Visual Studio 2005… oy vey
(opensource guys: Shush. I don’t set the technical direction of the company and I don’t feel like looking for work. Just enjoy the little story.)
I’ve had a copy of Visual Studio Pro 2005 for several months now. Got it for free by attending a conference and, since it fit the direction the company plans to head, I even installed it right away. Since then I just haven’t had the time to even look at it. Until today.
Now, to set some context, I’ve been coding on various platforms and with various tools for a couple decades now. But I’ve never been a “windows coder.” Closest I get to that would be the “classic” ASP stuff (web applications) I’m doing these days. Well, there were also the few years of Delphi development I did in the mid 90′s. And for that, I wasn’t doing any sort of windows UI — was all server based processes. So, I’ve never had the need/urge to use the MS development tools — and I’m sure that’s likely a contributor to some of my issues below. This is my first real foray into “Visual anything”.
Today I sat down, closed the door to my office and popped open a book that a coworker is letting me borrow. Forget the title, but it is from Microsoft Press and seems reasonably well written. My goal is simply to read along and do the examples as they pop up. Which is working well enough it seems. I got stuff to show up and work in a browser!
But I get bogged down with some of the .NET stuff trying to decide, from my admitedly limited exposure, how I’ll design a real world app. Will I do it similar to how this book is showing examples? Or is the book doing that just to expose me to more buttons? Frankly, I think I’m spending most of my time learning how to do things in Visual Studio and perhaps not enough time trying to grok the .NET 2.0 way in fullness. Dunno. Trying to get a handle on the Visual Studio way of life AND the .NET way of life at the same time is a bit confusing. I’ll do a few more chapters tomorrow (time permitting) and then probably forge off on my own and experiment a bit.
Coming from a background that includes vi and hand-coded makefiles, I see a lot to love about Visual Studio 2005 in general. The editor strikes me as rather nifty (although I see a need to tweak a few things) and the level of integration is nice. The debugging features alone cause me to drool like one of Pavlov’s furry friends. I also see a memory upgrade in my future: 512MB ain’t gonna cut it I fear. There’s a lot in Visual Studio and it isn’t exactly slim!
This should be interesting.
Possibly Related posts:
- Visual Studio Express Editions stay free
- Visual Studio for Free
- Visual Studio Express Tools Updated
- Copying Visual Studio Projects
- Visual Studio 2010 Keybinding Posters
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My own first reaction to Visual Studio was disorientation. Over time I grew comfortable with it. I recall the comfort I found in learning how many of the underlying files are plain text files (I’m an emacs guy). This was before .NET, however.
Handy, I have three words for you that should make your life better:
emacs on windows
The OSS/FS geek
[...] debugger quote of the day “The debugging features alone cause me to drool like one of Pavlov’s furry friends” http://www.solo-technology.com/blog/2006/03/21/visual-studio-2005-oy-vey/ Published Thursday, March 23, 2006 1:58 PM by ejarvi Filed Under: development [...]