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There's a lot to untangle here. Point 1 is largely true, Microsoft builds too many competing UI toolkits. Point 3: You can slim down Visual Studio's install a
by Someone1234 5y ago
There's a lot to untangle here.
Point 1 is largely true, Microsoft builds too many competing UI toolkits.
Point 3: You can slim down Visual Studio's install a lot if you're more selective during installation. For example if I only wanted to do .Net desktop application development it is closer to 4 GB and under 10 GB on disk.
Point 4: Is actually the end of the original synopsis on the topic and after it veers off. You successfully built the application.
Now it goes a little off the rails:
Point 5: "The app is extremely resource heavy and way too over-featured." Ok? You didn't say which toolkit, guide, or similar you used nor what you define as resource heavy or in what way it was "over-featured." This is too vague to discuss meaningfully (e.g. Win32 applications built in C++ definitely aren't resource heavy or over-featured for example, and since you didn't clarify even what tech stack was used let alone guide/template this isn't constructive at all).
Point 6: I've read this sentence several times but seemingly you opened an executable in a text editor and that somehow broke your build process? Or something? Was it write-locked by the editor?
Point 7-10: You had a working build pipeline, you broke the pipeline, then decided to start again from scratch in an editor that doesn't have native desktop development support on Windows (because the old editor was "bloated"). You found this process problematic.
So in answer to:
> Why is building Windows apps so complicated
You made it complicated by using unsupported workflows and introducing arbitrary limitations on what was a successful outcome. There's a lot you can legitimately criticize Windows and even its desktop application development workflow for, but this isn't that.
- rodrigo_b 5y agoI don't understand why the text editor is coupled to the build process. Visual Studio has, in my opinion, a text editor that leaves a lot to be desired. Multiple cursor support is especially bad, even more so when compared to VS Code multi cursors. Sadly I'm stuck with VS since I'm working on a Xamarin app and I couldn't figure out how to build and run with MS build :(
- vixalien 5y agobtw I used this guide: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/winui3/create-your-first-winui3-app?pivots=winui3-packaged-csharp https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/winui3/c.... 5. I wanted to build a Hello World App remember, to develop windows apps, they told me to download Visual Studio with the following features selected: workflows: Universal Windows Platform development, .NET Desktop Development, Desktop development with C++. Individual components: Windows 10 SDK (10.0.19041.0) and C++ (v142) Universal Windows Platform tools. I found all that unnecessary for Hello World but I was following a guide: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/windows-app-sdk/set-up-your-development-environment?tabs=vs-2022 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/windows-app-sd... 6-. Visual Studio was too heavy for my 7th gen Intel laptop so I switched to Sublime Text to work over there because I thought all build tools was installed. I tried to run "dotnet build" but it didn't work. "msbuild" worked but i don't know to run the built app.
- oblio 5y agoDeveloping .NET applications using simple text editors isn't really practical. Everyone uses VS, Rider or VS Code.
- vixalien 5y agoI used VS Code but I still can not run my app. I can only use VS.
- easton 5y agoVSCode has issues with MSBuild for all but the easiest (read: Recent .NET version, targeting the web) to build projects. It'll be difficult to get by without VS unless you're a wizard, in which case you're probably stockholm syndromed into VS anyway.
- Tempest1981 5y agoVS has a debugger, which I find useful during development. Not sure if VSCode does. Edit: looks like there is an extension for C# and C++
- dleslie 5y agoVSCode can debug and build apps if you have the extensions and tooling installed. Even C/C++ apps. It's actually a pretty great visual debugger on Linux for that reason.
- squeaky-clean 5y agoSublime Text is on par with VSCode. I wouldn't call it a simple text editor unless VS Code also fell into that category.
- oblio 5y agoDoes Sublime have a .NET plugin that offers intelligent, symbol based autocompletions (i.e. intellisense)?
- ylyn 5y ago> Point 6: I've read this sentence several times but seemingly you opened an executable in a text editor and that somehow broke your build process? Or something? Was it write-locked by the editor? I can't imagine how you got to that interpretation. Obviously what OP meant was that they wanted to get out of VS and try developing in Sublime..
- azinman2 5y agoAnd in doing so expected Sublime to be an IDE and not a text editor, which means they don’t really understand what. text editor is, what’s in scope, or how it functions.
- Vivtek 5y agoNo, in doing so they expected the IDE to continue to function as a build tool even if the programmer is using a text editor that works for them.
- vixalien 5y agoI needed to install Android Studio to get the relevant android build tools, when I was done, I didn't touch android studio, I wrote all my code in Sublime and run a command that uses Android Studio's tools without opening the app. Heck, I could even run an emulator without opening the Android Studio GUI which is comparable to VS. It seems like Windows devs are locked to Visual Studio.
- ufmace 5y agoSpeaking as somebody who spent years developing Windows desktop apps professionally, yes this pretty much. Visual Studio is admittedly a bit bloated and can be slow, but it's pretty much the only game in town when it comes to building Windows desktop apps. Jetbrains Rider might be okay, never tried it. Don't even bother trying to use any alternate text editors or you'll be in a world of pain. People used to doing development for Unixy CLI apps or web stuff tend to try to use their familiar tools when trying to do Windows desktop app development, and run into a ton of problems. The solution is, don't do that. Use Visual Studio the way it was meant to be used. Also, in the web world, it may be less of a pain to always use the newest hottest thing. Microsoft does have a tendency to produce half-baked new UI frameworks and over-hype them before abandoning them, so people used to the web world way of figuring out what to use tend to get sucked into them and then get frustrated. IMO, stick to C# WinForms to get going, and use it until you know you need something it doesn't do well.
- ZanyProgrammer 5y ago>IMO, stick to C# WinForms to get going, and use it until you know you need something it doesn't do well. Heh, as per the discussion above, this really should be prefixed with "unpopular opinion:", since you really don't see a lot of recommendations that people use WinForms for anything these days.
- scotty79 5y agoWinForms is actually super nice, and given how many toolkits MS released after that, latest one even without working GUI designer, I'd say WinForms is one of the best options available.
- ZanyProgrammer 5y agoI agree, it's unfairly maligned and very useful.
- throwawayHN378 5y agoI read the sentence as “I opened the source code in a different IDE and it fucked with IDE files of the first one”. I don’t use any of the mentioned IDEs so I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but I have ran into it before. I just delete all the files that I wouldn’t check into scm and reimport into my IDE of choice