.Net Framework and Visual Studio Now Available

DJ-Dodger writes "The Microsoft Blogs are all buzzing with news that the .NET Framework 2.0, Visual Studio.NET 2005 and Sql Server 2005 have released to manufacture. Michael Swanson's blog has a nice run down of what's available now and what's coming. The short version: MSDN Subscribers can download everything now, everybody else can pick up their copy after the November 7th launch." The .Net framework is downloadable from FileForum.

Comments

Oh boy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just love Microsoft products! Now, I just wait for the karma to roll in ...

Torrent?

[fuzzy12345]

Sheesh. At least point us to a torrent.

And "SQL Server 2005"? Shouldn't that be 2006? What do I want with last year's model?

Re:Torrent?

[DrEldarion]

And "SQL Server 2005"? Shouldn't that be 2006? What do I want with last year's model?

"SQL Server 2005 - Outdated even before release!"

Re:Torrent?

[Golthar]

Yeah and get this... I'm getting MS SQL 2000 certified (because there aren't new certs around)

Direct download

[dedazo]

If you're downloading the 2.0 framework & SDK (many people write .NET apps without Visual Studio), you can get them directly from the MSDN .NET developer center.

I'm guessing MSDN is going to be less swamped than FileForum, though the subscriber downloads are extremely slow at the moment as expected.

Re:Direct download

[jeroenb]

Actually, it's rolling in here at ~200kb/s all the way to Europe. Although at ~3GB for VS2005 alone, it's still taking a while.

Re:Direct download

[dedazo]

Extremely slow in North America - I thought it was the pipe coming in here but someone just IM'ed me from somewhere else in the US and they're having the same problem.

Oh well, I can always wait for the DVDs to arrive at the office =)

Actually since I do a lot of development with their C++ compiler and (gasp) vim, for the moment I only want to look at the framework. I don't use VS.NET that much and can't think of a way to use SQL Server at all, but I do want to look at them eventually.

Re:Direct download

[jenkin sear]

I've been getting 800KB consistently, but I'm in a home office on comcast, so perhaps that isn't getting slammed.

Re:Direct download

[Sexy Commando]

I'm getting 4000kb/s at work.

Re:Direct download

[ergo98]

I'm guessing MSDN is going to be less swamped than FileForum, though the subscriber downloads are extremely slow at the moment as expected.

I downloaded both Visual Studio 2005 (it is not VS.NET anymore kids) and SQL Server 2005 from subscriber downloads in about 3 and a half hours - all 5.4GB of it. That was to a home cable modem connection. That's about 500KB/second for one single downloader, which is pretty damn good.

Re:Direct download

[dedazo]

Yay, that's not bad at all. It must be my pipe then. Sigh.

They're getting ready to give it out

[damiceious]

Sounds like they're getting ready to distribute it during the "Ready Launch Tour 2005"
http://www.microsoft.com/events/2005launchevents/s st.mspx

Re:They're getting ready to give it out

[ClippyHater]

When I registered, I was told it was a 180-day time trial. A shame.

Re:They're getting ready to give it out

[stoolpigeon]

The email I got said standard version- regular license. Now I'm not sure if it varies by location but they had to send the email out as the registration site said it was the pro version for a while.

Re:They're getting ready to give it out

[stupidfoo]

I believe it is MS SQL 2005 standard and Visual Studio 2005 pro. The only limitation is that they can not be sold. No timeout.

I'm signed up for the event in my city, but it's not until the middle of December.

Re:They're getting ready to give it out

[LurkerXXX]

The email I got didn't mention it at all :(

Now I'm not sure if I want to drive a few hundred miles to the event.

Re:They're getting ready to give it out

[LurkerXXX]

Yup. The 'while supplies last' is very worrisome.

You could get a free copy

[mymaxx]

They are handing out free copies at their launch events.

Re:You could get a free copy

[Surt]

Sadly, only if you can make it to a launch event. My nearest one is about 600 miles away. Granted, even with drive time, gas, and wear and tear on my car, it would still be cheaper than purchasing it.

Re:You could get a free copy

[spartan7891]

I'm gonna be at the one here in D.C. in January. Oh to be close to a major city. Anyone know what the license info is for it though?

Re:You could get a free copy

[RandoX]

Anyone know if this is a full-function unlimited version or a trial?

Re:You could get a free copy

[stoolpigeon]

the registration site said pro version for a while, then switched to standard and microsoft sent an email saying it would be standard. people in this thread are saying 180 day license-- the email I got said nothing about that.

Re:You could get a free copy

[el-spectre]

Full function, not-for-resale. The launch I'm going to is giving VS standard and MSSQL

Re:You could get a free copy

[Pop69]

Any idea if that is US only ?

I'm signed up to go to the launch tour thing in Edinburgh in December

Re:You could get a free copy

[Naikrovek]

I believe it depends on when you signed up. If you were invited before the bulk invite, I think you get a better version.

I don't know though, but I do know I'm going early so I can make sure I get a copy of each.

C# Generics

[skraps]

It's about time. The beta has been out for about a year I think.

Re:C# Generics

[Pxtl]

C# Generics should've been in the language back when it was called Java. The fact that the whole development world jumped over to these JIT platforms before that kind of basic expressiveness was present in the language perplexed and disgusted me. I mean really, for all people call them "C++ without the cruft" missing templates was "C++ without the basic, usable functionality".

Re:C# Generics

[rp]

I can't agree with you more, but then again, you have to realise that Java and C# are essentially attempts to sell basic programming concepts to C programmers. They had to dumb the languages down so as not to alienate the intended audience too much. C# has a nice roadmap towards more functional programming concepts. The whole idea is to get more people to use saner programming techniques without them realizing it.

Just my 2 Eurocents, as always ...

Re:C# Generics

[Lucractius]

Realy id say the impetus behind java isnt the use of sane programing techniques being snuck in, its simply A: its utterly pervasive, got a cell phone? youve got java (something like 75% or more of sim cards use javacard technology now). And B: Its freaking huge API. Raise your hand if youve memorised the entire Standard Edition API refference. I didnt think so... Me either...

The Language does more of your work for you now but it does it without robbing you of the ability to do it your own way fortunatly.

Re:C# Generics

[sjelkjd]

>>I mean really, for all people call them "C++ without the cruft" missing templates was "C++ without the basic, usable functionality". Except that you don't need templates in java/c# in the same way that you do in c++, due to a type system that actually worked. >>The fact that the whole development world jumped over to these JIT platforms JIT existed before C# and java; don't try to make it some kind of dirty word, since it doesn't have anything to do with the presence or absence of templates in a language. >>before that kind of basic expressiveness was present in the language Try writing a cross platform windowed, networked application in c++. That is java's "basic expressiveness."

Sql Server 2005 eh ?

[testednegative]

I wonder if they still have the wonderfull sa/(null) feature. God I loved that one...

Re:Sql Server 2005 eh ?

[lowe0]

1999 called. They want their security holes back.

Re:Sql Server 2005 eh ?

[bobcat7677]

No, they don't allow the sa account to have a blank password any longer. Actually, 2005 now requires the sa password to be "strong" (upper and lower case characters plus numbers or special characters).

Re:Sql Server 2005 eh ?

[0kComputer]

You mean the stupid user who doesn't put in a password feature? Yeah maybe MS could've thought ahead on that one, but you have to lay most of the blame of that exploit on the users.

Re:Sql Server 2005 eh ?

[martinlp]

Do you love it as much as mysql's root/(null) feature?

before you mod me troll know that I am posting from my Linux laptop :-)

Re:Sql Server 2005 eh ?

[Hurricane78]

Well... both are no db-servers but toys... so what? ;P

Re:Sql Server 2005 eh ?

[Robert The Coward]

True but it is only for local host. If you try to connect with anything other then 127.0.0.1 you have to use a password.

Robert

Cool!

[dslauson]

As much as I hate to give MS props, C# is one of my favorite languages to program in. I'm a GNU programmer at heart, but programming C# is like brain candy. I don't have to think about memory allocation or anything even remotely machine-related.

I know, I know, Java's got that stuff, too. I like 'em both. A guy can swing both way, right?

Re:Cool!

[geoffrobinson]

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Re:Cool!

[AstroDrabb]

As much as I hate to give MS props, C# is one of my favorite languages to program in.

So then give props to Mono!

Re:Cool!

[DrXym]

I programme Java and C#. To be honest, the differences between the two languages (especially since Java 1.5 & .NET 2.0) are so slight that it makes no damned difference which one I'm writing for. What makes a massive difference is the tools you use to write for these languages.

Eclipse is an absolutely awesome development platform. It is packed with so many useful things, that it's hard to imagine what developing without would be like. Being able to rename a class and every call to it, or turn a bunch of methods into an interface or seeing all compiler errors in real time etc., is so mind bogglingly useful that I don't think I could ever go back to a plain text editor unless it was forced on me. I'd say without a shadow of doubt that using something like Eclipse halves the amount of time it takes to develop code over a text editor.

DevStudio 2003 is not so great in this regard (although editing forms is easier) but I expect that the 2005 edition is a hell of a lot better. I'll have to grab the "express" version and get a taste of how far it's advanced.

Re:Cool!

[dslauson]

Mono didn't create the language, they just created another runtime environment for it. They get my props for doing that, too. I'm just trying to give credit where credit is due.

Honestly, the way I feel about it is that if I'm going to write real software, I'm going to write it in C++ and I'm going to write it for Linux. If I'm just dicking around writing some code for Windows, sometimes C# is fun.

I swear, you give a Microsoft product one little backhanded complement on this site, and people are all over you. This isn't a fascist Linux dictatorship, you know. It's a forum for people to express oppinions and share information.

Re:Cool!

[Thai-Pan]

Thank you! I feel exactly the same. I've been a Linux hippie for years, but I'm very rapidly converting to the dark side. Get prepared for a rant not specific to just C#...

I don't care what anyone says, C# is way better than Java. And I have ~5 years experience with Java, 6 months experience with C#. It converted me in no time. C# is very pleasant and the language just seems to get out of your way when you want to do something, largely because of the .Net framework.

I'm tired of the fact that it's "cool" to make fun of Microsoft on Slashdot. But you know what? They have a lot of very solid products. Visual Studio is a fantastic IDE. SQL Server is not always the server of choice, but it is very powerful nonetheless.

I'd say this is going to be a very big year for Microsoft. All of their major product groups have a major release due out, and they're all looking very good from what I've seen so far.

So we may not always like Microsoft's products in every way, and we may downright hate some of their business practices. Does that make Visual Studio and C# any worse of a product? Does that make Microsoft Word a worse word processor? NO.

"OMG WINDOWS 95 HAD BLUE SCREENS LOL C# MUST BE BAD" -- Grow up.

The entire open source community needs to grow up a little bit. There's a tremendous amount of talent in it, but it's so obscured by absurd social stigmas and internet-Green-Peace propaganda that a great deal of it loses credability. Visual Studio is a great IDE. C# is a great language. Office is a great productivity toolkit. People use them. Live with it, move on.

Re:Cool!

[ad0gg]

I agree. I can switch between java and c# like its nothing. Eclipse is a nice IDE but i prefer vs.net maybe because i'm used to it more. Eclipse refactoring tools are wonderful, but there are 3rd party addons(refactor is one) to vs.net to add the same functionality.

Re:Cool!

[SpryGuy]

IntelliJ IDEA for Java is even better (but it costs money). And Visual Studio 2003, let's face it, SUCKS. After working in IDEA for 3 years, going to VS2003 felt like going back to stone knives and bear-skins. It was awful.

But thankfully, the IntelliJ IDEA authors at JetBrains came up with "ReSharper" as a plugin to Visual Studio 2003, which brought it up to the level of almost being usable.

Visual Studio 2005 is significantly better than 2003, but still nowhere close to Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA. And also thankfully, the Jetbrains guys will be coming out with a ReSharper plugin to enhance VS2005 as well... though who knows when it'll be released (my guess: early 2006).

Re:Cool!

[jma05]

>> I don't have to think about memory allocation or anything even remotely machine-related.

Aside from C/C++, how many main stream languages don't have have garbage collection these days?

Re:Cool!

[bill_kress]

Hmm... C# is really just a bunch of Java concepts that MS stole. If you want to give props, give 'em where they are due.

There is very little in C# that wasn't in java, and what is new to C# probably should have been left out.

Re:Cool!

[SpryGuy]

If you think Visual Studio 2003 was a "fantastic" IDE, then you haven't used many modern IDEs. At the very least, you need to add something like "Resharper" to make it even remotely usable, imho.

I do love C# and the .Net framekwork though, I have to admit. I worked in Java for several years, and I think C# is just cleaner for a lot of things. And before Java I was C++ for a good many years, and C before that. I think C# is just about the easiest (while still being powerful) langauges I've ever used.

Re:Cool!

[Jugalator]

DevStudio 2003 is not so great in this regard (although editing forms is easier) but I expect that the 2005 edition is a hell of a lot better.

What I like most about 2005 is that it has honestly got the best UI editor I've seen in an IDE yet with its intelligent guides to align controls, along with it having vastly improved debug and analysis tools, such as a good edit & continue, code coverage analysis, and much more goodies. There are two products I do believe Microsoft is doing really well with nowadays -- MS Office and Visual Studio. Their C++ compiler is even a good (and highly optimizing to boot) ISO compliant one nowadays.

Re:Cool!

[tenchiken]

Hey kids, don't let a little thing called ignorance get in the way of your microsoft bashing! now you too can be a mindless /. troll!

Ignore the fact that Java stole from C++ and Smalltalk just as much as C# stole from java.

Ignore the nifty new features that C# introducted... Annotations, foreach, data binding etc.

Ignore the fact that Java has now lifted these features from C# and has them in the new version of Java!

Ignore all of the neat new features coming with 2.0 and 3.0. Generics and Closures? Who needs thoose!

Re:Cool!

[m4g02]

I don't care what anyone says, C# is way better than Java. And I have ~5 years experience with Java, 6 months experience with C#. It converted me in no time. C# is very pleasant and the language just seems to get out of your way when you want to do something, largely because of the .Net framework.

I agree C# is better than Java but I don't like both, I know you don't need to cover your traces when dealing with memory and dynamic allocation, but you are sacrificing quite a bit of processor time and system memory in the process. Garbage collectors and every other tool meant to make programming easy costs heavily in time and hardware. Most probably you are going to say that now days computers are fast enough to pay the toll but that is true only for certain cases. Think about AI, speech recognition (even an OS) and many other processor demanding tasks, you would like to use wisely every tick of the clock... As always the method to solve the problem is in the problem itself, but I personally would like to spend my days developing something more significant than a monthly savings report for McDonalds so I'm glad to take my time, use my brain and continue developing on C++.

So we may not always like Microsoft's products in every way, and we may downright hate some of their business practices. Does that make Visual Studio and C# any worse of a product? Does that make Microsoft Word a worse word processor? NO.

No, it doesn't, but as business practices go you can be damn sure they are going to struggle to suck your money up with incompatibilities, upgrades and what else.

Re:Cool!

[Pxtl]

I hear this a lot... but I wonder how much this is just because coders were stuck with C? I mean, if you use C++ and actually take the time to learn the language and the free tools available (like doing little things like using vectors and smart pointers). I haven't gotten to use 2.0 (or Java 5) yet, but up until there I feel like C# and Java are like being forced back into highschool - everything I know about abstraction and once-and-only-once is now useless because the languages no longer include concepts essential for clean code. Instead, you end up with mindlessly long files doing all sorts of convoluted crap that would be typesafe one-liners in languages with generics or multiple inheritence, and instead are done with piles of unsafe casting and copy+pasted code.

Now, finally, these languages are becoming useful. But as somebody who actually sat down and took the time to _learn_ proper C++ coding, it seems like they re-invented the wheel and left out the tire, axle, and various other important parts in the name of "simplicity". Now, I'm not a C nut that wants pointer arithmetic and manual memory management and crap like that - I just mean having basic expressiveness in the language.

C++ was ugly, and it was notably sorely missing a true "ForEach" function (and don't suggest that fugly Boost hack), but it was a damn sight better than throwing type-safety out the window. If I wanted to cast everything to-and-from Object over and over again, I'd just program in Python.

But I do like the CLI, and properties are fun.

Really, I think of these new languages as C-like scripting engines that just happen to be required to use their complete, thorough libraries. The languages themselves I could take or leave.

The other thing I laugh at about C#/Java - the fact that they go to so much effort to look like C. When I found out about how the "break" statement in C# switch statements worked, it made me laugh my ass off. They've made it a point to sacrifice common sense in favour of familiarity.

So far, Nemerle is looking like what C# should have been.

Re:Cool!

[dslauson]

OK, hold on.

First, having everything derived from one base class is not the same thing as throwing out type safety. Java and C# are both typesafe languages, but at the root most objects are derived from the same class. There is a HUGE difference.

Second, as for encouraging bad coding practices, I find it to be the opposite. In C++, you have the option of falling back on the old C-style programming, and it's easy to have a ton of bad global variables floating all over the place. C# and Java both force the object-oriented model, and it doesn't give you that option. I've found that makes my code better and more readable.

Third, C++ is my native tongue. I'm working on a master's degree in CS right now, and I make a living writing embedded C++, so you can't tell me that I only like C# and Java because I don't know true C++. That's bull.

I can see your point that if you let Visual Studio do all the work for you and you rely on drag-and-drop GUI's and auto generated event handling all the time, you may end up with some ugly, repetitive, unreadable code. Believe me, though, I've seen C++ code that's just as bad.

I've seen a lot of people in the tech industry who are incredible C programmers, but who don't really understand object oriented principals and design patterns. Those are usually the people who tend to say that pure OO languages like Java and C# are convoluted, because they don't really understand what's going on.

Re:Cool!

[AaronBrethorst]

Can you explain why you think Visual Studio 2003 sucks? I've never used IDEA before, so I have no basis for comparison.

Re:Cool!

[mrcparker]

I feel the same you that you do, except about C++. Coming from a LISP background, languages like C++ feel overly-complex and clunky. C# actually is a much more (IMHO) easy-to-learn language.

Re:Cool!

[Pxtl]

My point is that it takes more than a nice inheritence tree to make clean code. Consider the mess of casting and wrapping that it takes simply to make use of a container. In C++, you design the container as a template and then just give it the right type, and it works. In these other languages, there isn't even a simple macro system to substitute. Likewise, the lack of multiple inheritence means that I'm always seeing the same functions re-implemented over and over again rather than just inherited in from a sibling class.

Yes, C++ gave you a lot more rope to hang yourself with - anybody who wrote oldschool C mixed with OOP paradigms was just making a trainwreck (sadly, that methodology is very common in OSS). But it also had many much higher level abstractions available.

You can re-implement many of the high level abstractions using reflection, but at such a crippling performance and legibility hit you may as well be using Perl.

I can understand being frustrated with embedded C++ - embedded C++ means living without the libraries that make C++ a joy to work with. You need to keep things stripped and avoid boost pointers and the like. But that's my point - C++ has the capability to do most of the neat things that people love about the newer languages plus a lot that they can't do - the problem is that it doesn't _force_ you to do those things, and instead lets you do stupid stupid crap.

I know that C++ needed a replacement - I'm just frustrated with disappointment in what we got. The new language we were waiting for was something robust and expressive, not these castrated glorified VB-with-single-inheritence languages.

Re:Cool!

[AndroidCat]

My main complaint is that it's far too modal. Some things you can only do if you are in the resource view and you right-click on an item. Other things have to be done just so from the top menu. Some things are off the class view, and I still miss the class wizard... And what's with the 256 colour limit in the resource view?!

VS 2005 is a lot smoother.

Re:Cool!

[Pxtl]

Yes, I agree that C++ was overcomplicated - this is by necessity. They took an already complex language(C) added some new concepts to it (const, for example) and then implemented a thorough, versatile OOP system with it.

C# came and simplified the C language and removed some of those new concepts. Those were great steps. The problem is that they also ripped out a lot of the high-level and OO programming concepts too (like multiple inheritence and metaprogramming). That's where the problems came in. The fact is that while you can implement anything in C# and you can do it cleanly and legibly, it's really hard to refactor or consolidate your code. Everyone was sayign that they were going back to the simplicity of SmallTalk and Objective C, forgetting that those are dynamically-typed languages. Java and C# are statically typed, and so the static typing doesn't really get along with the object model.

I guess I'm just really sick of having to copy+paste my code.

Re:Cool!

[sconeu]

I would kill for the VC2003 compiler in the VS6 IDE.

Re:Cool!

[CausticPuppy]

I agree C# is better than Java but I don't like both, I know you don't need to cover your traces when dealing with memory and dynamic allocation, but you are sacrificing quite a bit of processor time and system memory in the process. Garbage collectors and every other tool meant to make programming easy costs heavily in time and hardware. Most probably you are going to say that now days computers are fast enough to pay the toll but that is true only for certain cases. Think about AI, speech recognition (even an OS) and many other processor demanding tasks, you would like to use wisely every tick of the clock... As always the method to solve the problem is in the problem itself, but I personally would like to spend my days developing something more significant than a monthly savings report for McDonalds so I'm glad to take my time, use my brain and continue developing on C++.

So, you use C++ for apps where speed and efficiency are important, while you use C# or Java for apps where maintainability and development time are important. Nobody said you have to use one tool for everything. C# and Java are particularly well suited to server applications, web services, etc. and you can program a LOT of functionality in a relatively small amount of time.
We use Java for most things (primarily server-side apps) and they are quite a bit more significant than savings reports.

Re:Cool!

[NuclearRampage]

Another shout for ReSharper. Once you don't have to compile to find out something isn't right it's real hard to go back to normal VS. I hope they reduce the extra time it takes to parse at the loading of a project though. Large projects take way too long.

Re:Cool!

[Axe]

I've never used IDEA before

That's your answer, right in your question.

Developed by a bunch of russian geeks from St.Petersburg. Good job, I would say.

Looks like they are planning to expand into more languages. That would be nice. They currently do Java, JSP and some xml stuff..

I would love to have them do a C++ IDE. Eclipse CDT on Cygwin is rather sucky.

Re:Cool!

[eprubio]

You should get VC++ Toolkit 2003 then.

Re:Cool!

[dslauson]

OK, one last reply.

Have you had a chance to play with C# interfaces? They basicly give you all the functionality of multiple inheritance without a lot of the mess it can cause. Check it out. Java's got 'em too. You can give an implementation of a function from an interfaced class without directly inheriting from it.

I'm really not frustrated with C++ or embedded C++. It's still my favorite language. I just think C# is fun sometimes, too. Especially when I want to sit down and focus on writing an algorithm without having to think about all the other stuff in C++.

I don't mind a little casting and wrapping from time to time. Sure, for a lot of programs it can get tedious, but if you're doing something like generating a huge polymorphic tree, C++ will look the same way.

So you have to throw together a simple wrapper class from time to time. Big deal. I still like that I can point to any object and say, "that's an object", even if I don't know what it is.

Blah blah blah. We'll agree to disagree. Hooray for us!!!

Re:Cool!

[eneville]

java has a foreach:

for (Object o : list)
    System.out.println(o);

How long it's been there I don't know, I know it's in my runtime (jdk).

Re:Cool!

[Samus]

I can't argue the C# vs Java language issue as I have to use VB.net at work but I do have to take issue with what you say about the .Net framework being better. Sometime go and grab a tool like the .Net Reflector and poke around. You'll find tons of classes that are either only friend scope or that have constructors that are friend scope. The number of classes that are not inheritable is high as well. Sometimes a class is public with a friend level constructor so your code can see it but not instantiate it. This lack of openness and stand offish attitude in the api has frustrated me many times.

Another problem I have with the .net framework is how you basically become a second class citizen whenever you don't use something in the Microsoft stack. Why can't I store my asp session in an Oracle database or a generic oledb compatible database? In 1.x this was impossible. In 2.0 it's at least possible but you won't get much help from Redmond. Some of the utility classes in the framework that the builtin providers use are unavailable to 3rd party implementers. And why did it take so long to come up with a generic database api! Having to use an OracleConnection class and a SqlConnection class and a NPGSqlConnection class is just asinine and either shows a lack of thought for encapsulation or probably something more malicious.

Oh and I don't think you'll be able convince me that static classes are a good invention. It's the equivalent of a bas module that you always have to put the class name in front of when calling the functions. Where's the object orientedness in that? I gave that kind of code up when I left VB3!

The last thing I can't stand is ASP.Net itself. The whole viewstate thing and trying to make web programming look like windows forms programming is just too clunky. At least I don't like it and the restrictions that it imposes on your pages. This at last is more of a personal opinion, the rest you can verify for your self.

Re:Cool!

[dadragon]

It's been there since Java 5 came out in September of last year. About frikin' time :)

Re:Cool!

[Lord of the Fries]

If you really feel that way, you should try Dolphin Smalltalk. It's a solid easy to use quick to get the job done tool for Windows. Its everything you like about C#, and even more so. I don't work for them at all. When I *have* to do windows stuff (which I avoid like the plague), there stuff's great.

Re:Cool!

[deaddrunk]

Ignore the fact that Microsoft could have just supported Java in the first place instead of trying to illegally maintain their monopoly by undermining it.

Re:Cool!

[Kayamon]

I remember when you used to be able to develop native Windows C++ applications using Visual Studio. Now it seems like with every release of VC they take out more and more of the features we were actually using.

Re:Cool!

[CaptnMArk]

c# people started with Java and Delphi, not C

Re:Cool!

[pete0t2]

c# doesn't have closures? man, when will it catch up with scheme? :P

Re:Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

you are sacrificing quite a bit of processor time and system memory in the process. Garbage collectors and every other tool meant to make programming easy costs heavily in time and hardware. Most probably you are going to say that now days computers are fast enough to pay the toll...

No, actually, I'm going to ask why Digital Mars D, a language with garbage collection, wins as many CPU time contests as it loses to g++ in the Great Computer Language Shootout, and uses less memory.

Maybe it's time to re-examine your preconceptions?

Re:Cool!

[killjoe]

While I think the open source world does need to grow up a bit the MS world also needs to get some moral compass and stop giving MS so much slack.

Speaking of growing up I have never heard of linus throwing chairs around, cursing, yelling, or calling MS employees communists, cancer and anti-american.

The MS community also needs to grow up and shed some of their zealotry, at a minimum they need to stop calling people names.

"So we may not always like Microsoft's products in every way, and we may downright hate some of their business practices. Does that make Visual Studio and C# any worse of a product? Does that make Microsoft Word a worse word processor? NO."

Walmart sells some nice televisions but I will never buy anything from them. I will never buy anything from MS for the same reason. They don't deserve my money.

Re:Cool!

[killjoe]

Visual studio is expensive and if you had to add even more money on top of that just to try and be as good as a free product why would you use it?

Besides eclipse supports more languages then VS anyway not to mention more operating systems. I just don't see the point of using a program that only works in windows anymore, I have to use a PC at work but I have a mac at home if it won't run on both platforms it's out of the question for me.

Re:Cool!

[killjoe]

Sure slashdot it biased but so is gotdotnet. What's the point of whining about it? At least here they don't delete your posts.

Re:Cool!

[SpryGuy]

No refactoring (somewhat remedied in VS2005)... this is a huge thing (no easy renaming of symbols and all references, no easy changing of parameters, parameter order, no easy ability to introduce variables, methods, parameters, etc, etc)

"Go to Definition" rarely works correctly, especially in the case of overloaded functions

No real-time syntax error highlighting (this is huge)

No "find usages" (again, remedied in VS2005)

Resharper adds automatic management of your "using" statements

No automatic flagging of unused variables, unused private methods, unused using statements, redundant casts

The intellisense isn't the greatest (the smart-complete in Resharper and IDEA is lots better) in VS2003 ... it could and should be smarter

Code navigation features are just not up to snuff (go-to file, go-to class/type, go-to symbol, go-to base, go-to inheritors, go-to declaration, next/prev-method, all with wildcards and completion active, go-back-to-last-edit-location, etc, etc)

Does that help? Most of these features I've taken for granted since around 2001, and thankfully Resharper makes VS2003 at least moderately usable.

Re:Cool!

[SpryGuy]

They are planning on doing a .Net IDE that should completely replace VS.Net that they're planning on gteting that out sometime next year or something (no official date has been set).

If you are doing any .net programming, their "Resharper 1.5x" plugin brings a lot of IDEA functionality to C# in VS2003, and version 2.0 will bring it to VB and ASP.Net as well (yeah, I'm on the beta program, that's why I know about it, I'm not affiliated with JetBrains at all, so I'm not plugging).

But other than maybe doing some Managed C++, there's no plans to help C++ with some of these features, primarily due to the C++ syntax and its complexity itself.

Re:Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be have a lot of complaints about what is essentially good API design:

* Sealing classes is good practice when that class is not designed for inheritance.
* Preventing unchecked construction is good practice when an object is designed to be the result/a handle to/or a control mechanism for some other (possibly transient) object state. Enumerators are a prime example here.
* Classes that only exist to provide some internal implementation are best left internal - a smaller public API means less things to support in perpetuity, and less chance that a programmer will rely on implementation details.
* Static classes have many uses - you can use them to represent a singleton object, or you can encapsulate, non-object specific operations. Like everying in System.Math for example. Not everything is best represented as an object - Microsoft is pragmatic enough to recognize that, even if some object-oriented bigots don't or won't.

Perhaps you're used to open source, source code reuse where you can basically hack anything you want to achieve your ends so long as you are prepared to deal with serious merge conflicts when you version your code. Microsoft restricts software to API reuse in .NET - not as "open" as open source perhaps, but it makes versioning far less painful, and hence, backwards compatibility is much easier to achieve.

Re:Cool!

[ClosedSource]

Actually, it was Sun who undermined it. They were more interested in the WORE fantasy then in the adoption of the language. If they hadn't sued MS, Java would probably have been second only to VB as the language of choice on Windows, C# would not exist, and the number of desktop Java apps would probably be an order of magnitude higher.

I believe that Sun wanted Java to be somewhat slow on all systems equally so they could sell Java processors that accelerated Java applications to native speeds. Having a Java implementation that optomized performance on Windows threatened that plan. Thus the suit.

Re:Cool!

[hotdiggitydawg]

This isn't a fascist Linux dictatorship, you know

You must be new here...

Re:Cool!

[eneville]

yeah sure its useful, but im kinda happy using:

for( int i=0, size=al.size() ; isize ; i++ )
{
    foo( al[i] );
}

since c/c++ doesnt have foreach, ive never really got grown used to it anyway.

Re:Cool!

[AaronBrethorst]

Thanks for the specifics. If you would like you can open up feature requests on the MSDN Product Feedback Center for us to remedy some of the outstanding issues that remain in VS 2005. It's located at http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/.

Re:Cool!

[dadragon]

Fair enough, but I also use the C shell and Z shell, and they both have foreach in their scripting languages, so I'm used to it.

I don't use it, though, because I tend to target Java 1.4 VMs when I do java.

Re:Cool!

[TummyX]

Except that Java doesn't have continuations, lexical closures, first class functions, nullable types, generics with runtime type information (erasure sux0rs!!) and extensive use of user metadata (attributes).

Continuations and closures are the biggies and the reason I'm using C# over Java now.

Re:Cool!

[ClosedSource]

Since MS settled the case it seems likely that they did violate the terms of the agreement. MS did not however break the cross-platform capability of Java but rather created a version of Java (Visual J++)that was more useful to Windows programmers.

I doubt that any serious developer using J++ expected the resulting code to be platform independent. The fact is that there really wasn't much of a market for desktop applications on Unix at the time J++ was introduced so most J++ users couldn't care less about portability.

Many of the features from J++ were adopted by C#, if the purpose of these features was to break Java compatability, why put them in C#?

Re:Cool!

[Rezonant]

What are you talking about? You are still able to do that, and the native C++ compiler is better than ever.

Re:Cool!

[aminorex]

> Many of the features from J++ were adopted by C#, if the purpose of these features was to break
> Java compatability, why put them in C#?

Is this a trick question? One hesitates to answer: Because C# also breaks Java compatibility.

Re:Cool!

[ClosedSource]

Then Sun should sue MS for another antitrust violation because C# isn't compatible with Java. Given the courts' history of gulliblity where Java is concerned they might actually win.

After all, the courts believed that J++ programmers were deceived into thinking their applications would be cross-platform - an argument only slightly less credible than thinking C# programmers believe their applications are cross-platform.

Re:Cool!

[heinousjay]

I guess I'm just really sick of having to copy+paste my code.

I don't want to come off like I'm picking on you, but this is a problem with your design, not the language. It's not Java/C#'s fault if you try to use them like they're C++.

Re:Cool!

[Samus]

Sealing classes is good practice when that class is not designed for inheritance.
* Sometimes it is necessary to seal a class but in general I would say it isn't. The majority of sealed classes in .net are unnecessarily so. It's as if someone said I know how to program better than you and I know you will never need to extend this class or they are being stingy and not allowing you to extend it.

Preventing unchecked construction is good practice when an object is designed to be the result/a handle to/or a control mechanism for some other (possibly transient) object state. Enumerators are a prime example here.
* Preventing unchecked construction prevents me from passing that same "result" from another class.

Classes that only exist to provide some internal implementation are best left internal - a smaller public API means less things to support in perpetuity, and less chance that a programmer will rely on implementation details.
* If they are internal then keep them out of System.* and put them in Microsoft.* where they belong.

Static classes have many uses - you can use them to represent a singleton object, or you can encapsulate, non-object specific operations. Like everying in System.Math for example. Not everything is best represented as an object - Microsoft is pragmatic enough to recognize that, even if some object-oriented bigots don't or won't.

* Your're right they can be useful but should be used sparingly and only where performance may be a problem. They can become a design wart.

Actually I was comparing the .net framework to java's library.

Re:Cool!

[Trepalium]

* Sealing classes is good practice when that class is not designed for inheritance.

Perhaps, but when classes are sealed in a framework from which you must build your application, sealed classes get in the way an awful lot. For example, there's no way to create a control that is usable as an ImageList in the GUI designer because the ImageList class is sealed. Regardless of if it's a good practice or not, it is frustrating.

* Classes that only exist to provide some internal implementation are best left internal - a smaller public API means less things to support in perpetuity, and less chance that a programmer will rely on implementation details.

True enough, but having so much hidden black magic isn't always a good thing, either.

* Static classes have many uses - you can use them to represent a singleton object, or you can encapsulate, non-object specific operations. Like everying in System.Math for example. Not everything is best represented as an object - Microsoft is pragmatic enough to recognize that, even if some object-oriented bigots don't or won't.

I'll agree with you here. There's nothing wrong with functional programming, and it can often simplify the task if you don't need proper OO structures. When you don't have macro expansion capabilities, utility classes are often the only way to avoid massive duplication of usually buggy code (if you copied it a half dozen times, there has to be a bug in it [must be some kind of natural law], and you'll always miss fixing one of the instances of that duplicated code).

Microsoft restricts software to API reuse in .NET - not as "open" as open source perhaps, but it makes versioning far less painful, and hence, backwards compatibility is much easier to achieve.

Microsoft doesn't care terribly much about backwards compatibilty in the framework versions since they have side-by-side support built into the framework. 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 all co-exist peacefully, and apps written for 1.0 may not work as intended on 1.1 or 2.0. Microsoft has tried to reduce the number of changes they make to the interface because it makes porting between the versions more difficult.

Re:Cool!

[cakoose]

They basicly give you all the functionality of multiple inheritance without a lot of the mess it can cause.

If you replace "basicly" [sic] with "don't", that sentence would be correct. Mixins get you closer (and possibly close enough).

Also, I wouldn't consider Java and C# to be completely type safe. From a security perspective, sure... all unsafe operations will be checked at runtime. But from a program development point of view, using C# or Java doesn't guarantee that your code will not generate a ClassCastException or NullPointerException. Those are type errors caused by the use of the unsafe type case (which is hidden/implicit in the case of NullPointerException). Both of these could have been entirely avoided had the language been designed better.

Re:Cool!

[Wardie]

Don't like ViewState? Why don't you just avoid using it?

Page.EnableViewState = False - not hard dude

No one forces you, the options there if you want. I think viewstate is a pretty inventive feature.

Re:Cool!

[Forbman]

And why did it take so long to come up with a generic database api! Having to use an OracleConnection class and a SqlConnection class and a NPGSqlConnection class is just asinine and either shows a lack of thought for encapsulation or probably something more malicious.

Well, yes, it was a big change from ADO, ADOX, DAO and ODBC, which abstract (most of) the details of accessing the database, but still allow you do a few db flavor-specific things if you need to. Borland worked around it with its BDP stuff for Delphi 8/9, which added back this layer of generalization that MS stupidly got rid of in ADO.Net 1.1. I think MS' goal was to push SQL Server, personally. Most of the example stuff with ADO.Net blatantly assumes you're working with SQL Server. Good luck if you're not.

Re:Cool!

[GCP]

I know that C++ needed a replacement - I'm just frustrated with disappointment in what we got.

It's not over yet. Walter Bright, one of the best commercial C++ compiler writers of the last generation has created his own C++ replacement based on his intimate knowledge of the internal details of C++.

His "D" programming language has what I want from a C replacement. It is garbage collected by default, but you can manually "free" and "malloc" anytime you want, doing 100% manual memory management if you like.

It's like C but with real, native strings (100% Unicode), real arrays, foreach, and dozens of other features from high-level languages such as real Eiffel-style Design by Contract, C#-style delegates, templates, exceptions, etc.

The nonsense of header files is gone. You "import" modules as in Python.

Even so, it is still so close to C that you can statically link D code and existing C libraries into a single executable as if it were all written in pure C, and compiled D code is usually *faster* than the equivalent C++ code (see the Great Language Shootout for evidence.) It's always natively compiled into small, fast, standalone executables, like C. No big "runtime environments" are required.

Check it out at digitalmars.com.

(I'm promoting it here for the typical reason that I like it a lot and think that popularity will eventually benefit me as a user through more libraries, tools, books, and other resources.)

I have tried to install it...

[dzafez]

... but it seems non-compliant to unix standards. Anyhow, it will not run on NetBSD nor on Linux.
Some guy told me to use a MS operating System, so I tried out some newer version of DOS, I think it was 5.0, but still it is telling me something about windows. So I looked it up and came across WinE. I used this to start the installation, but still no success. I think it will not be able to establish a market position, if nobody can install it. Am I missing something?

Re:I have tried to install it...

[LifesABeach]

Ya, I think their web site is broke. I surfed the microsoft site and there was no source to download and build? I couldn't find any pages with any MD5 numbers. This might be a little premature, but this microsoft stuff might be some kind of vaporwarz. Talk about a possible growth culture for viruses! I like told my story to others. Their opinion is to just wait till the web master gets enough time to fix the links. I don't know who's heading up the development volunteers, but there's nothing on sourceforge either? These microsoft folks are most likely handling it as best as they can. I figure they'll get some help from someone on one of the various user forums to help clean up their host server.

Re:Yes but?!

[bobcat7677]

Bah! You beat me to that comment.

At this point I suppose it is obigatory though! :)

Windows without a compiler?!

[zerojoker]

This article made me think about it. I mean Microsoft is shipping an operating system without a compiler included. Isn't that strange, that everyone takes this as normal? Isn't a compiler an integral part of an operating system.
I mean sure, a nice IDE is something different, and with those Express Editions things have changed now, but still... if you buy a computer out of the box you can't program it. Not even a simple compiler, Basic or whatever.
In the good ol' days that would have been unthinkable...

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[fanfriggintastic]

Since when has Windows come bundled with a compiler? And given Microsoft's 90-something percent of the PC market, wouldn't an OS coming with a compiler be the exception to the rule anyway?

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[just_another_sean]

"In the good ol' days that would have been unthinkable..." I totally agree. But didn't Sun stop shipping a compiler with it's OS back in 90? From what I've read it had a significant (positive) impact on the distribution of gcc. MS isn't the first company to realize that shipping an OS and then charging for developer tools is just another way to make more money.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[swingkid]

Well, I just bought a laptop w/ XP that had the .Net Framework 1.1 included. The framework ships with a C#, a VB.Net, and a JavaScript.Net compiler, so you don't need an IDE to compile.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[fractaloon]

In the old days computers were only bought by geeks. Nowadays only a small percantage of people care about a compiler. 'sides, can't you just code using in CRL and a text editor as long as you have the .Net framework?

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[deedubya]

Not sure which good old days you are talking about. None of the computers I've ever purchased came with a compiler (I admit my VIC20 and C64 "came with" BASIC) Are you talking about the VAX days?

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[Spy der Mann]

Fortunately, there's MinGW, various IDE's, and a bunch of
Open source
libraries available online.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[lowe0]

So download the compiler. MS gives their C++ compiler and .Net compilers away for free. Hell, they're even offering an IDE for those who don't want to pay for Visual Studio (I read something about it being free earlier today, but I can't remember if that's from the mouth of the C# Express team member that was part of the discussion, so don't take that as official word yet).

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[dedazo]

The vast majority of people who use Windows have no use for a compiler. Windows is a binary-only 'distribution' so it does not require a compiler to install software. Some people think that's better than having to open a console to write 'make & make install', some don't. But if you're wondering about the reason, that's it. Normal people (a demographic which I assume does not include you) don't buy computers so they can 'program them'.

I've been using Ubuntu for a few months now and because I have Synaptic, I could actually care less if it shipped with a compiler or not. See how that works?

If you want to tinker or write software in Windows, there are enough free (beer and whatnot) compilers, interpreters and IDEs out there to shake a stick at.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[eltoyoboyo]

Those good old days to which you seem to be thinking back were when computers did not come in boxes. They came in crates and they were assembled by a team of factory reps. ;-)

Even then, there was a cost associated with the compiler.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[slapout]

Most of you are missing the parents point. In the past, a lot of systems came with development tools. Commodore's and Atari's came with BASIC. BEOS came with a compiler and IDE. Macs come with a compiler, etc.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of you are missing the parents point. In the past, a lot of systems came with development tools. Commodore's and Atari's came with BASIC. BEOS came with a compiler and IDE. Macs come with a compiler, etc.

And Windows comes with WSH.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[StandardDeviant]

If you want a free IDE to go with those free compilers, you might enjoy SharpDevelop. It's a pretty good (open source/free) IDE, at least from the limited playing around I've done with it (I'm more of a Java / lamp guy, but I try to at least check in on the MSFT world once a year or so).

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[beerman2k]

...charging for developer tools is just another way to make more money.

While MS does charge for Visual Studio, the tools to program the OS, the Windows SDK (compiler, headers, libaries), are a free download from the Microsoft Windows website. And with the release of VS 8.0 you can now download free copies of the IDE as part of Express product line which includes fully featured versions of the compiler, editor, and SQL server.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[mikael]

SGI charged for their optimising compiler, so Sun figured they could do the same.
And the academic users figured they might as well write their own C compiler, especially since they wrote papers on writing C compilers.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[PCM2]

SGI charged for their optimising compiler, so Sun figured they could do the same.

And not just the compiler. If I remember correctly, you had to buy the (four-figure) developer's package from SGI just to get the system header files. So it wasn't even a matter of simply downloading gcc instead.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[jshaped]

sarcasm follows...

that would be a lawsuit waiting to happen.
MS including a useful tool for free along with their operating system would immediately get the attention of the justice department.
they would be forced to split it up.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[yuiop]

Windows does come with compilers in the .NET Framework, which is either on your windows CDs or available through Windows Update.

But, in 1.0 and 1.1 there was no build/make tool, and no resources compiler (like resgen) so even though you had the VB/C# compiler, you still needed to download the SDK or install Visual Studio to build managed projects. Really, the reason those compilers were in the .NET Framework at all (as I understand it) was for ASP.NET servers to use.

This is fixed in 2.0 (Whidbey). There's now a build tool (MSBuild, see http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/MSBuild .HomePage) and it includes that missing ability to compile resources. That means you can build VB/C# projects on Windows boxes without installing the SDK, even Visual Studio VB/C# projects.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[petee moobaa]

"Macs came with a compiler"?

When? Certainly not with my System 6 & 7 Macs. No, I had to resort to Symantec C++, Think Pascal and MPW for that...

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[TofuDog]

Mac OSX has shipped with compilers since OSX public beta in 2000. Type "gcc -v" at the default bash term and you'll get:
"gcc version 4.0.0 20041026 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 4061)" -or something similar.
For several years now all Macs have also shipped with the X-Tools IDE (not installed by default, but included with every machine and os license), which has received much praise from developers (which I am not).

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[LurkerXXX]

I'm not missing the parents point at all. In the Commodore and Atari day (when I started) everyone who had a computer was a computer hobbiest. Yes, we wanted those because we enjoyed working with things like programming. These days computers are commodity home appliances. They are used by the majority of folks for surfing the web and doing email. The market is entirely different, and it's not shocking that the default application loadout is different. If you do want to program, the tools to do it in any number of languages are readily available, even if they aren't pre-installed.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[lasindi]

This article made me think about it. I mean Microsoft is shipping an operating system without a compiler included. Isn't that strange, that everyone takes this as normal? Isn't a compiler an integral part of an operating system.

Well, even some Linux distros are shipping without GCC (examples I know of: SUSE (regular, not professional), Ubuntu). Still even these distros make it relatively easy to get compilers (with YaST or Synaptic or apt-get). In a way it is ashame that operating systems don't ship with compilers; it would probably help encourage more people to learn to program, just by making it something available for people to play with (kind of like including Solitaire with Windows made it one of the most popular time-killing activities for computer users). Then again, unless you do happen to be a developer or at least a "power user" who likes to compile everything from source, a compiler isn't an integral part for your operating system. You want to run software, not compile it; so the compiler would just sit there unused, using up hard drive space.

So yes, since I'm a programmer, of course I like the idea of every computer coming with a compiler. But the difference is that in the "good ol' days," developers comprised a much bigger portion of computer users than they do now. Today there are a lot of people who know next to nothing about computers, but still use them -- that's why AOL exists. ;)

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[istartedi]

Wasn't the BASIC on the C64 interpreted? I was thinking the same thing. Some OSs come with compilers, some don't. Yes, I think the OS *ought* to come with a compiler and source. And it wouldn't kill MS to put the source on the box. It could still be copyrighted MS, and it would make the machine fantasticly more useable. No, every user doesn't need it in the default install. Those of us who know we want it ought to be able to choose it as an option under the custom install. It's MS's job to make sure nobody really needs it unless they're a developer. Of course, then MS developers would be tempted to release patches that require recompiling part of the OS instead of just doing binary patching. Then of course, they'd have to deal with all the support issues caused by unauthorized patches. 3rd parties would be more likely to release mods as source, requireing users to install development tools to get the mods, etc. Then of course, exploits could modify the *source* on your box, laying dormant until the next time you recompile. This is not such a big problem in *NIX because of the security model, but when everybody is running as admin...oh... watchout what you ask for people, you might get it!

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[petee moobaa]

Oh, MacOS *10*... the Slashdot-friendly Mac ;)

I just take issue with blanket statements that aren't true two-thirds of the time :P

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[gbarta]

The .net runtime comes with the standard c# and vb.net compilers so they have addressed this to a degree, since the runtime will be installed with the OS in future versions.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[mikael]

Yes, it was the whole caboodle - everything from programming API's to the standard include files. Since SGI had the monopoly on 3D graphics hardware, they could force application developers to pay such high rates, which in turn gave application developers an effective monopoly.

Re:Windows without a compiler?!

[dadragon]

Ships with? Yes. Installed by default? No. In fact, it didn't even come with my late 2001 iBook. I had to download it from Apple. It did, however, come on my new PowerBook.

Remember....

[carguy84]

If you have a Version 2.0 Beta installed, you HAVE to uninstall it first. Version 1 can co-exist with it. Uninstall the beta before trying to install the new release, otherwise it will barf at you and make you close it anyway. And in IIS 2003, you may have to re-enable ASP.NET web server extensions if you had it off by default prior to your previous install. A couple of gotchas I have run into. 2.0.50727.42 is the version you should be downloading.

Get it here

[anandpur]

Mono provides the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix

http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page

Re:Get it here

[oni]

cool! Thanks for the link. Is it possible with this to have a (very simple) program that would compile under both windows and linux? Or are the libraries too different?

Re:Get it here

[amliebsch]

Not only can you do this, but you the compiled binary files themselves (which are actually MSIL) run on both platforms. It doesn't have to be real simple, either - but for now, avoiding any GUI other than STDOUT is the key to portability. I've done this plenty of times before - write console app in Visual Studio, compile to .exe, run exe file on slackware...groovy!

Re:Get it here

[wasabii]

Mono doesn't have a good IDE for either of those platforms, and doesn't have full 2.0 support yet.

Also you can't use Integrated AUthentication with the Mono runtime. Also you can't use Impersonation. Also System.Windows.Forms sucks.

Re:Get it here

[laffer1]

Mono does not run properly on FreeBSD. It does not have full support for .NET 1.0 yet let alone 2.0. I have not tried mono in linux, but i have used it in mac os x and filled bug reports on the freebsd issues. OSX can work with the proper libraries installed in GUI mode but dont try to use it for webapps.

Why No Merge Module??

[EXTomar]

Again I don't see a merge module for this piece of software.

This has always been perplexing: Why is there no merge module for the .Net Framework to build installs around? Admittedly MS's packaging system isn't portable while .Net strives to be (how much it is a subject of debate). So if a true merge module is not possible how about providing a "dummy" merge module instead that doesn't provide the distributable but provides install time information?? If I have to make an install for .Net application it requires a bunch of "hoop jumping" to not only determine if the .Net Framework is installed but if the version/patch level is the target. This is informaton the package system should be providing instead of the installer hunting for evidence of the installed components!!

If MS really wants the .Net Framework to be adopted by the end user (note I didn't write 'developers'), they should make any installation issues a breeze.

Re:Why No Merge Module??

[jeroenb]

If MS really wants the .Net Framework to be adopted by the end user (note I didn't write 'developers'), they should make any installation issues a breeze.

They have, it's called ClickOnce.

Re:Why No Merge Module??

[Zebra_X]

Interesting that you bring this up. Are you checking the release version? I'm pretty sure they wouldn't include a merge module for a beta of the dotnet framework.

Re:Why No Merge Module??

[jeroenb]

It's a structural solution from now on, so yeah, this time everybody's still screwed, just like before Java Web Start :)

Re:Why No Merge Module??

[omibus]

Do you really want to add a 24 MB merge module to you install for "just in case"?

Actually, most installs take care of that for you anymore, automatically downloading and installing the framework for you.

Or are you using an antiquated installer?

Re:Why No Merge Module??

[AndroidCat]

Do a look for Visual Studio 2005 Bootstrapper. (Covered in Oct 2004 MSDN magazine.) With that wrapped around your application, it's supposed to work with Win 98 or higher and handles fetching the .NET framework, DirectX, etc, as needed.

Re:Why No Merge Module??

[Timothy Chu]

ClickOnce is just a wrapper around a .NET 2.0 MSI, which will run on any platform back to Win98. The target machine does not require .NET 2.0.

Last Years Model?

[SuperKendall]

And "SQL Server 2005"? Shouldn't that be 2006? What do I want with last year's model?

I'm pretty sure it's not a year thing, I believe it was either a required number of open ports to run or how many default logins with blank passwords it offers that you have to unset manually one by one.

Re:Uh-oh.

[Zebra_X]

Yes, they expire at some point. The CTP Sept. of SQL Server studio will tell you how many days you have left (Help -> About...), I think it's almost a year from install. I don't know about the older versions. VS Studio has no such warning but expect it to work for about 6 months.

They fixed that!

[Anonymous Coward]

They changed it to sa/12345.

Re:They fixed that!

[Jorkapp]

Remind me to change the combination on my system admin password!

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

How many computer users are also computer programmers?

Did your router come with a manual that discusses the Ethernet protocol?

Did your car come with all the tools necessary to change the oil and rotate the tires?

Did your DVD player's manual talk about the DVD specification?

Did your LCD's documentation discuess signal pins and timings of the driver it uses?

No, because very few people would find it useful. Linux comes with everything because it is a hacker's operating system. Windows doesn't because it is a user's operating system.

Re:No.

[slapout]

How many computer users are also computer programmers?

How many computer programmers are programmers today because their computer come with BASIC or a compiler and they started playing with it?

Did your car come with all the tools necessary to change the oil and rotate the tires?

No, but the manual has instructions telling how to.

Did your DVD player's manual talk about the DVD specification?

I dunno. I didn't read it. :-)

Re:No.

[sarguin]

When I was young, I wanted to be a chemist... The day I got my Commodore 64, I started to play with BASIC (because it came with it) and I LOVED it... Now I'm a software developer!

Re:No.

[aminorex]

So your point is that vendors sell crap? Whoa, who wudda thunk it?

I just stopped buying the consumer crap because of this behaviour.
I send the extra money I save to South-east Asia, and I estimate
that I've saved over 2000 lives so far, just by telecommuting and
downloading all my entertainment for the past ten years.

Re:No.

[Forbman]

Did your car come with all the tools necessary to change the oil and rotate the tires?

Well, my cars have all come with some type of jack and a lug wrench, as well as a spare tire. So, it's possible to rotate the tires. If only the oil pan plug was the same size as a lug nut, then I'd have all the tools to probably do an oil change as well, assuming the grease monkey didn't tighten the oil filter on too tight for the last oil change, thus requiring some sort of oil filter or strap wrench to remove it.

Just in Time

[clinko]

The problem with the .NET Framework is that it has to be installed on the PC for any .NET apps to work (Seems obvious, but that's the catch...)

All XP SP2 Machines have 1.1 finally, so I can make an app and distribute it easily now...

Because of this, your best bet is to always program in the previous version of the .NET framework. (This was the same in 1.0 vs. 1.1)

I'll be excited about the 2.0 release in about 3 years, when Vista is on a good share of PCs...

In other news..

[MaXiMiUS]

.Net Framework and Visual Studio Coming Soon to a P2P Network Near You! No, seriously.

Re:In other news..

[RomanySaad]

The .NET Framework is free: http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/downloads/u pdates/

Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 Developers Edition have been on Usenet for the past 6 hours now... :-)

Re:Uh-oh.

[stupidfoo]

The express products are actually going to be pretty reasonable. Around $49 a piece I believe.

Best of All!

[Anonymous Coward]

A brand new version of Visual Basic is included! w00t!!

Re:Best of All!

[AndroidCat]

That's not funny at all to the VB6 people who feel like they've been kicked to the curb by Microsoft.

(Very funny for the rest of us however, heh heh.)

Re:Best of All!

[Pxtl]

Heheh - don't laugh. Take a look at VB and C#. They're the same damn language - both CLR languages that are just hacked up to look familiar to users of their respective legacy languages. Look into the function of the "break" statement in C# and you'll see how it's just made for all those people who couldn't be bothered to learn a new syntax.

They don't just compile the same - they look the same, but with different keywords. It's like a series of 2-word #defines were used for the translation. This is like people who drive a Saturn Sky bashing drivers of the Pontiac Solstice.

Re:Best of All!

[AndroidCat]

Hmm. What is the legacy language of C#? C++, Delphi, Java...?

Re:Best of All!

[petee moobaa]

Yes. ;)

It's 2005 because...

[HalAtWork]

It's 2005 because it was developed during 2005?

One thing I don't get about magazines is they research the articles in May, release the magazine in June, yet designate the magazine as the July issue. Wtf? Now you're suggesting software follow suit?

Do you WANT my head to explode?

Re:It's 2005 because...

[rebelcan]

Yes?

*ducks*

Re:Is it free?

[Trigun]

The first hit is always free.

Java will still rule

[thammoud]

The fact of the matter is that C# will never be able to erode Java's dominance since it is not cross platform. Don't sell me on the Mono project. It is still a little toy. For the .NET platform to be a true competitor, MS will have to port it to all Java supported platforms. Not very likely. Most projects that we work with are written in Java and Run on various platforms. No amount of .NOT will ever touch that.

Re:Java will still rule

[0kComputer]

Spoken like a true Java fanboi. Everytime somebody wants to tout Java you always hear the "cross platform" argument. I could come back and say that Java is slow as hell, but then I'd just be spouting off the same dogma you are.

Fact of the matter is that Both Java and .Net are great frameworks for running business apps. If you want to use linux, use java, if you want to run wintel, then use .net. They are really pretty simillar to be honest and most businesses don't mix the 2 platforms, so cross platform shouldn't be an issue.

Re:Java will still rule

[megame]

Java's dominance? Isn't Java that thingy for phones? And .Net runs on real computers?

Just kidding.

Microsoft has no plans, or better yet - has plans to keep .Net Windows only - selling .Net for other platfoms is not an option (no-one would pay for it) and it would add strength to those other platforms. So why bother? People have Java for that stuff...

Dominance of .Net in only world in which exists (Windows) was reality since 1.1. And I belive I saw some research about % of projects being done in which programming language - .Net is leading in most sectors.

And again - who would ever need cross-platform tools when there is only one platform (Windows)? :)

Java has and it will always have its place in developement world for that projects which need cross-platform stuff - but face it - Java in desktop world is very week - most Windows machines do not have it any more (blame MS), in Linux and Mac world is not popular for desktop apps.

Re:Java will still rule

[SComps]

wow. I thought I was the only one that thought that way. By any chance are you single? *grin*

Re:Java will still rule

[j3tt]

with 90% (is this right?) of the world's PCs running Windows, I don't think they give a shit about having it run cross-platform.

Re:Java will still rule

[TheNetAvenger]

Microsoft has no plans, or better yet - has plans to keep .Net Windows only - selling .Net for other platfoms is not an option (no-one would pay for it) and it would add strength to those other platforms. So why bother? People have Java for that stuff...

Actually, the MS guys 'encourage' other platforms to implement .NET if they want, and even give them skinny on the basics of the framework if they would want to do so.

However, since these are NOT Microsoft's OSes, they are not going to program the .NET interoperability for the OSes manufacturers.

But Microsoft isn't closed about lettting them exist.

Just like the XAML and XPS of Windows Vista, Microsoft will not make the tools for reading this data, viewing it onscreen or printing for non-Microsoft OSes; however, they give any developer all the tools they would want to create a full implementation of these technologies on their favorite OS, bascially giving the Open Source and Mac world FREE access to Microsoft's developerment, ideas, and technologies - even if they aren't writing the source code for you. (Apple doesn't even do this, do you see Apple ANYWHERE encouraging or allowing people to use QuickDraw or Carbon on other OSes? - NO, they won't even help non OSX versions of BSD run or know how to run the GUI portions of OSX. Microsoft on the other hand is like, this is great technology, take it and use it wherever you want.)

Closed does not always mean 'closed' in the classical sense, Microsoft's ideas of 'closed' have been surprising more open than people realize.

You can take things like the NT Kernel and go, ya it is so closed it hard for people to get information of all the things it is designed to do. But it is a big piece of Mystery that they need to keep the intellectual concepts in check on. There are no other successful hybrid Kernels like NT. Business wins here...

But then you can also look at 100s of other products and applications that Microsoft will give developers the tools to implement or even COPY them on other platforms, Microsoft just isn't going to take the time to do it themselves.

Even take the notorious .DOC format and the original .RTF format, Microsoft LETS these companies read these files on alternative platforms, and even GIVES them the XML based document structure - don't think Wordperfect and Open Office just magically were able to crack a file format.

It wasn't that 'closed' of a fle format, go to msdn if you don't believe this. Microsoft just wasn't going to write the import and export filters for these companies. Additionally, you will notice that these companies do a GOOD job of reading and writing .DOC formats, it is when the .DOC contains concepts like INK and Embedded Objects, Sound, Pictures that opening a .DOC document in these other wordprocessors that it gets dodgy, as they don't always have equivalent technologies to implement the features in the .DOC file, even if it knows how to read them. Take the redact add-in for .DOC files - if the other WordProcessors don't have redaction abilities, these things are lost..

My two cents for the day, and even if you disagree with me, fact check it, or at least ponder what I have said. (Part of my coments regarding the XPS distribution cannot currently be proven as it would break NDAs to quote the sources.)

PS News of month that everyone here should go pay attention to (Since my articles never get accepted)...

I warned all of us /.ers a long time ago, and now it is about to become an integrated shipping product.

Go Look at Windows 2003 R2, and see what Microsoft is stacking on NT to ensure they have the edge.

Right now Microsoft is currently making its UNIX subsystem for Windows fee to anyone that wants to download it, but Microsoft has beefed up the Unix subsystem (not the o

Re:Java will still rule

[hao2lian]

I think Microsoft is going more for a sizeable dent in the Windows application market right now than the enterprise market dominance Java has (as seen from the lack of fifty four-letter acronyms); that's why I've never really liked any comparison between .NET and Java market shares. Java and C# are about as close as being alike without being illegal as they can, but the two companies are pushing their languages and frameworks in different directions. The selling point being "Hey! It's not WinAPI! ::hallelujah::" there's a rather good chance of it succeeding.

Re:Java will still rule

[Naikrovek]

The fact of the matter is that C# will never be able to erode Java's dominance since it is not cross platform.

bull-SHIT.

here's the source for a C# compiler made available from MICROSOFT that compiles out of the box on FreeBSD and OS X. http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/sscli. Its called ROTOR.

Remember our favorite tech-book publisher? Here's an O'Reilly article explaining how to compile and begin using ROTOR: http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2002/03/27/ge ttingstarted.html

Here's an O'Reilly book on how to use the Shared Source CLI: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sscliess/

Re:Java will still rule

[Mr2001]

The fact of the matter is that C# will never be able to erode Java's dominance since it is not cross platform. Don't sell me on the Mono project. It is still a little toy.

Which is it, "never" or "still"? Mono is evolving, and while it's true that today you have to be careful about which Framework classes you use if you want to write a cross-platform .NET app, it's only a matter of time before Mono catches up.

Re:Java will still rule

[HerbieStone]

Hey a pro-Java Comment which gets modded up on slashdot... got to comment on it.

I programmed Java full-time some years ago. I was pretty excited with all the things to come. Java had everything to be a great success. But Sun butched it several times. First mistake, sucky Java implementation by Netscape. Second, fast but crashy AWT. Third slow as molasses Swing (too many classes to load in startup). If it wouldn't be for the Server-side, Java would be long gone. Today there are only 2 Good Java Applications on the Desktop that I'm aware of: Eclipse and Azureus (and well the map24.com map-applet). Everything else is server-stuff, which is a serious thing (as in NON-Toy) but still not what it could have been.

I wish Java and its libraries would have been open-sourced. I but I guess Sun is too jealous and greedy to do that.

Herbie out.

Re:Java will still rule

[21mhz]

The selling point being "Hey! It's not WinAPI! ::hallelujah::"

Only, it's still WinAPI under a thin veil of managed classes.
Eclipse SWT is just like that, though, and it's cross-platform.

Re:Java will still rule

[21mhz]

You seem to forget the budding Java ME support on mobile devices.
Even Motorola MPx 220 running Windows Mobile Smartphone 2003 has a Java machine in ROM, yet I haven't found .NET CF anywhere on it.

Re:Java will still rule

[aminorex]

C# is not now and never will be a cross-platform development environment. It's a nice, useful language, and the class library is vast beyond the dreams of avarice, but to choose to deliver a project in C# is to bind that project forever and irrevocably to the .NET platform. I'd prefer to support more than that. My code wants to live. Win16 is dead, Win32 is dying in the ICU, COM is being denied hydration. I'm guessing .NET will have 5 more years before Microsoft decides to deprecate it, and all that code will become legacy.

My Java 1.1 applications from 1998 are still producing results for customers on MacOSX, Win98/ME, NT 4.0, dozens if not hundreds of Linux distributions, Solaris versions from 7 through 10, and God alone knows what else. Thankfully, I don't need to worry about it because it just works. And I can still fix bugs or add features using 2005 free state-of-the-art development tools, while maintaining that broad user base.

Does that come at a cost? Certainly, but the benefits overwhelm those costs by orders of magnitude. Now you know why I'm a Java "fanboi": It's the bottom-line, silly.

Re:Java will still rule

[aminorex]

Mono might converge, given infinite time, on 5% of the .NET API, but it's still not nearly so xplat as JVM, which is approximately universally available.

Re:Java will still rule

[Haeleth]

to choose to deliver a project in C# is to bind that project forever and irrevocably to the .NET platform.

Indeed. How then do you explain the existence of C# projects that are not, in fact, developed for or used with the .NET platform, pray?

Re:Java will still rule

[Mr2001]

5%? Last I checked, it was already quite a bit farther than that. The biggest thing Mono lacks (IME) is a full implementation of System.Windows.Forms, but if you use Gtk# instead, you can easily write a cross-platform GUI.

Changelog for .Net 2

[cranesan]

Does anyone know what changed between .NET 2 and 1.1? I can't find anything on Microsoft's site describing what changed.

Re:Changelog for .Net 2

[owlstead]

Well, at least they have a stab at real time parsing. I guess you can get enough information from the beta versions to guess what's coming. It's sure to have some refactoring support (renaming classes and updating references and stuff). If you've worked with Eclipse or NetBeans (most popular Java IDE's) you'll know what's possible (real time links between tools and classes for instance). Unfortunately, at least in Beta-1, the functions were still pretty much in their infancy, and there were not many of them. Does someone have access to the latest versions, and tell us what has happened in this respect? The parse tree (abstract syntax tree) should be there, so putting some refactoring functions in there should not prove to be too difficult.

Re:Changelog for .Net 2

[SpryGuy]

Main changes for C# are support of parameterized types (generics), support for partial classes (a class can be split across two files, so, for example, machine generated code lives in one file, and human tweaked or written code lives in another), and support for nullible intrinsic types (so that, say, a bool can be either true, false, or null... an int can either have a value or be null, where 'null' is distinct from all other possible values).

There are also new globalization/localization features, new security features, new liberary routines, new classes in the .net class framework, etc.

There is also new support for "edit and continue" in the IDE for allowing changes when in debug mode and then continuing with the changes taking effect, rather than having to stop, recompile, and restart to pick up the changes.

Here's a link with more info

Re:Changelog for .Net 2

[AndroidCat]

You have to order the Changelog DVD. :)

But seriously, a lot has changed. Did Microsoft axe MSDN Magazine? They were covering the changes over a year ago, but I haven't seen it in the book stores for a long time now.

Re:Changelog for .Net 2

[ChicagoDave]

The changes are listed in the SDK documentation:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=fe6f2099-b7b4-4f47-a244-c96d69c35dec&Displa yLang=en/

But a short list would tell you that they added generics and partial classes. The IDE is indescribably efficient at knowing what you want to type using its internal Intellisense functionality. It's sort of a catch-22...it's faster to write code, but if you don't know how to code, it's faster to write bad code.

The higher versions of the IDE include Rational type products like bug-tracking, a new enterprise source control tool, and methodology infrastructures (you can force your team to follow certain rules for coding, checking in code, completing documentation).

The "Express" versions will be $49 so if you want to play around and see what all the fuss is about, that would be the easiest way to go.

Personally this is all wonderful, but the really good bits will come next year when Windows Communications Foundation is completed, which is a framework of WS-* API's that will nearly completely hide xml web service details from the developer and allow for all of the higher end web service functionality.

You can say .NOT all you want, but if you write a few programs in Visual Studio .NET 2005 with C# 2.0, you'll be crying when you go back to Eclipse/J2EE.

Re:Changelog for .Net 2

[megame]

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t357fb32. aspx

64-Bit Platform Support
Access Control List Support
ADO.NET 2.0
ASP.NET 2.0
Authenticated Streams
COM Interop Services Enhancements
Console Class Additions
Data Protection API
Debugger Display Attributes
Debugger Edit and Continue Support
Detecting Changes in Network Connectivity
Distributed Computing
EventLog Enhancements
Expanded Certificate Management
FTP Support
Generics and Generic Collections
Globalization Imp.
I/O Enhancements
Manifest-Based Activation .NET Framework Remoting 2.0
Ping class
Processing HTTP Requests from Within Applications
Programmatic Control of Caching
Security Exceptions
Serial I/O Device Support
Serialization imp.
SMTP Support
Strongly Typed Resource Support
Threading Improvements
Trace Data Filtering
Transactions namespace
Web Services imp.
Windows Forms-Related Features
ClickOnce Deployment
Application Settings
New Data-Binding Model
New Windows Forms Controls
-DataGridView
-ToolStrip
-MaskedTextBox
-Windows Forms SoundPlayer
-ListView control now supports three features provided by Windows XP and the Windows Server 2003 family: tile view, grouping, and drag-and-drop item repositioning.
-ListView, TreeView, and ToolTip controls now support owner drawing
-WebBrowser control
-*LayoutPanel controls
-BackgroundWorker component
-Asynchronous Pattern for Components
XML-Related Features

Re:Is it free?

[m4g02]

The express version is free. Which is really a stripped down version meant to students and small business that, according to the plan, will later on need to buy the costly standard version. Another strategy to suck up money... Sadly is very likely going to work.

Re:C# Not Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

C# is more like a brain fart. If you were a real GNU programmer you would use C or Lisp or one of the other Stallman-approved languages. C# is a Java knock off. They also stole scheme's for-each primative and it doesn't even do as much.

I'm not even going to touch the "Stallman-approved" comment, because on its face it's completely indicative of your closed mindset. Instead, I'll tackle your points individually.

Foreach isn't a primitive, it's a keyword. It's also not part of the .NET framework, it's just a convenience C# provides to use IEnumerables.

I guess you'd also like to take the opportunity to lambaste PHP for "stealing" foreach as well?

Meaning you don't have to deal with pointers and dynamic allocation. Jim Gosling got famous 10 years ago when he savaged C pointers in his Java whitepaper. The problem is by discarding pointers you also discard major functionality. If you anything in hardware or embedded development Java/C# are useless.

Check out the "unsafe" keyword in C# and then get back to us. Or C++ Managed Extensions, which by the magic of .NET can interoperate perfectly with C#. Native methods in Java are a pain in the ass.

For once....

[DeepDarkSky]

No automatic negative remarks in the article nor by the editor of Slashdot...what is this world coming to?

Re:Uh-oh.

[AndroidCat]

I have the full-up VS2005 beta 2 version on discs, free for the asking, a few months ago. VS2005 Team Suite, VS2005 Team Foundation Server, and SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition. The SQL Server DVD says that it has a 365 day limit on use, but I forget if there was any warning during the install about expiry on any other parts.

Visual Studio Express

[ChaserPnk]

Personally, as a student, Im looking forward to Visual Studio Express editions. You can still grab the Express betas for free. From what I hear, the price point for the final version will be under $100. I think this is a great move by Microsoft. Now millions of students will have access to a cheap, industry standard IDE to code in. What could be better? Not sure when the final versions will be released, but hoping Nov 7 as well.

Re:Visual Studio Express

[jalefkowit]

Now millions of students will have access to a cheap, industry standard IDE to code in...

Yeah! Since it's not like there's a kick-ass, extensible open source IDE that you can download for free which supports a whole range of languages, including C#...

Re:Visual Studio Express

[cheekyboy]

Does it ;

A) while running in windows, can it edit remote C/C++ files via SSH ?
B) compile on remote systems using SSH rexec
C) debug remotely via a SSH layer using GDB
D) run from C:\IDE\ and not require a real setup.exe installation which might be prevented by corporate LOCKED DOWN PCs.
ie. like a mac, can we just copy a running folder of the IDE and run it as is.
E) run on windows but really editing/developing for a linux or sun platform.

Re:Visual Studio Express

[Matt - Duke '05]

Not sure what kind of student you are, but if you're in college, you should go talk to the CS department and see if they're a member of MSDNAA (Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance). Through this program you can get Windows, SQL Server, Visual Studio, and a bunch of stuff like that for free.

Re:Great...

[starcrafter]

And are these programmers talking, or end-users. Never mind, I already know.
I'm a programmer by trade and while I'll admit there are programs that should never be released, by and large the world runs on the efforts of us poor maligned folks.
Just remember that at times programming can be like trying to push water up hill with a straw. It isn't easy - if it were anyone could do it...
As-far-as auditing and 'giving a program what it needs to run' is concerned this isn't (necessarily) the programmers' fault. It is virtually impossible to anticipate system and software configuration out there in the real world. All we can do is try to code in such a way as to allow things to operate in a 'typical' (whatever that is) environment. Want specific to your environment 'out of the box' perfection? Specify such and be willing to pay for it.
OK, climbing off my soap box now.

Even Money Says

[BronxBomber]

Half the /. posts that will piss on this news have not ever used the product, let alone .NET.

Go on, mod me troll... you know its true. I'm all for calling a spade a spade, but it goes both ways.

Re:Even Money Says

[Seraphim_72]

Not at all, at work I code ASP and C# all day, every day, it is a very nice suite, though I code java and jython at home. But, despite how nice it is ... it still isn't worth the money. I work for an .edu and our pricing is just insane, I can drop VS Enterprise on a machine without thinking. The other side though, which I am acutly aware of, is that I am dropping thousands of dollars of software on a machine, thousands. I have the new version (been running Beta for a while) and it is very nice. But is it worth 1000's more than free? No. I can hand code my database hooks.

Sera

Re:Even Money Says

[smithmc]

  Half the /. posts that will piss on this news have not ever used the product, let alone .NET.

Believe it or not, there are still people out there who use Visual Studio and don't target .NET. I've been using VS 2003 since it came out and I've never built a .NET app.

Re:Even Money Says

[serutan]

Half the /. posts that will piss on this news have not ever used the product, let alone .NET.

Well here's one up from the other half. I've been a Visual Studio user since 1998 and have been working with .Net and C# for 3 years. Yesterday I tried to install the .Net Framework 2.0 Beta and fire up the QuickStart tutorials, since they were so helpful when I was learning Framework v1.

The Quickstart said I had to install a new version of the SQL Server Desktop Engine, which is now called SQL Server Express. The install failed. I ran that installer and it failed, saying it had found incompatible components. The fix, according to Microsoft, is to use a Cleanup tool found in the installer package. I extracted and ran the cleanup tool, and tried the SQL Server Express install again. Now it says it can't be installed without Framework 2.0. So I install the Framework again and try the SQL Server Express install again. Now we're back to the original error.

Shaking my head sadly and wondering WHO THE F*CK TESTED THIS CRAP, I uninstall Framework 2.0, reinstall 1.1, and go back to my work.

Maybe they fixed these ridiculous problems in the release version. I don't know and I don't care. I already wasted a couple hours on this damn thing and I'm not touching it again for a while.

Some problems with your argument

[SuperKendall]

This is an absurdity. JAVA's dying, can't you see that? It runs slow everywhere, nobody wants to download a virtual machine to run it, and it's such an ugly hack on top of any operating system it sits on.

If it runs slow, then how is .Net supposed to gain marketshare when for some things it runs slower?

Also people running Java did not have to "download" anything because they are running on an app server or something that comes with a VM. But it's funny you should bring up downloading since the .Net runtime is larger to download than the .Net framework. Are you saying that .Net is dying even faster?

I'm a Windows .Net developer

[RingDev]

I have developed and supported custom business applications used by hundreds, and very few of the users have been admins.

I also have a few AD tools that only admins can run.

-Rick

Re:Is it free?

[RomanySaad]

Express versions will be $49 a piece when they come out. The exception is SQL Server 2005 Express which is free.
You do not technically need Visual Studio to develop using .NET.
Check out SharpDevelop. It's features include: "Write C#, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, XML, HTML code" and: "C# to VB.NET converter, as well as VB.NET to C# converter" which Visual Studio does not have (unless they added it in 2005 and nobody told me).

Re:Is it free?

[kyhwana]

The beta's are currently free, but according to various people (and MS's faq) the release version are going to be $50 each.

Re:Won't they please think of backward compatabili

[captain_craptacular]

Give me a break. Are you seriously trying to blame Microsoft because your outdated, extremely poorly coded vb6 apps won't work with a product being released at least 5 years after they became obsolete? Any programmer worth a penny puts things like database connection strings in a single, central, secure place that can be edited without recompiling the app, anything else is inexcuseable.

Furthermore, I don't know what version of SQL server you're running, but you haven't been able to have a blank sa password for at least 2 years. Which tells me that you're either full of it, or running unpatched databases. Would you blame Red Hat if your linux server was hacked via an exploit they patched 3 years ago but you just never bothered to apply the patch?

Re:Won't they please think of backward compatabili

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing, you hard coded the use of the system administrator login with a blank password into your application and are blaming Microsoft for introducing an "incompatibility?"

Dude, follow these easy steps:

1. Shut the power down to your office
2. Return all hardware to the manufacturers
3. Apply at McDonalds
4. Commit suicide after application rejected due to being a total idiot

That said, just because MS isn't honoring the free incidents provided for the eight year old IDE that is Visual Basic 6.0 doesn't mean that you can't modify the project to fix that lunacy. But go ahead and jump to MySQL/Python. At least you'll be in like company.

Re:Uh-oh.

[Kippesoep]

Those limits are not as severe as you might think. All editions contain the same compilers. Many (if not most) developers won't run into the limitations. The ones that do are probably doing software development for companies that already have MSDN subscriptions anyway. Check out the differences here

Re:Uh-oh.

[pherthyl]

Why do you comment about a subject you know nothing about? Give the express editions a try, even the betas are full featured and perfectly suitable for all kinds of development. Really the only major things they are missing is integration with Visual SourceSafe (useless to me) and remote debugging. For 99% of windows developers, the express editions are going to be a huge boon for little money.

Re:Is it free?

[Kippesoep]

The limits are not all that severe. Very few people will be likely to actually need to upgrade to a more advanced version. Check out the differences here. Personally, I won't need anything the Express editions can't offer. It has also been said that, while the boxed version of Express will be $49, the download version will be free (although this has not yet been officially confirmed). Unlike the older versions of MSVC (for instance), which had the optimising compiler only in the professional edition, the express editions seem extremely capable. While this will likely decrease MS' revenue stream from the VS line, it can be an important factor in keeping people on Windows.

Re:Uh-oh.

[AaronBrethorst]

One thing that's worth pointing out here is that you can use the Express Editions of Visual Studio to build commericial or shareware products. I've been asked this several times now, and I don't think we make it clear enough anywhere.

Benefits on .NET 2.0 Framework (via ASP.net)

[PhatboySlim]

For those of us who have worked with ASP.net via .NET Framework 1.1 all of us have been painfully aware of the drawbacks:

- Manual compilation before every execution
- Slow debugging (IIS needs to be restarted to attach to the aspnet_wp process)
- Poorly defined/loose html elements
- Redundant programming/lack of controls (if you didn't take time to roll your own)
- No cross-page posting

Fortunately all these issues have been addressed:

- Pre-compilation
- No need to define html element values as protected
- Thin webserver program for viewing applications (improves debugging)
- Role management out of the box
- 45 new server controls
- Cross-page posting
- Whidbey performance enhancements

Also, to all the Java/PHP fans (myself included) out there, be sure to give this product/platform some serious respect. It is amazing.

Re:Benefits on .NET 2.0 Framework (via ASP.net)

[killjoe]

Nah the big problem with ASP.NET is the lack of a generous community. Anybody can put a web site using zope, php, python or Ruby in two hours that is robust, well designed, skinnable, with fine grained ACLs and a zillion features just by downloading one of hundred already packaged applications and application frameworks. On top of that there is an unbelievable wealth of libraries avaliable make for a incredibly rich platform to work with. The amount of java frameworks and libraries is literally breathtaking and it still pales when compared to the PEAR or CPAN libraries.

Add to that zero compile cycles, and eclipse and you have a winner.

Can you honestly think of any Ruby on Rails developer moving to ASP.NET willingly? I can't.

Re:Are you missing something?

[SComps]

Actually it seems the mods who decided this was a troll were lacking the sense of humor. I use .NET, I like .NET, and even I saw a tongue planted firmly in cheek, and giggled my way through the post until I saw how it was moderated... then it was wtf!?!

bugs and removals

[OSUMooGle]

Having used the beta for quite some time now, I hope they have fixed a lot of the bugs. I haven't used the new release yet, but my boss' are all complaining about how they have removed unit testing in this new version...

Congratulations!

[opusman]

I've been trying to download it for an hour now with no success.

I think we've finally Slashdotted Microsoft!

Re:Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because most programmers, regardless of platform, are idiots by default. Typically the reason for the problem is that the person writing the application makes the stupid assumption that the user can write a file to the same directory that contains the program. The other common mistake is attempting to write to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

Unfortunately this is largely because DOS and Win9x could not prevent this from happening. People got lazy and carried over their non-skills to WinNT. But some of those programmers also carried their non-skills to UNIX. I've worked with two UNIX-based systems where security was atrocious.

One was an autodialer platform built on RedHat Linux 7.2. All daemons run as root. All users log in as root. They even train you to transfer files to the host by logging into FTP as root and putting the files into the same directory as the main database files and where the core binaries are kept. One mistaken overwrite and BOOM.

I tried to lock down what I could, creating separate logins for users and a public user for FTP that only had access to a single directory. It drove their support nuts who would always blame me anytime something broke. Fortunately, I don't work with this system anymore.

Analysis Services is better...

[sonofagunn]

Having worked with Analysis Services 2000 and Analysis Services 2005, I can assure you that this is one area in which many useful new features have been added. It's a pleasure to develop cubes finally.

available in...

[FudRucker]

except in Nebraska and Korea

Re:A spade is a spade

[dougTheRug]

I'm all for calling a spade a spade, but it goes both ways.

Are you saying that you would also call a spade a spade?

But... What's new about it?

[deinol]

I am currently working on a project that is built with VS 2003. There are some nice things in the .Net framework, but there were some basic classes I've had to extend myself. So is there someplace with a concise list of useful new features to look at?

Things I'm looking for are say, datagrids for example. Have they finally made a combo box column type? Or a method to color different rows in a datagrid? Or even a good double-click handler for data grids?

I've built some of my own extensions for these, but they sometimes still feel like a hack. Particularly my combo box column, which doesn't quite handle tabs right. Or how if I want to know when the user double clicks on a row, the first click goes to the data grid, and the second goes to the row, so I have to track the clicks and times myself. Which seems silly considering all the other places I don't have to worry about that sort of thing. Similar for clicking on a check box in a row.

Haven't wanted to mess with the beta version, but can anyone who has tell me some good reasons to switch over? It'd have to have some nice features to convince me to migrate the existing product we've got, considering the time it would take to a) convert the project, and b) test to make sure everything still works, c) roll out 2.0 framework to everyone's machine.

SQL Server 2005 now on par with Oracle version 4!

[Phatmanotoo]

Excuse the trollish comment, I couldn't resist... Now that I caught your attention, you might like to know this. Remember this thing called "read consistency", and how important it is to get it implemented both correctly and efficiently (MVCC) in order to achieve this other thing called "scalability"?

Well it turns out SQL-Server 2000 implemented read-consistency via locking, which means that it can never have the scalability of Oracle (or even Postgres, which also uses MVCC) in OLTP scenarios.

Oracle introduced the use of MVCC in version 4, 1984 !!! (ask Tom Kyte). Finally, MS has caught up. It'll be interesting to see how the implementation performs.

Re: ideas that SHOULD have been lifted from Java

[dougTheRug]

Here are my C# gripes: 1) No concept of checked exceptions. True, this can be misused, but come on... that really should be part of the .NET runtime. Exception handling feels just a little bit pointless without it. 2) System.Diagnotics.Process can't get a handle from a Process to its parent Process. Lame!! And while we're in the zone: Java, wtf is up with supporting environment variables with Runtime.getEnv() and then breaking it? Listen, I'm cool with CLASSPATH but Dproperties suck. And the ultra-lame excuse? Mac OS 9 and below doesn't have environment variables, so it's not a universal concept.

Seriously

[Overly Critical Guy]

Lately, a ton of militant Microsoft and Windows defenders have really gotten vocal around here. There's always been that contingent, but now you can't even report the big news that more two key executives have left Microsoft without a bunch of "WHY IS THIS FRONTPAGE NEWS OMG THAT'S /. FOR YOU" comments. You also get the "XP hasn't blue-screened for me in years, which means the other 99% of the population who have had problems don't count" comments and the wannabe MSDN subscribing know-it-alls who write vast essays listing all the breathless Microsoft marketing points about Avalon, Indigo, and all the other crappy new APIs that already exist elsewhere.

So while the editors and many of the readers are vehemently anti-Microsoft to a fault, a lot of the moderators and a loud cross-section of readers are vehemently pro-Microsoft/X-Box 360/any other crappy Microsoft technology that the marketing brochures told them was cool.

So, yes, praising Microsoft will get you karma. It makes you look hip, enlightened, and individual. Go against the grain!

Re:Seriously

[ClosedSource]

"a lot of the moderators and a loud cross-section of readers are vehemently pro-Microsoft.."

If you mean "a lot" as in "the vast minority", I agree with you.

I suggest you tally-up the pro and anti MS moderation for a week and get back to us.

Re:Uh-oh.

[Kippesoep]

Yes, I'm sure. From the VC++ Express FAQ:

Q: Does Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition include the "optimizing compiler"
A:Yes, Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition includes the same core optimizing compiler that will be included with all other Visual Studio 2005 editions. It should be noted that some new expanded optimization features, including Profile Guided Optimizations, will be available only in the Professional and above editions of Visual Studio 2005.

No Massachusetts Event???

[Bricklets]

Looks like they're not holding any events in MA???

Re:Java will still rule - you idiot

[Axe]

then *GASP* .NET is better than Java for everything except cross-platform deployments!

Real development means using a lot of other products and libraries. It is not about a little toy you cooked up. There are many more usefull libraries and products and packages for Java to develop your business applications.

And .NET does not run circles around Java. Try using JRockit JVM.

Re:Just spotted SQL 2005

[RomanySaad]

The file name, size and created date lead me to believe it is SQL Server 2000...

In other news...

[owlstead]

Downloads of service packs, IE6.xxxx and MSDN have spiked. Terrible cries are heard all over town, where developers tried to get the development environment installed on their 256MB 4200 RPM company laptops.

Seriously, it took me some *hours*, way into midnight to get the environment installed for a 4 day .NET course. Thank god there will be a stripped down version.

Re:In other news...

[MeerCat]

you're installing what is essentially a platform development kit, including not just the compiler,
but every symbol file for the platform, the industry leading programming environment and a few other things

Bwah-ha-ha-ha ... you guys kill me ... every time...

15 minutes to open my project cos "it's too big", continual crashes of VS, cos the project is "too big", no debug info other than line numbers cos it's too big, no browse info cos it's too big... show me a version of visual studio that does 10% of what emacs does and I'll slap down the cash for the convenience of a debugger, but until then the "evangelists" Microsoft keep sending around can continue to kiss my butt.

Last excuse they gave for the crashes (after a week's careful analysis by 'the expert' from Microsoft) - "your pathnames are too long, can't you try to keep all absolute filenames below 256 characters" - ha ha ha ha ha..... tell me when did you last hear that excuse from another development system vendor ??

Re:Uh-oh.

[AaronBrethorst]

huh? you can build open source software with Visual Studio if you want. No one's stopping you from doing that. The issue at hand is that a lot of people ask "can I use the Express SKUs to build software for sale?" I'm not trying to spin anything.

Re:Uh-oh.

[Javagator]

My question is this: According to TFA the express editions will be downloadable. Does this mean that they will be free, or will they cost $49 like the boxed versions?

Good news about the Express editions

[theolein]

I think that Microsoft has taken a page from Apple's book in making the free Express editions of their tools available on the web for download. Free tools are what get people interested in your tools. I'm a Mac user but my next computer will be a PC because I'm interested in using Microsoft's tools since they seem to be pretty good.

Re:Good news about the Express editions

[dadragon]

Virtual PC can save you hundreds of dollars there, especially if you have a resonably fast Macintosh. I use it to use VS 2003 on my PowerBook.

Back then.....

[nurb432]

We were not under constant attack, so having your doors wide open really didnt matter much.

Well...

[Sr. Pato]

You could always install Microsoft SFU. I know it's Unix, but, it's a free compiler that you can choose to install or not. On a related note, could you imagine a Windows operating system with even more fat than it already comes with? No thanks. I'll just install stuff as I need it.

Re:Uh-oh.

[R2P2]

I've heard the Express Editions will be a free download, and the $49 boxed versions will come with a book or CD with training stuff to make the package (theoretically) worth the money.

Re:Won't they please think of backward compatabili

[NutscrapeSucks]

Well, as stupid and incompetant as it may be, you really ought to be able to have a blank password if you want to or need to. I could care less if you need to type "IAMSTUPID" into regedt32 in order to do it, but it should still be possible.

Re:Uh-oh.

[Tim C]

Is Microsoft going to disable these betas now that the final products are (soon to be) shipping?

Yes, as was clearly stated at the time.

Ask and you shall receive

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of your wishes are granted.

A new control called DataGridView is available, which allows template columns of various types, including Checkbox, Textbox, and DropDownList. The grids are SQL-style CRUD for easy data management, and sortable by default. The code for the click and doubleclick events is simply a check of the HitTest to determine the location. And of course the AlternatingItems can have different colors.

Other than having the 2.0 framework installed on the target machines, so far my experiences have been mostly positive with VS 2005. FWIW, I am an MCAD consultant working for a MS Certified Partner, using Visual Studio 03/05 and SQL every day. Sure, not everything is perfect yet, but there is a ton of new functionality. At the end of the day, it's evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but many of the upgrades directly address common issues.

SQL Reporting Services is beautifully integrated (Crystal still sucks). Source Safe finally has been upgraded from its archaic roots to give better source control. And Team System/Server 'could' enable easier overall project management (I don't buy this one yet, but who knows, maybe by sp2... ;) )

Anyway, maybe not worth migrating to yet, but certainly something to think about moving forward. And for the rest of the slashbots, please quit the knee jerk posts bashing VS2005. Unless you have MSDN or are a Partner, you don't have the final version to even comment on. And most of you are still busy waiting 3 days for your Java app to fire up and run anyway ;)

Re:Uh-oh.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

One thing that's worth pointing out here is that you can use the Express Editions of Visual Studio to build commericial or shareware products.

Isn't that kinda normal for a development environment?

Re: ideas that SHOULD have been lifted from Java

[JakusMinimus]

And while we're in the zone: Java, wtf is up with supporting environment variables with Runtime.getEnv() and then breaking it? Listen, I'm cool with CLASSPATH but Dproperties suck. And the ultra-lame excuse? Mac OS 9 and below doesn't have environment variables, so it's not a universal concept.

They unbroke it for Java 1.5 fyi.

I guess I will troll then

[Seraphim_72]

How about some standard syntax in .Net then? How about it has some (ANY!) relation to Office VB? Try this ...fire up excel, make a dialogue, drop on a checkbox. Find me a way to know if that checkbox is checked or not. If you can, then tell me how to make a .net app know it. All I ask for is a java like .isChecked() - but I aint getting it.

Sera

Re:Is it free?

[Naikrovek]

every .NET framework install comes with a compiler.

for c#: c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v(framework version number here)\csc.exe (vbc.exe for vb, jsc.exe for j#)

use the /? switch to see the syntax.

you don't even NEED an ide for .net, the compiler is free.

Now if Oracle could only catch up....

[toadlife]

..to Microsoft in the security department.**

**This is a serious post. ;)

Re:SQL Server 2005 now on par with Oracle version

[killjoe]

All I want to know is "have they fixed replication yet". Just fucking give me a replication that works, is that too much to ask for?

Re: ideas that SHOULD have been lifted from Java

[ClosedSource]

In practice, checked exceptions have turned out to be a bad idea. That's why no languages have followed Java's example.

Re:Uh-oh.

[AaronBrethorst]

Since the Express SKUs are positioned towards hobbyists and students, this is potentially unclear. See elsewhere in this thread, for instance.

Re:Won't they please think of backward compatabili

[will_die]

MS-SQL Server 2000 any version allows you to have a blank sa password, you just have to check a box that where you enter the password that says you want a blank password.
Back with SP3 they did add the abaility to disallow blank passwords but that has to be activated.

Static methods are a hack.

[cakoose]

Static classes have many uses - you can use them to represent a singleton object, or you can encapsulate, non-object specific operations. Like everying in System.Math for example. Not everything is best represented as an object - Microsoft is pragmatic enough to recognize that, even if some object-oriented bigots don't or won't.

(By "static classes", I assume you're referring to classes whose methods are static.)

Static methods are a hack. They are only necessary because some idiot decided that only classes could exist at the top level. If objects could exist at the top level, singletons could be defined more naturally. If functions could exist at the top level, the math functions could be defined more naturally as functions in the "Math" namespace.

Someone should point out, though, that static classes weren't invented by Microsoft. They existed in C++ but only fully assumed their current role with the introduction of Java (because C++ lets you use top-level functions and objects they are appropriate).

Continuations?

[cakoose]

Continuations and closures are the biggies and the reason I'm using C# over Java now.

C# has generator functions, which are nice, but this isn't the same as full-blown continuation support.