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As a person who has to use visual studio every day, I find that it’s by far one of the worst IDEs I’ve ever used Beyond being slow and confusing and unintuitiv

by cglan 5y ago

As a person who has to use visual studio every day, I find that it’s by far one of the worst IDEs I’ve ever used Beyond being slow and confusing and unintuitive I think the most annoying part is whats mostly mentioned in this article. Either you do things the visual studio way or screw you. Even creating a blank file is annoying and it keeps trying to shunt you into various templates.

vlovich123 5y ago
Having worked on in a wide variety of C++ development environments (Linux, Windows, & Mac with a variety of IDEs), VS is hard to beat. It’s parallel stacks feature is particularly helpful in debugging threading issues.
- ed_elliott_asc 5y ago
  The debugger is hard to beat, the rest of it is a bit crap.
  - garaetjjte 5y ago
    It would be fine but it is slow. Watch window refreshes and responds to expanding trees like it is traversing dozens of gigabytes on every single action. (if you enjoy watching rants there's one: https://youtu.be/GC-0tCy4P1U?t=1767 https://youtu.be/GC-0tCy4P1U?t=1767)
dagmx 5y ago
What other IDEs do you rank higher than Visual Studio? (Emphasis on IDE and not code editors). I'm going to assume C++ or C# dev. Eclipse is surely worse. Qt Creator and CLion/Rider are the only two I think are better . Xcode is terrible in comparison too.
- black_13 5y ago
- jcpst 5y ago
  Rider for sure. I commonly see mistakes in code reviews that likely wouldn’t have happened if they were using an IDE that provided more information. Once Rider and dotnet core liberated my work from Windows, I don’t see myself going back to VS unless there’s some technical reason it’s use is required.
andi999 5y ago
How about eclipse?
achn 5y ago
I don’t see how anyone can have this opinion. If you are producing code for which VS was designed (.net for example) it is obviously and definitely one of the greatest IDEs ever produced. If you are having to fight with VS, then you may not be using it for one of its main use cases. I certainly don’t think it is perfect (git support being quite annoying at times) but to say that it isn’t an incredible achievement is ridiculous.
- amelius 5y ago
  > If you are producing code for which VS was designed That's literally what GP is trying to say: "either you do it the VS way or screw you."
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  Try programming for Xamarin, UWP, or anything involving multitargeting. The list of actions for which closing visual studio, deleting a bunch of random folders, and restarting is long. Unfortunately it includes any changes to project files, because the project system is super broken with anything multitargeting related. That basically means I have to completely restart my IDE and run a script to clean everything maybe 15 times a day. And fuck me if I’m trying to find where a regression happened (which means changing dependencies, which live in the csproj). I remember when I didn’t have to restart VS 30 times a day, and memorize which build errors actually aren’t errors, and do random sequences of events to work around bugs, and memorize which unsuppressable warnings are legitimate and which are not. Before those days, Visual Studio was indeed an incredible accomplishment.
  - lazulicurio 5y ago
    > Try programming for Xamarin, UWP, or anything involving multitargeting. The complaints in the original article fell rather flat to me, but this is one area where it's absolutely fair to criticize VS. More generally, the reason that build tooling in the .net sphere is such a mess is because of historical baggage from VS. With that said, if you're coloring within the lines[1], VS is very powerful and productive. [1] To an extent. There definitely are use cases that are "supported" only in name.
hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
However, I'm not sure if other C++ IDE beats VS. The thing about VS is: I started to use VS back in VS2012, and for EVERY version that follows, it seems to be slower and slower. The last version that I stay put is VS2017 and I still have it installed. I have very good experience about Jetbrain products so maybe I'll try their C++ product as well, but so far I heard it's not very good for large projects.
- dustymcp 5y ago
  Wierd i have the opposite progression where its gotten faster 2022 also added abit more speed and laughable hotreload might give it a try?
  - hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
    Sure I'll see if 2022 is better.
GiorgioG 5y ago
I find VS2022 to be anything but slow now that it’s 64bit. Having said that, without ReSharper I find VS to be a terrible experience (I’ve been using R# for 15 years.) Rider is also a viable alternative.
- tester756 5y ago
  Have you tried Roslynator instead of R#?
- hughrr 5y ago
  I have a project here that won’t even open with Resharper on in VS2022. It just hangs and wedges the CPU at 100%, then my shitty laptop overheats and hibernates. Then I get pissed off and go for a walk and wonder why the hell I ever invested so much time in this.
  - GiorgioG 5y ago
    Laptops have always been a compromise between portability, battery life, thermals, and performance. In my opinion, Visual Studio was never meant to run well on a laptop.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      I’ve got a desktop it sucks just as hard on. That just makes my feet warm instead.
      - GiorgioG 5y ago
        I've worked on some legacy solutions that did indeed suck to open (100+ projects in a single solution), but none that would fail to load completely.
- ejb999 5y ago
  >>without ReSharper I find VS to be a terrible experience Resharper was always one of my favorite must have utilities to use for C# development in VS - but I have had the opposite experience as you, it became so slow and so bloated I had to give it up - often spiking my CPU to 100% and making the entire solution unusable - until I uninstalled it. Never could figure out why, but maybe resharper has gotten better since then?
SantiagoElf 5y ago
I strongly disagree with Visual Studio being slow. Visual Studio 2022 is hands down the best IDE ever created. (I have been using Visual Studio since 6.0 and .NET since the Beta of 2000) On this machine[1] Visual Studio 2022 flies :) [1] - https://valid.x86.fr/nkby1v https://valid.x86.fr/nkby1v
- thrower123 5y ago
  2022 does seem reasonable. 2017 and 2019 have been very bad. If they had moved to 64-bit a decade ago when it was obvious that they needed to do so, they would have never developed this reputation for being unusably slow and kludgy.
  - SantiagoElf 5y ago
    Worst was 2010, when they tried to switch to WPF or something. It was really slow. The top versions of Visual Studio for me: VS 2022, VS 2008 and VS 2019. The Chief Architect of Visual Studio mentioned on the VS 2022 launch event that they were planning to migrate it earlier, but according to telemetry data - just the past 2-3 years people started to use 64 bit operating systems et mass :) Btw I would love to see percentage of programmers who have families and children broken down by: 1. Ones using IDE like Visual Studio, Eclipse, Rider, etc. 2. Ones using IDE-ish editors like VS Code, Sublime 3. Ones using vim/emacs :)
    - jen20 5y ago
      > according to telemetry data - just the past 2-3 years people started to use 64 bit operating systems et mass This is what happens when you blindly trust telemetry when the target group of a product is the most likely to disable it because of company policy or personal preference.
kaetemi 5y ago
Yeah. You just create new code files outside of VS, and re-run CMake or add them to the project. Adding a new source file in VS will always shoot it in the wrong folder, and apply some useless template. Other than that, VS is great.
gromitss 5y ago

by cglan 5y ago

vlovich123 5y ago

Having worked on in a wide variety of C++ development environments (Linux, Windows, & Mac with a variety of IDEs), VS is hard to beat. It’s parallel stacks feature is particularly helpful in debugging threading issues.

ed_elliott_asc 5y ago
The debugger is hard to beat, the rest of it is a bit crap.
- garaetjjte 5y ago
  It would be fine but it is slow. Watch window refreshes and responds to expanding trees like it is traversing dozens of gigabytes on every single action. (if you enjoy watching rants there's one: https://youtu.be/GC-0tCy4P1U?t=1767 https://youtu.be/GC-0tCy4P1U?t=1767)

dagmx 5y ago

What other IDEs do you rank higher than Visual Studio? (Emphasis on IDE and not code editors). I'm going to assume C++ or C# dev. Eclipse is surely worse. Qt Creator and CLion/Rider are the only two I think are better . Xcode is terrible in comparison too.

black_13 5y ago
jcpst 5y ago
Rider for sure. I commonly see mistakes in code reviews that likely wouldn’t have happened if they were using an IDE that provided more information. Once Rider and dotnet core liberated my work from Windows, I don’t see myself going back to VS unless there’s some technical reason it’s use is required.

andi999 5y ago

How about eclipse?

achn 5y ago

I don’t see how anyone can have this opinion. If you are producing code for which VS was designed (.net for example) it is obviously and definitely one of the greatest IDEs ever produced. If you are having to fight with VS, then you may not be using it for one of its main use cases. I certainly don’t think it is perfect (git support being quite annoying at times) but to say that it isn’t an incredible achievement is ridiculous.

amelius 5y ago
> If you are producing code for which VS was designed That's literally what GP is trying to say: "either you do it the VS way or screw you."
n8cpdx 5y ago
Try programming for Xamarin, UWP, or anything involving multitargeting. The list of actions for which closing visual studio, deleting a bunch of random folders, and restarting is long. Unfortunately it includes any changes to project files, because the project system is super broken with anything multitargeting related. That basically means I have to completely restart my IDE and run a script to clean everything maybe 15 times a day. And fuck me if I’m trying to find where a regression happened (which means changing dependencies, which live in the csproj). I remember when I didn’t have to restart VS 30 times a day, and memorize which build errors actually aren’t errors, and do random sequences of events to work around bugs, and memorize which unsuppressable warnings are legitimate and which are not. Before those days, Visual Studio was indeed an incredible accomplishment.
- lazulicurio 5y ago
  > Try programming for Xamarin, UWP, or anything involving multitargeting. The complaints in the original article fell rather flat to me, but this is one area where it's absolutely fair to criticize VS. More generally, the reason that build tooling in the .net sphere is such a mess is because of historical baggage from VS. With that said, if you're coloring within the lines[1], VS is very powerful and productive. [1] To an extent. There definitely are use cases that are "supported" only in name.

hnthrowaway0315 5y ago

However, I'm not sure if other C++ IDE beats VS. The thing about VS is: I started to use VS back in VS2012, and for EVERY version that follows, it seems to be slower and slower. The last version that I stay put is VS2017 and I still have it installed. I have very good experience about Jetbrain products so maybe I'll try their C++ product as well, but so far I heard it's not very good for large projects.

dustymcp 5y ago
Wierd i have the opposite progression where its gotten faster 2022 also added abit more speed and laughable hotreload might give it a try?
- hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
  Sure I'll see if 2022 is better.

GiorgioG 5y ago

I find VS2022 to be anything but slow now that it’s 64bit. Having said that, without ReSharper I find VS to be a terrible experience (I’ve been using R# for 15 years.) Rider is also a viable alternative.

tester756 5y ago
Have you tried Roslynator instead of R#?
hughrr 5y ago
I have a project here that won’t even open with Resharper on in VS2022. It just hangs and wedges the CPU at 100%, then my shitty laptop overheats and hibernates. Then I get pissed off and go for a walk and wonder why the hell I ever invested so much time in this.
- GiorgioG 5y ago
  Laptops have always been a compromise between portability, battery life, thermals, and performance. In my opinion, Visual Studio was never meant to run well on a laptop.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    I’ve got a desktop it sucks just as hard on. That just makes my feet warm instead.
    - GiorgioG 5y ago
      I've worked on some legacy solutions that did indeed suck to open (100+ projects in a single solution), but none that would fail to load completely.
ejb999 5y ago
>>without ReSharper I find VS to be a terrible experience Resharper was always one of my favorite must have utilities to use for C# development in VS - but I have had the opposite experience as you, it became so slow and so bloated I had to give it up - often spiking my CPU to 100% and making the entire solution unusable - until I uninstalled it. Never could figure out why, but maybe resharper has gotten better since then?

SantiagoElf 5y ago

I strongly disagree with Visual Studio being slow. Visual Studio 2022 is hands down the best IDE ever created. (I have been using Visual Studio since 6.0 and .NET since the Beta of 2000) On this machine[1] Visual Studio 2022 flies :) [1] - https://valid.x86.fr/nkby1v https://valid.x86.fr/nkby1v

thrower123 5y ago
2022 does seem reasonable. 2017 and 2019 have been very bad. If they had moved to 64-bit a decade ago when it was obvious that they needed to do so, they would have never developed this reputation for being unusably slow and kludgy.
- SantiagoElf 5y ago
  Worst was 2010, when they tried to switch to WPF or something. It was really slow. The top versions of Visual Studio for me: VS 2022, VS 2008 and VS 2019. The Chief Architect of Visual Studio mentioned on the VS 2022 launch event that they were planning to migrate it earlier, but according to telemetry data - just the past 2-3 years people started to use 64 bit operating systems et mass :) Btw I would love to see percentage of programmers who have families and children broken down by: 1. Ones using IDE like Visual Studio, Eclipse, Rider, etc. 2. Ones using IDE-ish editors like VS Code, Sublime 3. Ones using vim/emacs :)
  - jen20 5y ago
    > according to telemetry data - just the past 2-3 years people started to use 64 bit operating systems et mass This is what happens when you blindly trust telemetry when the target group of a product is the most likely to disable it because of company policy or personal preference.

kaetemi 5y ago

Yeah. You just create new code files outside of VS, and re-run CMake or add them to the project. Adding a new source file in VS will always shoot it in the wrong folder, and apply some useless template. Other than that, VS is great.

gromitss 5y ago