have any updates or SP that might be around.
Presumably if it is WPF causing issues, it can also be influenced by the OS and version of .NET installed; so it could improve simply as .NET does? Maybe someone who knows .net better can comment.

[VectraMan]

To be fair, I was using it on my laptop, which despite being a reasonably powerful 2Ghz dual core jobby, has pretty poor graphics performance. It's not bad to the same degree on my desktop machine (similar processor), so I think it is all down to graphics performance. It's not intellisense or anything clever, because it was the same editing a plain text file, and wierdly the same whilst using a file open box. Something is obviously just interrupting the GUI thread; in fact I'd notice that after typing a couple of characters the CPU usage would always shoot up to 50% (i.e. flat out on one core) for a couple of seconds.

It has to be said VS2005 on the same machine didn't have these issues.

There were several other GUI bugs though. I got a little tired of the search dialogue opening three times wider than the screen.

[woohoo]

VS2010 is pretty fast on my 2 year old macbook pro. I like it because it works pretty well with dual monitors and I can't remember it crashing on me.

Only issue I've had is when it slowed to a crawl and for some reason deleting the brakepoints sorted it out.