Customer Reviews

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Standard (Old Version)

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

 

 

I made a sea-change jump from VC++6.0 to Visual Studio 2008. I miss my old ClassWizard, but it only took a day or so to get familiar with the new methods. Probably the hardest thing to get used to is the change from Alt + E + I to launch Find-In-Files to using Ctrl + Shift + F. Even after weeks of using VS2008, I still do the old key combination.

The executables produced are great and the program functions reliably.

I would easily buy it again.

VS2008 is an excellent development tool. I couldn't survive without it.

In case you're wondering the main difference between Standard and Professional is that Standard doesn't have the Tools for Office development (which I didn't care about).

By all counts Visual Studio is a good development environment for C++ programming on Windows, and it is the standard to which others are compared.

However VS2008 compatibility issues with VS2005 compiled .lib files have bitten me on several projects as an independent contract programmer in the game industry, and it seems that extremely few companies (at least in the game industry) actually migrate to VS2008, so this product has proven far less useful than I had hoped, as it can not compile most of them without significant work (recompiling libpng/zlib/libjpeg and others that are frequently included as a .lib file in projects, and requesting updated SDKs from middleware vendors).

Be warned that this slow adoptance afflicts other software industries as well, they simply do not update to each new VisualStudio version, if you are an independent contractor you may want to purchase VS2005 instead (or in addition to VS2008).

Overall I like VS2008 more than VS2005, it just does not suit my needs as well as I would hope.

Reasons to buy Visual Studio 2008 Standard when compared to the free Express version:
ATL and MFC libraries - necessary to compile IE ActiveX plugins and most graphical applications.
x64 compilers and debugging environment - VS2008 Express can be patched with the VS2005 Platform SDK to do x64 compiling but it's a hassle to use, and has no x64 debugger.

Features I really wish Visual Studio had but it does not:
A performance profiler - I recommend AMD Code Analyst if you're looking for a free one, I hear that Intel VTune is worth it if you can afford it.
A memory debugger - I develop cross-platform, so I simply use valgrind for this on a Linux system, but it is a sorely missed feature in Visual Studio (there are many commercial packages available, but all inferior to valgrind).

Visual Studio 2008 is well worth the money, just watch out if you are an independent contractor and may need 2005 as well.

The company I work for is big into 3rd party applications. However the last company I worked for we wrote everything because it allowed us better control and we could design the exact systems we wanted, not buy a solution off the shelf and then adapt our processes to fit it. So I was able to convince my supervisor that the company could benefit if I got this software and we pulled the trigger. Fast forward a year later I have already written several applications to monitor enterprise systems, I've create applications to expedite the way we support stores and created a release scheduling tool and intranet website to share the information across the company.

Each project I started didn't take long at all to complete. I came from a VB6 background so the jump to .NET was interesting as many of the terms and code changed, but in an easier way.

I'm now on the verge of getting more copies of this software for my other team members so that we can all work on the various applications and save the company more money. After all, $400 for software that lets you develop your own tools is a lot cheaper then the $10,000 that you could spend on a big box solution which doesn't do everything you want.

I will say that this isn't a perfect program. I have often times had the program crash on me and offer to let me debug Visual studio while I was running visual studio debugging an app I wrote... Yes I was debugging the debugger. So there are issues but for the most part it works great and has increased the productivity and value I can bring to the company. In fact I started with VB6, learned VB.NET within a few days and when it came time to making the ASP intranet site I learned that from scratch, about 3 weeks later I had a fully functional site up and running and even made a mobile blackberry version.

I bought this product six months ago. I've been using it heavily day to day. I really like most of its features. I especially like the javascript debugger. You can attach the debugger to a web page on your local machine that has embedded javascript and debug it when an exception occurs. Now that's nice.

If you are a hardcore .Net and/or Web programmer, you want this product. It has project templates for Windows WPF applications, WCF applications, Web applications, Reporting, and Silverlight.

I've had this product since it was released, and it has some compelling new features that would normally make me enthusiastically recommend the product. The biggest one is multi-platform support. You can code for .Net 2.0, 3.0, or 3.5 from the same IDE (and VS2010 will add .Net 4.0 to that list). That's where the good stuff ends.

As long as you don't write WPF applications, it's reasonably solid. HOWEVER, the IDE is easy to knock over if you're doing anything more than a sample application, and the more complex your solution is, the more likely it is that the IDE will turn to crap.

I recently started writing WPF code about 2 months ago, and EVERY DAY, the IDE freezes up on me at least a dozen times during the day. What's worse, it will often simply close with no error message or other indication that something might be wrong. Most of the time, it will simply vanish when I right-click on a project's Properties tree item. The only fix for that is to exit the IDE, delete the solution's SUO file, and then go back into the IDE.

WPF support in the IDE is quite frankly half-as*ed. Microsoft expects you to purchase a completely different tool (Expression Blend at twice the price of *this* product) if you want to have more control over your design. In fact, Microsoft acknowledges the fact that the designer in the IDE is crap, and recommends using Blend instead. The problem here is that Blend has a COMPLETELY different look/feel, and you are forced to learn how to use a completely different tool - again. What's more, using Blend is both a blessing AND a curse. On the one hand, it allows you to modify a control's template (the IDE does NOT allow you to do this without actually writing code - how stupid is that?). On the other hand, if you want to add a reference to your project, you hace to pick the correct DLL instead of the having the convenience of selecting from a list of namespaces.

One of the biggest problems in the designer is that it assumes you want to change control anchor settings when you're moving a control around in the form. If I wanted to change the anchors, then I surely would have done that myself.

Lastly, Microsoft is still dragging their feet with regards to unmanaged C++ support. Programmers writing unmanaged code have been screaming at the top of their lungs for improved support, and have yet to see ANYTHING but promises from Microsoft. If you're a C++/MFC programmer, don't expect anything new or improved in this product.

It's really unfortunate that Visual Studio is pretty much the only game in town where .Net development (and more specifically, WPF development) is concerned. Microsoft claims they eat their own dog food where development tools are concerned, but I really find that hard to believe. No programmer worth his salt would allow crap like this into the retail channel.

Because this is the only game in town for .Net development, I recommend that you buy the product, but it sucks so bad that I have to give it just one star.

I bought VS2008 to learn C++ and C# and their Visual counterparts. The product seems to be able to support those. But I had a major problem: I wanted to install it on a 64-bit computer running Window Vista Home Premium. The templates for CLR projects and Windows Form Application compile but will not execute. I spent hours uninstalling the product, uninstalling and reinstalling the .NET framework versions, and reinstalling VS2008. Nothing worked. Researched Microsoft website and the internet in general and everything seemed to point to incompatibilities between the .NET framework, Vista, and VS2008. I gave up and installed it on an old HP computer running XP, and it runs without problems; just not the machine I wanted to use with it.

As I work more with the product I may update this review.

Item installed ok the first time. Found the software to be buggy. Software did not install ok the second time.

For those who are interested in programming in Microsoft only tools or building programs this will be a great tool for you offering a vast amount of tools and resources quite unlike any other I have ever seen.

For those who already have a good knowledge of web programming (And is all you require it for) , you may want to stay away from this tool. It is expensive and proprietary. The output code (much like Dreamweaver) is not compatible with anything other than Microsoft and maybe Firefox. If you are this person, just use Notepad ++. It's free and works like a charm!

Visual Studio 2008 is an overly expensive piece of software for what it does, but there are no major complaints. The packaging, on the other hand, is horrible. Huge, unwieldy, difficult to figure out how to open, and overall an over-sized CD case. All of MS's recent packaging has been like this and it is terrible.