Jun 13 2006

My view of VS2005

Posted by admin under ASP.NET 2.0

This article was written some months ago but not published until 2006-06-02.

 

 

Being somwehat "slow" I have not until a few months ago developed and delivered my first whole project in VS 2005. As you all know it's not until you create a "real" project you really get to learn and know a new tool and/or classlibrary.


The samples you see in mags, books and on websites are often made to "fit" the environment and therefore often makes the environment looks fantastic.

 

Now, my own project was very small - not to say tiny :) - no external components was used - no internal dll:s either, just a simple one page website.

 

Flow:
1.Select a user from dropdownlist - which is filled when page loads with users from a table in SQL Server db
2.Press button "Run"
3.GridView (new in ASP 2.0) gets filled with result. Get result from SQL Server using DataReader, match with some file info - in short I look into the database  to find out which documents belongs to a certain customer and then checks the file system  to see that the docs (PDF-files/jpg:s etc) are indeed there.

4.Show Export to Excel button - when clicked - expert the grid content to Excel

5.All parameters (locations to where files are stored etc) are stored in application.config file.

As you can see it's a small project, only took me half a day to get it running and published, -

Now with that background I still feel I wanna give you my experiences on VS2005 - as a tool :

 

1. IT'S SO SLOW!!!

My development box (Windows XP reinstalled just a few months ago) has 2 GB RAM and double 15000 RPM SCSI disks. Still, and now pay extra attention to the fact that the project itself was incredibly small - one webpage, 2 classes. While compiling and running is as fast as with VS2003 but one thing that's bothering me is switching between sourcecode file windows. I work a lot with ctrl+tab to change windows and it's instant in 2003 but in VS 2005 it's a lot slower. Or is it just the popup "Active Windows - Active files" making it feel slower ?? - anyway it's annoying to me. Especially slow when you have made code changes - automatic recompiling must work somewhat different I believe

 

2. Moving solutions
No "Save xxxxx.sln as" ??? Or I am blind?? I created the solution for my webproject at the wrong location and just want to move the solution to another place. This also gave me the problem I describe at 4.

 

3. All the popups.

Popups everywhere, constantly - making you distracted. The ctrl+tab popup above is one example. Refactoring is another example. When you for example want to Encapsulate field - that is
create a property around a private variable - you get a popup dialog asking you, in my opinion stupid, questions. Just do it!!
 
4. As for webprojects I have a lot more to say, but that might not me relevant in this forum, but I can say that they change the thinkings around build, and you won't find (at least I didn't) any DLL:s to redistribute until you "Publish web site" which was totally new to me.

 

5. Colors etc. Lots of new colors in the code window - now different colors for types (green) and texts(red) and reserved words (blue). This I might get used to.

 

6. Changes in framework with lacking documentation. Some functions and classes you are used to use is now obsolete - I'm fine with that - but I found at least one example where I was to replace this function

 

RegisterStartupScript(string strKey, string strScript);

with

ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript( Type type, string strKey, string strScript )

 

I surely understand what I do with the old function and can't for my life figure what the Type type function should be. So I start up help:

 

"Registers the startup script with the Page object using a type, a key, and a script literal. "
All parameters are specified - but no example of what type could be...

How I solved it ? Google of course. Someone else had solved it...

 

I have used VS 2005 a few times for simple testing before - and really liked it, now when I really wanted to get things done, I found that I do get disturbed by a few things.

 

So to sum up - I'm getting older and doesn't like changes? Maybe. But VS is well not my life but at least 99 percent of my work life. I have it up and running every hour I'm working. Now, from the other side: will I get used to it. Yes, because I need to -it's the future - and yes,
because I want to as well. I really like .NET 2.0 - the class library, and the new thing in C# 2.0 called generics which lets you create for example typed collections with just a few lines of code. I managed to get that into my small first project :)

 

Anyway, now it would be really nice if you all could fill in your own experiences, as you can see I am only comparing to VS2003 (which I am used to - therefore I might just be whining about things not being where they supposed to - it will go over in a few months), but even if you are going from no VS at all (maybe just from VBA) it would be nice to see how you feel about it.