6 ms·

This will have to be very good to be better than Visual Studio on Windows. I've used Visual Studio 2013 a fair bit in the last 12 months and it's a fantastic ID

This will have to be very good to be better than Visual Studio on Windows. I've used Visual Studio 2013 a fair bit in the last 12 months and it's a fantastic IDE. Microsoft are also developing their cross-platform offering Visual Studio Code, which is a nice text editor and I imagine it's just going to get better. I am using another JetBrains product, PHPStorm, on the Mac at the moment for some Front End Dev, which is another IntelliJ based product. This has recently become quite sluggish and is starting to annoy me, after all, who wants the tool to get in the way of the work. I hope this gets sorted soon. That said, I think JetBrains do a great job focusing on develop tools and I've used their dotPeek product to untangle the mess left by the absence of release control in a recent contract.

sangnoir 11y ago
> This will have to be very good to be better than Visual Studio on Windows. You might as well be right: on OS X, Linux or *BSD however, it will be a completely different story due to the absence of Visual Studio.
- kohanz 11y ago
  Unless the user can run a Windows VM without too much pain. I currently do most of my development in Visual Studio, via a Parallels VM on my MBP and am very happy with this setup. And for those wondering, the performance is surprisingly fine. I rarely notice that I'm working inside of a VM.
  - 72deluxe 11y ago
    Out of interest, what disc are you using? SSD? I use a 2012 MBP i7 which was top of the line and notice slowness on its abysmal 5200RPM hard disk, even worse in Parallels Windows 7. At work I am using a Mac Pro 2008 with a WDC WD20EFRX-68AX9N0 in it (no idea of rotational rate, thanks Western Digital!!) and VMware is slow. Perhaps it is the antivirus I am forced to run inside Windows in a VM but it isn't snappy.
    - iolothebard 11y ago
      Lmao 5200rpm drive. Yeah that's clearly Windows/Parallels' fault. Developers not using SSDs is like a race car driver using an Impala off the car lot for a race.
      - webjprgm 11y ago
        Tell this to my IT department that gave me a Macmini with SSD and not only insists on antivirus but also on File Vault. It takes a long time to boot and Xcode compiles are horribly slow. (Eventually I'll convince them, it just hasn't been worth it to push too hard yet since 99% of my time is spent in VS on the Windows box sitting next to it.) (FWIW, I prefer VS to Xcode, despite preferring Mac to Windows. IntelliSense and editor tabs seem nicer to use than Xcode's UI, and Xcode with a Swift project only a little bigger than a toy demo hits periodic freezes. On my home iMac which does have an SSD.)
        iolothebard 11y ago
        You should tell them and your managers. For every 1/2 day you sit watching the machine, they could be getting double the workload out of you. As a consultant and contractor this is the first thing I point out. However, it's their money, not mine.
        72deluxe 11y ago
        My managers can be somewhat closed-fisted and stingy. Blood from a stone is easier.
      - 72deluxe 11y ago
        Ah yes I wasn't saying that it was Parallels fault, other than there is clearly a lot of hardware out there (including "top of the line" Macs from a few years ago) that have this hardware. If I switch to an SSD, yes the problem would go away. BUT! we should not be quick to ignore hardware like this and suggest to upgrade as a solution. Since there is a lot of hardware in use with that spec, it is best to cater for it. You wouldn't recommend someone went and used a fibre Internet connection when your mobile web page takes too long to download, would you? You'd fix your massive mobile web page. I do get the feeling that OSX developers are all using SSD at Apple, because they obviously don't realise how unbearably slow the experience is with the 5200 RPM drive they sold me...
toomanybeersies 11y ago
Visual Studio Code is not an IDE, and never will be. It's a bit of a silly name in my opinion. I don't think that MS have any plans to add debugging, or build tools into VS code.
- ygra 11y ago
  Code offers debugging already (https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/editor/debugging https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/editor/debugging).
- dimgl 11y ago
  You can already debug Node.js applications in Visual Studio Code so they may provide DNX debugging eventually.
  - Delmania 11y ago
    I think you can on OSX/Linux. It's not on Windows. If I had to guess, it's because VS Community exists.
    - plexicle 11y ago
      I was debugging a Node app on Windows with VSCode about 20 minutes ago.
      - Delmania 11y ago
        You can debug a Node application, my comment was with regards to a C# application.
        matthewblott 11y ago
        You can already debug C# programs on OSX and Linux, I've done it myself. You can't debug ASP.NET apps yet but it's in the pipeline apparently.
- mattmanser 11y ago
louthy 11y ago
> This will have to be very good to be better than Visual Studio on Windows. Really? I feel MS has really dropped the ball with VS. VS2013 was OK, but not great. A lot of random lock-ups in really annoying situations where you can't even fathom why (like opening a text file). VS 2015 is actually awful - it wasn't until Update 1 that typing this (below) in C# would pop-up an on screen exception dialog: class Foo : Bar { public Foo() : Pressing enter after the colon would throw the exception consistently. How on earth was that missed in testing? This is such a common C# pattern for invoking the base or this constructor. I often find myself staring at the screen, saying in my head 'What the hell are you doing now!'. The new DNX project system is unusably slow (compiling) and the tooling for it is non-existent. And for me it still crashes all of the time. Other devs on my team are having similar problems. TFS and TFS explorer is a total joke. The 'offline mode' is slower than online mode, and also causes crashes. If I lose my VPN connection then I have to shutdown VS and restart before TFS will reconnect again (this has been an issue for every version of VS I've used). Luckily we're moving away from that travesty of a system to git very soon (the VS git integration is actually pretty good). I used to feel that VS was a really solid piece of tooling, and I agreed with your sentiment that I quoted. I don't any more. I will check this out, and if it works then I'll happily drop VS, two years ago I couldn't ever imagine myself saying that. Competition can only be a good thing here.
- yoklov 11y ago
  > I feel MS has really dropped the ball with VS. This has been the case for C++ for a while now. Every version of VS has gotten worse since, IDK, 2006 or something (and that's ignoring how long it takes them to finish new versions of the language). I had a suspicion that they had moved their A team over to work on C#, but hearing this... maybe they're just getting worse.
  - alkonaut 11y ago
    For C# at least every version is at least better than the previous. 2015 was the big Roslyn makeover so I suppose I can accept a few more regressions than usual. But feature-wise, each version has had at least one killer feature that made the previous seem dated on day 1. Examples: edit-and-continue, or lambdas in watches.
ohitsdom 11y ago
Completely agree. Also, the fact that Visual Studio Community edition is free, whereas Jetbrains is now on a SaaS model for their products means this is pretty much dead on Windows.
- snuxoll 11y ago
  Yes, community edition is free, to those with fewer than five users or $1mm in gross revenue. Those of us with more than that still have to pay, and I would much rather throw money at JetBrains than have to split it between MS and JetBrains.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
  While it is indeed free, it comes with online activation and needs to be tied to a Live account (or whatever it's called these days) after the first 30 days. This is a pretty stupid decision IMO, as I discovered a few weeks back on a non-internet-connected dev server. And I say that as a longtime VS fan and advocate! (Of course, I guess JetBrains products would suffer exactly the same problem now with the new SaaS model - I just needed a rant about this particular issue.)
mantenpanther 11y ago
> This will have to be very good to be better than Visual Studio on Windows. Having worked with VS for many years, things not so glorious in my opinion. The main criticism is an increasing lack of stability and error prone refactoring. I've basically given up on automatic renaming with VS2015. The IDE crashes more often as it should, especially during debugging. Furthermore the solution/project-file concept (instead of using just folders to organize projects) is ancient and a real PITA when working in a team repository. I understand that this will hopefully be better in the future with .NET Core. Another thing are licensing issues, which is really a uprising problem at MS (this is also the case for other MS products). You're not allowed to open your IDE when the license - falsely - expired. I really enjoy working in VS code nowadays, which seems to be the more future oriented product. Don't get me wrong, VS is still a solid IDE, but not as stellar as often claimed in my opinion. As others already said, competition is a good thing.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- allisb 11y ago
  We are part of the Visual Studio Licensing team. We're sorry to hear about the issues you've had. We understand that some customers have hit issues like this and have improved it in Update 1. For example, a single sign in to VS will now license the product for up to 1 year, making sign in failures resulting in an inability to use VS much less common. We are still listening to feedback. Please feel free to send some our way using the Send Feedback icon in the title bar.
- VSTeam 11y ago
  Hi mantenpanther, We appreciate the feedback. Can you contact us at VScteam@microsoft.com? We would like to chat with you regarding your concerns. Thanks.
zaszrespawned 11y ago
Agree with this. VS is itself written in C++, and I'm not sure if a java based ide is ever going to as performant on windows
- edgyswingset 11y ago
  Are you referring to backend services or the whole IDE? Because the GUI is written in WPF.
- interdrift 11y ago
  I think the IDE is written in WPF using PRISM and MEF

sangnoir 11y ago

> This will have to be very good to be better than Visual Studio on Windows. You might as well be right: on OS X, Linux or *BSD however, it will be a completely different story due to the absence of Visual Studio.

kohanz 11y ago
Unless the user can run a Windows VM without too much pain. I currently do most of my development in Visual Studio, via a Parallels VM on my MBP and am very happy with this setup. And for those wondering, the performance is surprisingly fine. I rarely notice that I'm working inside of a VM.
- 72deluxe 11y ago
  Out of interest, what disc are you using? SSD? I use a 2012 MBP i7 which was top of the line and notice slowness on its abysmal 5200RPM hard disk, even worse in Parallels Windows 7. At work I am using a Mac Pro 2008 with a WDC WD20EFRX-68AX9N0 in it (no idea of rotational rate, thanks Western Digital!!) and VMware is slow. Perhaps it is the antivirus I am forced to run inside Windows in a VM but it isn't snappy.
  - iolothebard 11y ago
    Lmao 5200rpm drive. Yeah that's clearly Windows/Parallels' fault. Developers not using SSDs is like a race car driver using an Impala off the car lot for a race.
    - webjprgm 11y ago
      Tell this to my IT department that gave me a Macmini with SSD and not only insists on antivirus but also on File Vault. It takes a long time to boot and Xcode compiles are horribly slow. (Eventually I'll convince them, it just hasn't been worth it to push too hard yet since 99% of my time is spent in VS on the Windows box sitting next to it.) (FWIW, I prefer VS to Xcode, despite preferring Mac to Windows. IntelliSense and editor tabs seem nicer to use than Xcode's UI, and Xcode with a Swift project only a little bigger than a toy demo hits periodic freezes. On my home iMac which does have an SSD.)
      - iolothebard 11y ago
        You should tell them and your managers. For every 1/2 day you sit watching the machine, they could be getting double the workload out of you. As a consultant and contractor this is the first thing I point out. However, it's their money, not mine.
        72deluxe 11y ago
        My managers can be somewhat closed-fisted and stingy. Blood from a stone is easier.
    - 72deluxe 11y ago
      Ah yes I wasn't saying that it was Parallels fault, other than there is clearly a lot of hardware out there (including "top of the line" Macs from a few years ago) that have this hardware. If I switch to an SSD, yes the problem would go away. BUT! we should not be quick to ignore hardware like this and suggest to upgrade as a solution. Since there is a lot of hardware in use with that spec, it is best to cater for it. You wouldn't recommend someone went and used a fibre Internet connection when your mobile web page takes too long to download, would you? You'd fix your massive mobile web page. I do get the feeling that OSX developers are all using SSD at Apple, because they obviously don't realise how unbearably slow the experience is with the 5200 RPM drive they sold me...

toomanybeersies 11y ago

Visual Studio Code is not an IDE, and never will be. It's a bit of a silly name in my opinion. I don't think that MS have any plans to add debugging, or build tools into VS code.

ygra 11y ago
Code offers debugging already (https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/editor/debugging https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/editor/debugging).
dimgl 11y ago
You can already debug Node.js applications in Visual Studio Code so they may provide DNX debugging eventually.
- Delmania 11y ago
  I think you can on OSX/Linux. It's not on Windows. If I had to guess, it's because VS Community exists.
  - plexicle 11y ago
    I was debugging a Node app on Windows with VSCode about 20 minutes ago.
    - Delmania 11y ago
      You can debug a Node application, my comment was with regards to a C# application.
      - matthewblott 11y ago
        You can already debug C# programs on OSX and Linux, I've done it myself. You can't debug ASP.NET apps yet but it's in the pipeline apparently.
mattmanser 11y ago

louthy 11y ago

> This will have to be very good to be better than Visual Studio on Windows. Really? I feel MS has really dropped the ball with VS. VS2013 was OK, but not great. A lot of random lock-ups in really annoying situations where you can't even fathom why (like opening a text file). VS 2015 is actually awful - it wasn't until Update 1 that typing this (below) in C# would pop-up an on screen exception dialog: class Foo : Bar { public Foo() : Pressing enter after the colon would throw the exception consistently. How on earth was that missed in testing? This is such a common C# pattern for invoking the base or this constructor. I often find myself staring at the screen, saying in my head 'What the hell are you doing now!'. The new DNX project system is unusably slow (compiling) and the tooling for it is non-existent. And for me it still crashes all of the time. Other devs on my team are having similar problems. TFS and TFS explorer is a total joke. The 'offline mode' is slower than online mode, and also causes crashes. If I lose my VPN connection then I have to shutdown VS and restart before TFS will reconnect again (this has been an issue for every version of VS I've used). Luckily we're moving away from that travesty of a system to git very soon (the VS git integration is actually pretty good). I used to feel that VS was a really solid piece of tooling, and I agreed with your sentiment that I quoted. I don't any more. I will check this out, and if it works then I'll happily drop VS, two years ago I couldn't ever imagine myself saying that. Competition can only be a good thing here.

yoklov 11y ago
> I feel MS has really dropped the ball with VS. This has been the case for C++ for a while now. Every version of VS has gotten worse since, IDK, 2006 or something (and that's ignoring how long it takes them to finish new versions of the language). I had a suspicion that they had moved their A team over to work on C#, but hearing this... maybe they're just getting worse.
- alkonaut 11y ago
  For C# at least every version is at least better than the previous. 2015 was the big Roslyn makeover so I suppose I can accept a few more regressions than usual. But feature-wise, each version has had at least one killer feature that made the previous seem dated on day 1. Examples: edit-and-continue, or lambdas in watches.

ohitsdom 11y ago

Completely agree. Also, the fact that Visual Studio Community edition is free, whereas Jetbrains is now on a SaaS model for their products means this is pretty much dead on Windows.

snuxoll 11y ago
Yes, community edition is free, to those with fewer than five users or $1mm in gross revenue. Those of us with more than that still have to pay, and I would much rather throw money at JetBrains than have to split it between MS and JetBrains.
SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
While it is indeed free, it comes with online activation and needs to be tied to a Live account (or whatever it's called these days) after the first 30 days. This is a pretty stupid decision IMO, as I discovered a few weeks back on a non-internet-connected dev server. And I say that as a longtime VS fan and advocate! (Of course, I guess JetBrains products would suffer exactly the same problem now with the new SaaS model - I just needed a rant about this particular issue.)

mantenpanther 11y ago

> This will have to be very good to be better than Visual Studio on Windows. Having worked with VS for many years, things not so glorious in my opinion. The main criticism is an increasing lack of stability and error prone refactoring. I've basically given up on automatic renaming with VS2015. The IDE crashes more often as it should, especially during debugging. Furthermore the solution/project-file concept (instead of using just folders to organize projects) is ancient and a real PITA when working in a team repository. I understand that this will hopefully be better in the future with .NET Core. Another thing are licensing issues, which is really a uprising problem at MS (this is also the case for other MS products). You're not allowed to open your IDE when the license - falsely - expired. I really enjoy working in VS code nowadays, which seems to be the more future oriented product. Don't get me wrong, VS is still a solid IDE, but not as stellar as often claimed in my opinion. As others already said, competition is a good thing.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
allisb 11y ago
We are part of the Visual Studio Licensing team. We're sorry to hear about the issues you've had. We understand that some customers have hit issues like this and have improved it in Update 1. For example, a single sign in to VS will now license the product for up to 1 year, making sign in failures resulting in an inability to use VS much less common. We are still listening to feedback. Please feel free to send some our way using the Send Feedback icon in the title bar.
VSTeam 11y ago
Hi mantenpanther, We appreciate the feedback. Can you contact us at VScteam@microsoft.com? We would like to chat with you regarding your concerns. Thanks.

zaszrespawned 11y ago

Agree with this. VS is itself written in C++, and I'm not sure if a java based ide is ever going to as performant on windows

edgyswingset 11y ago
Are you referring to backend services or the whole IDE? Because the GUI is written in WPF.
interdrift 11y ago
I think the IDE is written in WPF using PRISM and MEF