5 ms·

In fairness to the folk who can't install Visual Studio - it's a genuine pain in the butt. Last time I tried, half of the download links were absolutely non-fu

by bpchaps 10y ago

In fairness to the folk who can't install Visual Studio - it's a genuine pain in the butt. Last time I tried, half of the download links were absolutely non-functional. Their documentation didn't help much, either, since they pointed to the non-functioning links. I got a lot of shit for that one, but felt completely vindicated when it happened to someone else a year later.

eropple 10y ago
`choco install VisualStudio2015Professional`. ;) After all--we're all developers. Automate!
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> In fairness to the folk who can't install Visual Studio - it's a genuine pain in the butt. It takes a while but I've never found it to be a pain in the butt and I've used it, off and on, since version 6 in the late 90s. If the install errors out it gives you an error message, you google for it, figure out what the problem is (most common messages are easy to find solutions for), fix the problem, reinstall, done.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  Then you were lucky. I remember on the first day of a new job being given a folder containing all the MSDN subscription disks in the mid-2000s and being told to install visual studio. I'd only ever used notepad as an editor before. This is a massive stack of DVDs with multiple disks, but worse there are a bunch of cds listing different versions of a thing called "visual studio". After 15 minutes of struggling and surreptitious googling because I didn't want to look stupid on my new job, a colleague walked by, went "oh", picked out the right disk and said "that's the one you need". And I had to do the same for multiple new starters. Even today when you have to install something from MSDN, you search for "Office" and get a bunch of irrelevant language packs listed at the top which is definitely not what you want, then also have to know what x86 and x64 means, something a novice will not know, and know what "SP" means and that "SP2" is better than "SP1".
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    > Then you were lucky. I worked in 3 Microsoft dev shops and 1 that had a mixture. As far as I know I hadn't heard of anyone having issues getting it installed except for the rare, occasional error that could be Googled and fixed. I'm not sure I'd call that luck, sounds like you just had a bad experience. But yeah back in the day it was a stack of discs (I think the last disc version I used had 2 discs for visual studio and 4 for the msdn) but they were always clearly labeled. One for Visual Studio, one for additional add ons and stuff and the rest for MSDN documentation. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - mattmanser 10y ago
      There were 40 DVDs in a MSDN subscription in 2004, so not sure what you're talking about, you might have had the cheapo one?
      - user5994461 10y ago
        I've worked on VS since VS 2003. The first versions (200X) had some challenge at times. Starting from locating the installer for the right edition and the license. Then minimal setup to have a working environment was split in 5 different installer/projects to be executed in orders (one VS pack per language + the Windows SDK + the debugger kit + the ATL/MFC package + the driver kit [if you dev drivers] + the DirectX SDK [if you need it]). Then configure some PATH and libraries to link together all of that. Last I checked, in 201X editions. A lot have been regrouped in a single setup. That's enough for most developments. And the optional packages have auto detection (and it ain't fucked it you run it twice).
      - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
        OHHH So the MSDN subscription is different. The MSDN subscription is the full Microsoft catalog of software. Every version of Visual Studio, every Windows, Office, MSDN documentation; it's literally everything. The parents above were talking about just installing Visual Studio. When you purchase Visual Studio it was usually 2-6 discs in my experience (most containing the MSDN documentation). But the MSDN subscription is a very different beast. Granted there should have still been a Visual Studio disc for a specific architecture that you were using and your group should have known if they're using Professional, Team, etc as you'd likely need the same. That was a fun misunderstanding though :)

by bpchaps 10y ago

eropple 10y ago

`choco install VisualStudio2015Professional`. ;) After all--we're all developers. Automate!

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

> In fairness to the folk who can't install Visual Studio - it's a genuine pain in the butt. It takes a while but I've never found it to be a pain in the butt and I've used it, off and on, since version 6 in the late 90s. If the install errors out it gives you an error message, you google for it, figure out what the problem is (most common messages are easy to find solutions for), fix the problem, reinstall, done.

mattmanser 10y ago
Then you were lucky. I remember on the first day of a new job being given a folder containing all the MSDN subscription disks in the mid-2000s and being told to install visual studio. I'd only ever used notepad as an editor before. This is a massive stack of DVDs with multiple disks, but worse there are a bunch of cds listing different versions of a thing called "visual studio". After 15 minutes of struggling and surreptitious googling because I didn't want to look stupid on my new job, a colleague walked by, went "oh", picked out the right disk and said "that's the one you need". And I had to do the same for multiple new starters. Even today when you have to install something from MSDN, you search for "Office" and get a bunch of irrelevant language packs listed at the top which is definitely not what you want, then also have to know what x86 and x64 means, something a novice will not know, and know what "SP" means and that "SP2" is better than "SP1".
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  > Then you were lucky. I worked in 3 Microsoft dev shops and 1 that had a mixture. As far as I know I hadn't heard of anyone having issues getting it installed except for the rare, occasional error that could be Googled and fixed. I'm not sure I'd call that luck, sounds like you just had a bad experience. But yeah back in the day it was a stack of discs (I think the last disc version I used had 2 discs for visual studio and 4 for the msdn) but they were always clearly labeled. One for Visual Studio, one for additional add ons and stuff and the rest for MSDN documentation. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    There were 40 DVDs in a MSDN subscription in 2004, so not sure what you're talking about, you might have had the cheapo one?
    - user5994461 10y ago
      I've worked on VS since VS 2003. The first versions (200X) had some challenge at times. Starting from locating the installer for the right edition and the license. Then minimal setup to have a working environment was split in 5 different installer/projects to be executed in orders (one VS pack per language + the Windows SDK + the debugger kit + the ATL/MFC package + the driver kit [if you dev drivers] + the DirectX SDK [if you need it]). Then configure some PATH and libraries to link together all of that. Last I checked, in 201X editions. A lot have been regrouped in a single setup. That's enough for most developments. And the optional packages have auto detection (and it ain't fucked it you run it twice).
    - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
      OHHH So the MSDN subscription is different. The MSDN subscription is the full Microsoft catalog of software. Every version of Visual Studio, every Windows, Office, MSDN documentation; it's literally everything. The parents above were talking about just installing Visual Studio. When you purchase Visual Studio it was usually 2-6 discs in my experience (most containing the MSDN documentation). But the MSDN subscription is a very different beast. Granted there should have still been a Visual Studio disc for a specific architecture that you were using and your group should have known if they're using Professional, Team, etc as you'd likely need the same. That was a fun misunderstanding though :)