Development of Visual Studio IDE - asp.net

What does the Visual Studio development team at Microsoft use to develop new versions of Visual Studio? Do they use VS2005 to develop VS2008? Thinking about it makes my head hurt a little...

One of the PDC videos I recently watched said they use VS2010 to develop VS2010.
You may imagine how quickly bugs get fixed that way.

They start on an abacus and work there way through mathematical instruments until they reach computers. At this point they stop and roll another funny cigarette and wonder is this what life has come to?

We dogfood our products, and VS is no exception.
/me goes back to his happy world of rainbows, unicorns, lambdas, auto, and dynamic ;)

C was implemented to write UNIX. UNIX is written in C. On UNIX, currently. At some point, you use what you've built to keep building it.
I'd imagine the very first go of VS2008 is written in VS2005, but then they start using VS2008 as soon as is feasible to continue developing VS2008.

Related

Who uses IntelliJ for real commercial projects?

Just a simple question:
Would you prefer IntelliJ? If so, what are the Pro- and Cons?
Thx
I'd prefer IntelliJ for any Java project. I'll also point out that ReSharper is a Visual Studio plug-in that provides a lot of the same niceties for .NET. It's also written by JetBrains.
Pros:
Smartest IDE I know. Everything works together. It's not a Frankenstein monster stitched together from disparate plug-ins that don't know about each other.
Best Spring support.
Keeps getting better with every release.
Great integration with SVN, databases, Java EE app servers.
Local and remote debugging with Java EE app servers.
Cons:
Not free. If that puts you off, IntelliJ isn't for you.
Swing UI support isn't the best, but I'm not much of a Swing/desktop developer.
Not Eclipse. If you're a dyed in the wool Eclipse lover you may not like IntelliJ.
I used Eclipse for many years. I liked it and felt grateful to have something so good when my employer wouldn't lay out any money for tools.
Then I changed jobs and was given IntelliJ. I've never gone back. I buy a personal license every year with my own money so I can use it at home and at work. It's an essential tool for me.
In the software projects that I participate developers use either Eclipse or IntelliJ, simply because they are used to either one of them. No one of my collegues switched the IDE yet, so there does not seem to be a "killer application/feature".
I heard that NetBeans is better than Eclipse, especially NetBeans is supposed to be more stable with regard to plugins - this is the only aspect of Eclipse that really troubles me: You either do not find a plugin that you need (I'm still looking for a Maven plugin that actually works) or installing one plugin breaks another.

Migrate Vb to Vb.net

Hai Friends
I having the project in Vb i want to migrate that project in the vb.net.any tool available pls inform me.i have tried a lot.i have not installed the visual basic.with the help of remote server i am running that project.
Quite a few versions of Visual studio have a built-in Upgrade Wizard to help you with converting VB6 to Vb.Net code. I know that VS 2005 Pro has it but I'm not sure what other versions.
Here's an article about how to go about upgrading. And there's even a complete free e-book about it as can be found here.
Aside from the sources Ho1 mentions some of the biggest pitfalls are the lack of control arrays, printing and graphics. The printing can be partly mitigated by the use of Printer Compatibility. You can download the PCL as part of the Visual Basic Power Pack 3.0.
If you have room in your budget I would recommend ArtinSoft. www.artinsoft.com. They have a trial version that you can test out. They have been named Microsoft's preferred VB to .NET upgrade solution provider.
I have trialed artinsoft's upgrade companion.
I have also looked at vbmigration partner.
This is my, very limited, anecdotal experience.
On vbmigration partner they have some sample conversions of projects they found on planat sourcecode.
One is call ezdatabase.
If you run vbmigration partner's conversion it will crash if you click the connect/disconnect button more than twice.
On the vb6 version you can click this all day without crashing.
This project is small enough to put through the artinsoft trial of vbuc in its entirety, so i did that.
However after i converted it, there seemed to be a lot of compile errors.
It's not a fair comparison as obviously vb migration partner had lots of opportunity to perfect it before putting the converted code on their website. and yet it was easy to crash.
However I was also disappointed with artinsoft's tool as this was just a small (few hundred lines) crud application and yet there were a lot of compile errors.
Make of this what you will. I would like to hear of others' experiences.
EDIT : On the other hand if this is a true test of the relative capabilities of vb migration partner and artinsoft vbuc then vb migration arner is clearly the winner in this example

a simple .net website source control system?

I work in Visual Studio working on sites mostly myself and occasionally I start on new features for a site and bam a bug pops up on the live site and now I am in the middle of changes and can't post a fix to the bug until everything I started to change is complete.
So I am looking for a nice an simple way to work with this type of situation - any suggestions?
Are you asking for a recommendation of a source control system? SourceGear Vault is free for single users.
I am big fan of subversion. There also plugins for VS to work with subversion repository.
http://subversion.tigris.org/
http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/
I am in a similar situation and I use Perforce. It is free for up to two users and integrates well with Visual Studio.
Subversion is well supported and has tools for most any environment. It's also mostly straightforward to use, so you should be able to get up and running quickly.
If you need to work on a lot of separate features and bugs at the same time, you might try Mercurial instead. The tooling support is a lot less mature but I find the distributed design to do a better job of merging and facilitating work on separate issues concurrently.
But really, if you aren't using anything currently and aren't sure what your needs are, just choose one that has support in the IDE/tools you use. It will probably be Subversion.

Is Flex development without FlexBuilder realistic?

Is it realistic to try and learn and code a Flex 3 application without purchasing FlexBuilder? Since the SDK and BlazeDS are open source, it seems technically possible to develop without Flex Builder, but how realistic is it.
I would like to test out Flex but don't want to get into a situation where I am dependent on the purchase of FlexBuilder (at least not until I am confident and competent enough with the technology to recommend purchase to my employer).
I am experimenting right now, so I'm taking a long time and the trial license on my Windows machine has expired. Also Linux is my primary development platform and there is only an alpha available for Linux.
Most of the documentation I've found seem to use Flex Builder.
Maybe I should use Laszlo...
IntelliJ IDEA works as a Flex IDE, if you happen to also be a Java developer. It's free if you contribute to open source projects.
Check out FlashDevelop for Windows. I like it better than Flex Builder.
I've been using Flex since version 2 and Flex3/BlazeDS since it came out of beta. I also have some experience with Lazzlo and the difference is day and night (Flex rocks!). I have not regretted once using Flex. Regarding FlexBuilder, it is worth every penny. While it is completely possible and reasonable to write Flex application without FlexBuilder, the productivity gains of using it will more than recoup the investment. Try the evaluation for 30 days and compare it to some of the other options suggested about (I'm going to try FlashDevelop).
Some things you get with FlexBuilder include:
Code completion
Visual editor
Debugger (it is fantastic!!)
Profiler (also very good)
Regarding Linux, the alpha version of FlexBuilder does not have a visual editor. Other than that, I understand it is reasonably feature complete, still free, and many of the Adobe employees I've talked with that use Linux are happy with it.
FlashDevelop is really easy to setup with the Flex SDK. Just download FlashDevelop, then download the Flex SDK. In FlashDevelop go to Tools > Program Options > AS3Context (under Plugins) > Set the "Flex SDK Location" to the root of the folder you extracted the SDK to and build away. FlashDevelop even has a basic MXML project that will get you going.
If you use ColdFusion for the backend, having FlexBuilder in Eclipse and CFEclipse can mean one less IDE to have to get familiar with.
I'm going to join the choir here and say FlashDevelop for an alternative. The only reasons you might want FlexBuilder are:
Flex charts
Step-through debugging.
Profiler (I haven't used it)
Visual style editor
However, the code-completion and general bloody-awesomeness of FlashDevelop's code-completion and syntax highlighting knocks the gimpy eclipse crap out of the water. So, pretty much what Todd said, except for the code-completion part. Flex Builder is very flakey in that department.
Short answer: Yes
I'm working on a team of developers and designers. We code our .MXML and .AS in FlashDevelop 3 and our designer creates .FLA with skins and widgets that get [Import()]ed in ActionScript.
I wrote a little more about this subject here:
Flash designer/coder collaboration best practices
I have been using FlashDevelop for along time (4/5 years), I am actively using it to develop Flex4.5 applications, it has built in support for code completion, it has a profiler and a debugger that work excellently. The IDE itself is responsive and require the .Net framework, in fact here, I'll list some stuff.
FlashDevelop Pros
Free IDE
Code completion feature
Very capable Debugger
Profiler
Documenting
Ability to build Air / Flex files
Templating
Plugins
FlashDevelop Cons
Lack of UI desing support
.Net support only (Won't work with Mono)
Everything else is pretty simple to get running with, the instructions are available at http://www.flashdevelop.org/
Absolutely. I've been a Flex developer since Flex 2 and until recently I've used my regular editor, TextMate, for coding and Ant for building. TextMate has some good extensions for ActionScript and Flex coding, but I think you could get that for any decent editor.
What's been missing from my setup is a usable debugger, the command line version is a pain to work with. Because of that I've been starting to use FlexBuilder on the side, using it in parallel with my regular setup.
Having a profiler doesn't hurt too.
I've been using FlexBuilder for awhile now and just started to switch to using Eclipse with Flex SDK. I work for a non-profit so the word FREE is huge.
Initially, it is fairly intimidating so if you have the money, you might want FlexBuilder.
There is a lot you need to know and do if you use the SDK. The learning and experience may pay off though... I am still undecided myself.
I second FlashDevelop. You don't get the visual design stuff for the MXML, but for the code (both MXML and AS) it's excellent.
I also use FlashDevelop when working on AS3 projects. For me, the ugliness (UI design) and sluggishness of Eclipse/Flex Builder is enough of a deterrent to stay away from Flex Builder.
In addition to the weaknesses of FlashDevelop pointed out previously, one of my biggest gripes is that it is not a true .NET only app and therefore will never work in mono and therefore can not be easily ported to the mac - which is my platform of choice for development web/javascript/AS3 development.
Amethyst is also a pretty good option to try. It is a plugin for MS Visual Studio, and takes advantage of a lot of the goodies there. It is significantly less sluggish than FlashBuilder, has a really good debugger, and a decent visual designer as well.
The personal version is free, but quite crippled. You have to buy the pro version after a 60 day free trial. However, it is (at time of writing) almost 1/3 the cost of Flash Builder.
As an added bonus you don't need to pay for Visual Studio since it works with the free (albeit hard to find) "shell version (integrated)" of Visual Studio. It won't work with any of the free Express editions, though.

IronPython and ASP.NET

Has anyone built a website with IronPython and ASP.NET. What were your experiences and is the combination ready for prime-time?
The current version of ASP.NET integration for IronPython is not very up-to-date and is more of a "proof-of-concept." I don't think I'd build a production website based on it.
Edit:: I have a very high level of expectation for how things like this should work, and might setting the bar a little high. Maybe you should take what's in "ASP.NET Futures", write a test application for it and see how it works for you. If you're successful, I'd like to hear about it. Otherwise, I think there should be a newer CTP of this in the next six months.
(I'm a developer on IronPython and IronRuby.)
Edit 2: Since I originally posted this, a newer version has been released.
Check out the Dynamic Languages in ASP.NET page on Codeplex. This has the newest IronPython bits. It doesn't give you any Visual Studio integration, other than the sample website project, but that's coming.
Keep a look out for ASP.NET MVC
The IronRuby guys have got some internal builds of MVC to work with IronRuby, and IronPython 2 and IronRuby have a lot of code in common with the DLR.
I'm not sure if they'll support IronPython/IronRuby when MVC is released, but it's definitely worth keeping your eye on anyway - The old ASP.NET forms-based development model is old, busted, and the sooner it goes away the better.

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