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I agree 100%.
I still have a copy of VS6.0 that I keep for posterity.
Mike
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Jeff Dickey wrote: the responses strongly favored the older versions
Actually, I see it as a logical progression. New versions come into the fold starting at the bottom because they're new -- not everyone is using them yet and they have yet to go through the product lifecycle of fixing new product issues (yes, bugs).
A new version starts off low in the ranks and climbs up in popularity as more people use it and they release updates to fix the bugs.
I've installed VS 2008 on one of my development workstations. I still use VS 2005 primarily because one machine needs more memory (it's barely able to hold on as it is), and the other is in need of an OS rebuild at which time I will upgrade it to VS 2008. Once that happens and I do the work to address a couple of other minor issues that bother me, I'll be using VS 2008 primarily - partly because it's a little nicer, and partly because I fee obligated to stay current. The latter is important for reasons of personal marketing.
Aside from that, I like the extra little features I've noticed so far. It's not a huge improvement, but it does make programming a little faster/easier.
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Jeff Dickey wrote: that the responses strongly favored the older versions
It depends what you count as older version. As you can see VS2008 and VS2005 together are very close to 65%. And I'm unsure about those who voted VS2003, wheather they want to use that version or they have to use it.
Mostly, when you see programmers, they aren't doing anything. One of the attractive things about programmers is that you cannot tell whether or not they are working simply by looking at them. Very often they're sitting there seemingly drinking coffee and gossiping, or just staring into space. What the programmer is trying to do is get a handle on all the individual and unrelated ideas that are scampering around in his head. (Charles M Strauss)
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They're all junk. Nostalgia is such a debilitating illness...
But who is the king of all of these folks?
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Yeah, bring back WordStar 3.3. Back in 84/85, that was my word processor and my text editor.
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I find the Intellisense "improvements" of VS2005 a bit over-zealous, and it doesn't seem as responsive as VS.NET 2003 even on a powerful PC. So the latter just seems a bit better, despite lacking some great features of 2005.
However 2008 will likely become my new favourite...
"For fifty bucks I'd put my face in their soup and blow." - George Costanza
CP article: SmartPager - a Flickr-style pager control with go-to-page popup layer.
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As someone who tries to maintain a rock-stable automated build environment across many compiler versions, I must say that the "customer harassment" misfeatures in newer MS IDEs have been mounting starting at VS 98 (Visual C/C++ 6.0):
1. Bad coexistence with other compiler versions on the same machine (This is critical in an automated build system where historic product versions need to have their service packs built with the original tools used for their gold release).
2. Refusal to run without scattering junk all over the global Windows registry, VC 5.0 was the last version that could be truly XCOPY-installed and run with no prerequisites.
3. Insistence on installing "prerequisites" that affect the "global" behaviour of the computer (Like the .NET framework, or the "Office" files bundled in recent MSDN viewers).
4. Insisting on installing or storing many files on the C:\ or system drive, even if the compiler is ostensibly being installed on a different disk. The worst offender is the new documentation viewer introduced in VS.NET.
5. Increasingly slow technology used for the basic IDE User Interface (To someone who edits code 8+ hours a day, a slowdown of each keystroke by 500ms adds up to very bad usability).
6. Non-modular install: Starting somewhere in the ".NET" studio series, the ability of the user to install only desired parts of the suite has been reduced to a joke. Example: In 2005 users cannot install the CE targeted compiler and libraries without also installing the remote device access tools and graphical device emulators. Similar for many other parts of the IDE.
7. Forced takeover of other parts of the computer: When installing VS 2005 on a machine which also runs IIS and/or SQL server, those servers are forcibly reconfigured from production quality servers to debug slaves unsuitable for production use.
8. Overzealous dropping of platform support: Just because Microsoft PSS drops active support for a platform version (such as NT 3.1 or Windows 2000), this does not justify cutting the legs out from under developers who still want to support users of such older systems. However in recent years, the VS team has been very swift to make changes that prevent VS (or worse: VS created programs) from running on "deprecated" platforms.
9. Destructive VS service packs: Each of the following VS service packs contained incompatible runtime or build time changes which guaranteed that developers would loose out if they upgraded or not: VS98Gold (incompatible version of the cross-version runtime redistributables), VS98SP6 (Suddenly switched to use VS2003 runtime for some tasks), VS2005SP1 (introduced a version of the runtime redistributables which cannot share a process (such as Internet Explorer or IIS) with the VS2005Gold version, due to abuse of the manifest system).
10. Almost industrial espionage: Starting with VS2003, various tool, IDE and viewer features routinely send information to Microsoft about what every single developer does on a day by day basis. While rarely including source code, uploads do include all the search terms in the documentation viewer (ostensibly to present updated online content), automatic "crash" feedback when compilers linkers etc. fails (Those crash dumps just have to contain snippets of the source code being processed, and the "privacy policy" grants MS permission to use the data for development!)
Personally, I currently use the oldest VS IDE around: MS PWB 1.0, ca. 1990 with the 1992 updated API help and much more recent MS C compilers (currently at version 14.x, aka VS2005 Team Edition). For the occasional ATL/MFC task, I fire up VS98, because it doesn't refuse to run without its MSI registry keys).
<div class="ForumSig">This message is hasty and is not to be taken as serious, professional or legally binding.
I work with low level C/C++ in user and kernel mode, but also dabble in other areas.</div>
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But seriously...
Coexistence? These tools make the Borg look like touchy-feely New Age pop psychologists!
Sh!tt!ng all over the entire system? Why should we care? We're not supposed to be running any non-Microsoft stuff, and they'll make bloody well sure we have to WORK for it if we want to...
(and on, and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, ad ware)
I have a client who just got talked into a completely automated build/SCM environment; developers throw things over the wall by checking in files, which get tagged, build process gets fired up, a successful build triggers automated testing, reports get emailed to the various stakeholders, you know the drill. They're trying to figure out how to transition off VS98's command-line tools (developers can use the VS98 IDE or any third-party editor they want). They've got pilot copies of VS 2005, and they're Not Happy, for just the sort of reasons you lay out (very well, I might add). They do basic black-box development; customers buy boxes that run XP (another soon-to-be-headache), hook them up to their LAN, and do everything over the network via a set of MFC-based client programs. If this all sounds terribly early-90s, there's a reason for that; the system in one form or another has been around that long.
They've been coasting along in a Microsoft world for a long time, now that world "is changing in ways that don't seem to really help", as the CTO has been saying lately. They've stayed with MS because their clients are "quite conservative" and because their people know the toolchain they've been using... but now they're starting to wonder if life wouldn't be better Somewhere Else.
I have a really hard time believing that these guys are at all unique, or even terribly atypical. If SteveB really thinks the way to maintain world domination is "developers, developers, developers", then he'd better start thinking real hard about how to keep selling products and services to folks who basically can't change hardware platforms as often as he changes his shorts. Given an apparent tradeoff between a knowable, working platform and the Latest And Greatest SHIny new Thing, the former *always* wins (these guys haven't had a serious or severe defect in their code on a production (24/7/365) system in almost *10 years*). But if a vendor does something stupid like cancel their entire technical world in an attempt to get them to crap buckets of cash to the same vendor to do the exact same business activity...then things start getting "interesting".
This is gonna get greasy...
--
Jeff Dickey jdickey@seven-sigma.com
Seven Sigma Software and Services
Phone/SMS: +65 9360 1820
FOAF: http://www.seven-sigma.com/foaf.rdf
Yahoo! IM: jeff_dickey
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Well for starters Microsoft vs. Microsoft coexistence would be nice...
As for the VS98 command line tools: Except for the option to launch the VS98 IDE in a command line mode to autobuild projects, most of the other command line tools are still there in VS2005, provided you ignore the "advice" given in the documentation. They even have new features and bugfixes in them
(like x64 support, code validation options etc.). And unlike the VS2005 IDE, the VS2005 traditional
command line tools can be run in an XCOPY-install (with a few weeks of hard work), thus avoiding
running the VS2005 installer on the rock-stable automated build server.
Just too bad the VS2003/2005 IDE can no longer produce a traditional Makefile itself, but then the
VS98 generated ones were not exactly following best practice anyway.
And yes, I "know the drill", having actually built and maintained (most of) such as system, with full
support for mixing Microsoft C compilers version 6.0 (16 bit) to 14.0 (64 bit) inclusive. And it is 95% Microsoft technology with a few additional tools from elsewhere (such as a zip file packer).
This message is hasty and is not to be taken as serious, professional or legally binding.
I work with low level C/C++ in user and kernel mode, but also dabble in other areas.
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CListCtrl
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds, and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides, and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all - he's walking on them. --Leonard Louis Levinson
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Vasudevan Deepak K wrote: CListCtrl
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. - Cicero
.·´¯`·->Rajesh<-·´¯`·.
Codeproject.com: Visual C++ MVP
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The legendary figure of every survey right?
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds, and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides, and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all - he's walking on them. --Leonard Louis Levinson
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Tell me what this CListCtrl all about? What made you start this thread? I just don't get it.
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. - Cicero
.·´¯`·->Rajesh<-·´¯`·.
Codeproject.com: Visual C++ MVP
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Sorry - that information you requested is on a purely "need-to-know" basis;
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"How do you find out if you're unwanted if everyone you try to ask tells you to go away?" - Balboos HaGadol
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Rajesh R Subramanian wrote: Tell me what this CListCtrl all about?
How did you manage to get MVP title if you don't know anything about that? 
Mostly, when you see programmers, they aren't doing anything. One of the attractive things about programmers is that you cannot tell whether or not they are working simply by looking at them. Very often they're sitting there seemingly drinking coffee and gossiping, or just staring into space. What the programmer is trying to do is get a handle on all the individual and unrelated ideas that are scampering around in his head. (Charles M Strauss)
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Hi Vsaudevan,
Let go of it now. It's now becoming old and boring joke.
You have, what I would term, a very formal turn of phrase not seen in these isles since the old King passed from this world to the next. martin_hughes on VDK
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Somebody should say that to him. That's soothing, Rama. 
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. - Cicero
.·´¯`·->Rajesh<-·´¯`·.
Codeproject.com: Visual C++ MVP
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You are only saying that because you don't remember where it comes from! 
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist
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For god's sake, Muttley, do something, I will give you a medal if you stop using this CListCtrl thing.
Nuclear launch detected
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Of course you're not an MFC programmer. 
// "In the end it's a little boy expressing himself." Yanni
while (I_am_alive)
{
cout<<"I love programming.";
}
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What... Mostly Forgotten Code (MFC)???
Yes... I know MFC .. still use it once in a great while...
But by now you should be able to code pretty much all of the MFC stuff blindfolded with one hand... (right?)
What do you need old technology for? Move on...
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M i s t e r L i s t e r wrote: Mostly Forgotten Code (MFC)???
I guess not.
M i s t e r L i s t e r wrote: But by now you should be able to code pretty much all of the MFC stuff blindfolded with one hand... (right?)
Yes, but it's not a good reason to ignore native coders. The fact that native coders are able to use notepad to code and CMD to compile, is not a good reason to remove ClsddWizard from VS. If you mean now in C# most of it can be done by just using mouse, I shall say yes, but I enjoy creating my own custom creature.
M i s t e r L i s t e r wrote: What do you need old technology for?
For maintenance, .net limitations, anywhere speed is more critical than UI (Games, Hardware related stuff like drivers, Scientific softwares with huge calculations,etc), using old classes that has not an equivalent in .net, managers decision, pure fun of it, etc. To me, it's just enjoying MFC and not too much enjoying C# on desktop Apps.
// "In the end it's a little boy expressing himself." Yanni
while (I_am_alive)
{
cout<<"I love programming.";
}
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Ask Cobol programmers how they like maintenance...
(and how they like the job market)
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