Customer Reviews

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Professional 2002

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a java developer, who got a little curious, I wanted to see what Visual Studio.net (professional edition) offers to a developer. During installation, the first thing that I noticed is the 2 gig disk space that the professional edition requires. After the installation, I test drove the IDE and I have to admit that I was not disappointed with Visual Studio .NET. Here is why.

Well-Integrated IDE: -
This is by far the best suite of Microsoft languages and tools. It contains the new Visual Basic .NET, which is totally object oriented and also Visual C# .NET that I found easy to use. The ASP .NET really captured my vote at how easy it was to create asps. The Visual Studio .NET provides thousands of .NET framework classes making a developers life easy and simple.

The similarity to the J2EE framework indicates that that the .NET framework has the capabilities of delivering object oriented enterprise applications. A downside is that, Windows .Net servers and windows operating systems are automatically included into the application environment. This environment may not be desired in all circumstances.

Web services: -
XML Web services are built on XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI specifications and can be built or consumed by your application without having to write the plumbing code yourself. The tools does it for you. All I had to do was to define my function that I want exposed as a web service and it was automatically deployed for me. I like that in an IDE.

Great Documentation and User interfaces: -
Trust Microsoft to woo you with good looks. The user interface is very intuitive and limiting my reference manual lookups. Even when I needed help, all I had to do was open up my help window and I had access to context sensitive help all the time. Microsoft has done a very nice job there.

Unfulfilled wishes :-
Built-in UML modeling. No architecture is complete without models. MS Visio 2002 integration is made available but I don't have a copy of that installed to see whether there is code synchronization with the models. I think that not providing this feature severely limits the use of vs.net as an IDE of choice for enterprise apps.
Another feature conspicuous by its absence is a built-in automated unit-testing framework, something similar to JUnit testing framework.

Finally, I think that this is a very powerful IDE and it is very developer friendly. For those that are open to any technology, Windows .NET servers and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET is definitely a viable option.

My apologies to Chairman Mao, but I've been using the beta version of VS.Net for several weeks now, and its advances are impressive. For VB programmers, there is a new, fully object-oriented version of the language that stands on an equal footing with C. For C++ programmers, there is C#, which combines the power of C with the RAD features of VB. It really is possible to knock out a Windows application in a morning! Finally, for Java programmers who are a bit frustrated with the quirks of that language, C# is a Java clone that is easy to learn, that has most of the power that Java left out, and that has a really spectacular IDE. I haven't raved about anything since VB3, but I'm raving about this.

The concept of the virtual machine is nothing new. The design of .NET would solve many problems associated with DLL and COM. Programs compiled with .NET is slower because Just-In-Time compiler must compile the code before the execution. Loading time for new application appears to be around 2 - 4 seconds in my system(K7 700MHZ). The initial execution memory requirement for a very small program appears to be around 6 - 12 MB. The memory requirement drops down to 1MB soon as you minimize the app (some type of memory clean up kicks in) The class library is object oriented, and all examples are in either C# or VB. If you are a C++ user, it will require some additional learning time.
The developing and debugging environment is easy to use. The debugger even let you trace the compiled x86 assembler code. Learning the system takes few days (very easy, but there are many objects) and experienced programmer can be productive in a week.

If you do pure C/C++ programming without COM, VB or C#, you won't see much of an improvement. Code profiling for performance measurements is gone, which was available in MSVC 6 (Microsoft Visual C++ 6). So if you get this software, you should get something like Rational Quantify for performance testing.

C# and .NET are the biggest additions to this environment over previous versions.

Our development environment went through a few upgrade pains. The VS .NET 2003 version fixed many usability problems found in VS .NET 2002. The UI is much better than MSVC 6.0. As with most compiler upgrades, certain C/C++ language features changed, which took us a little time to resolve (e.g. <iostream>, __FILE__ and a few other things). I recommend a phase in approach when migrating to this new environment. Don't jump into this environment.

If you want to do real C/C++ programming, you need at least the professional edition. The Visual C++ .NET 2003 Standard edition doesn't do optimization, but the professional environment does do optimization. Sadly, you can't get just the C/C++ compiler. Fortunately, there are more optimization options in this compiler, and it has buffer security checks, which I have found useful a couple of times.

The HTML editor doesn't create 100% valid strict HTML 4.01, but it's a better HTML editor than MSVC 6. It also makes it easier to edit basic CSS.

I haven't used all of the nifty features of this environment, but it's a decent improvement over MSVC 6. It's way better than MetroWerks CodeWarrior 5, at least with regards to price (current CodeWarrior version is 8.0, but 5.0 had some stability issues when I used it). I can't compare it very well to Eclipse, since I haven't used it that often (I like Eclipse, which is freely available at http://www.eclipse.org/). CygWin is a little difficult to use at times, but the price is right (free).

Overall I recommend Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional. If you're a casual C/C++ programmer, look elsewhere. This will probably be too pricey for you. If you're a professional programmer, you should consider getting this software. If you're a professional Windows programmer, you need this software because this is the future of Windows programming.

This studio is leagues beyond the last. Microsoft is easing the burden of developers by simplifying distributed application development using .NET. Sure, for instance, you can go in and manually write the low level COM interface connectors if you prefer to have the "stick shift" control and specific performance attributes etc., or you can rely on the built in functionality of .NET and speed the development process.

It seems that with this platform there is a bit of a learning curve even for the most experienced developers because of the great differences. But the online help is dynamic and useful when you get stuck on something.

Visual Basic is not Visual Basic now. They seemed to have completely renovated the way VB works.

The Common language Runtime (CLR) makes it possible to create solutions by interweaving any of the languages included with the studio. I believe there is a way to import 3rd party or future MS designed languages as well. So if one language is better at a specific task, then you can switch to it.

The integrated development environment (IDE) is meant to maximize developer productivity. In using it, I haven't experienced the contrary. I must mention that I do like the flexibility of working on web applications in .NET. You can use a grid layout like a form builder, or the flow layout like a web page editor.

I noticed a couple of funny things so far, but not worth mentioning. It takes some getting used to, but this is certainly worth it.

Been using VS.NET since beta 2, and the final version is everything I've ever wanted. I was a former ASP script kiddie, but because of the outstanding object-oriented VB.NET, and even better C#, I can now code Web apps like a "real" developer. I can see Windows programmers asking, "Wait, you mean it wasn't always done that way?"

There are some minor annoyances, like the fact that VS.NET won't use Intellisense when you write code right on an ASP.NET page (come on MS, a code-behind file isn't necessary for three lines of code). It's also not terribly idiot-proof setting up remote debugging.

The greatest thing to me is that SQL Server's Enterprise manager is, in a matter of speaking, integrated into the environment, so you're not alt-tabing to see what the heck your DB looks like.

If you hate the state of Web development, you need this.

The ease of use compared to VS 6 and before is the first thing one notices. So many great controls that make programming more fun because much of the code is well within those controls.
Only 4 stars though because of the amount of time and effort that was necessary getting my PC up to speed to be able to run VS.NET. Of course it will work with older setups and less memory - but I figured now was a good time to upgrade to Windows XP Pro. It also isn't supported by anything older than Windows 98 as I understand. Also no drawing tools - something new called GDI+ in which you draw programmatically - I am having to get used to that!
I am an MCP (VB6 Desktop) and a webmaster and between VB.NET, ADO.NET and ASP.NET, the programming future looks exciting.
To help you get started - go to the LearnVisualStudio.NET web site which has great video lessons that helped me a lot.
Give that and new VS.NET a try!

If you're serious about Windows development, this is definetly a 'must have'
The IDE has been vastly improved over Visual Studio 6, and is shared among all languages. And talking about languages: more than fifty different languages are being ported to .NET, such as Python and Perl. Visual Studio.net comes with C# a new language developed by microsoft which should make any C or C++ Developer feel at home.

As a java developer, who got a little curious, I wanted to see what Visual Studio.net (professional edition) offers to a developer. During installation, the first thing that I noticed is the 2 gig disk space that the professional edition requires. After the installation, I test drove the IDE and I have to admit that I was not disappointed with Visual Studio .NET. Here is why.

Well-Integrated IDE: -
This is by far the best suite of Microsoft languages and tools. It contains the new Visual Basic .NET, which is totally object oriented and also Visual C# .NET that I found easy to use. The ASP .NET really captured my vote at how easy it was to create asps. The Visual Studio .NET provides thousands of .NET framework classes making a developers life easy and simple.

The similarity to the J2EE framework indicates that that the .NET framework has the capabilities of delivering object oriented enterprise applications. A downside is that, Windows .Net servers and windows operating systems are automatically included into the application environment. This environment may not be desired in all circumstances.

Web services: -
XML Web services are built on XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI specifications and can be built or consumed by your application without having to write the plumbing code yourself. The tools does it for you. All I had to do was to define my function that I want exposed as a web service and it was automatically deployed for me. I like that in an IDE.

Great Documentation and User interfaces: -
Trust Microsoft to woo you with good looks. The user interface is very intuitive and limiting my reference manual lookups. Even when I needed help, all I had to do was open up my help window and I had access to context sensitive help all the time. Microsoft has done a very nice job there.

Unfulfilled wishes :-
Built-in UML modeling. No architecture is complete without models. MS Visio 2002 integration is made available but I don't have a copy of that installed to see whether there is code synchronization with the models. I think that not providing this feature severely limits the use of vs.net as an IDE of choice for enterprise apps.
Another feature conspicuous by its absence is a built-in automated unit-testing framework, something similar to JUnit testing framework.

Finally, I think that this is a very powerful IDE and it is very developer friendly. For those that are open to any technology, Windows .NET servers and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET is definitely a viable option.

I have been using Visual Studio for a long time (VB for 10 years, VC++ for 5 years). This is the best yet. Sure, the .NET platform is slow in taking off, but it is a MAJOR improvement and will take a while. The new IDE is used by ALL the languages and is fantastic. The debugging tools are an order of magnitude better. The online documentation is essential (make sure you load the whole thing, you will usually need it). Even the IntelliSense is improved. For VB long-timers, this version is probably a bigger improvement than any others, including the transitions of 16-to-32-bit and from interpreted to compiled. Software productivity is almost certain to explored -- once it catches on. The hype is real, but it will take time. This is what it was like before the Web took off -- the people in the know just "knew" it would happen, it is just a matter of time. Be on the front of the wave.