4 ms·

I often think, on seeing new releases of Microsoft products with "features" like this, that they simply have too many people who don't know how to leave well en

I often think, on seeing new releases of Microsoft products with "features" like this, that they simply have too many people who don't know how to leave well enough alone. Each of the last few versions of VS seems to include a lot of unnecessary UI churn - 2008 had a bunch of subtle but pointless changes, 2010 looks gratuitously different to every other Windows app and now in 2012 they're fiddling with the menu capitalisation. I'd much rather that they left all that alone and spent half that effort just fixing bugs - better C++0x support, make Intellisense actually work (I hear that one may have happened anyway in 2010?), fix the funky weird bugs in the text editor, fix some crashes. I can only assume that they're adding a lot of visible bling changes because they think that will drive more upgrades, but honestly, the menus were fine as lower case. Leave them alone.

JosephHatfield 14y ago
The Developer division is just another group of people within Microsoft with their own goals. The connection between them and the Office division or the Windows division is incidental. In my opinion, Visual Studio has been going downhill ever since version 6.
- archangel_one 14y ago
  I'm not quite sure, but assume that the connection to Windows/Office you talk about is in response to my suggesting that the menus should be consistent with everything else? I see that as more of a UI principle than a consequence of how closely the teams are bound within MS. I think there have been good features since; the VC++ compiler improved a lot in 2003 and the ability to debug into STL containers (IIRC, 2005?) is brilliant. I just wish I could get things like that without the bloat* and UI churn. *: yes, I know "bloat" is an overused term, but honestly, VS2008 is several gigabytes and takes an hour and multiple reboots to install, plus another half-hour for the service pack. I find that a bit extreme for what is basically a compiler and, as described in another thread, a glorified text editor.

JosephHatfield 14y ago

The Developer division is just another group of people within Microsoft with their own goals. The connection between them and the Office division or the Windows division is incidental. In my opinion, Visual Studio has been going downhill ever since version 6.

archangel_one 14y ago
I'm not quite sure, but assume that the connection to Windows/Office you talk about is in response to my suggesting that the menus should be consistent with everything else? I see that as more of a UI principle than a consequence of how closely the teams are bound within MS. I think there have been good features since; the VC++ compiler improved a lot in 2003 and the ability to debug into STL containers (IIRC, 2005?) is brilliant. I just wish I could get things like that without the bloat* and UI churn. *: yes, I know "bloat" is an overused term, but honestly, VS2008 is several gigabytes and takes an hour and multiple reboots to install, plus another half-hour for the service pack. I find that a bit extreme for what is basically a compiler and, as described in another thread, a glorified text editor.