Memoirs of a Bystander: Visual Studio.NET development on OS X w/ Parallels

A reader writes "There is an interesting blog piece entitled Memoirs of a Bystander: Visual Studio.NET development on OS X w/ Parallels. The piece does a good job talking about development for different environments then the one that you are programming in. " And with the continued rise of more and more heterogeneous environments, this will become more and more common.

Comments

Another Crappy Blog Slashvertisement

[BeeBeard]

Please stop linking to crappy blogs written by people who think they're important enough to even have "memoirs" and who think they're being oh-so-clever-and-ironic when they juxtapose the terms "memoirs" and "bystander" in their post titles.

Re:Another Crappy Blog Slashvertisement

[Mr. Underbridge]

Not to mention which, that title makes exactly 0 sense. So he nails the "pompous" and "incomprehensible" exacta.

Re:Another Crappy Blog Slashvertisement

[Otter]

Man, this guy is really taking a hammering here! In his defense:

• "Memoirs of a Bystander" is the (admittedly pretentious) blog name. The submitter misread the title bar.
• My understanding is that he's doing primarily Mac (or platform neutral) development, with a little .NET, not full-time .NET. If that's incorrect, I agree that what he's doing is silly and counterproductive.
• "Slashvertisement" seems unfair, and anyway it's a useful, well-written little piece that's completely distorted in the Slashdot blurb.

So I'd say this is just the usual case of submitter-illiterate-and-editor-barely-R'dTFA, unless the author is the submitter, in which case you sort of have a point.

ehum?

[Keruo]

Why virtualize .net development?
Just run monodevelop and do it natively on OS X

Re:ehum?

[TheGreek]

Why virtualize .net development?
Just run monodevelop and do it natively on OS X

Probably because:

1) Monodevelop is a pile of shit right now.
2) Running said pile of shit inside X11 isn't a "solution."

Do you actually develop .NET and own a Macintosh?

Re:ehum?

[m0rph3us0]

Hahah I wasted an entire week trying to get monodevelop working on OS X on Intel. (It never worked). Then I realized It would be cheaper to just buy Parallels, WinXP, and VS.NET. I estimate in less than a month the stack had paid for itself. I target mono on Linux and have found that developing in VS.NET and replicating your project files in .build (for Nant/Linux) files is the best way to go. Eventually I ran monodevelop on Linux and realized that it is a total piece of crap. Wtf is the point of an IDE that doesn't support debugging.

Re:ehum?

[bunions]

> And this is different from visual .net 2005 how?

Are you serious? Visual Studio is right at the top, as far as IDEs go. It's got it's warts just like everything else (Why is the goddamn configuration dialog not resizeable?!? arrgh) but overall it's very well-polished.

Re:ehum?

[Money for Nothin']

Not to mention:

3) Monodevelop isn't the defacto industry standard, Visual Studio is. So no business worth its weight in dog crap is going to consider using it, particularly when it costs a paltry (for business) $800/seat to buy a VS .NET Professional license, versus spending that much on developer time just getting the non-standard Monodevelop app running correctly, much less compiling compatible code they can ship as a professionally-produced product.

My guess is that the GP is still in college and has never set foot inside a corporation of any noteworthy size.

Um... huh?

[truthsearch]

The piece does a good job talking about development for different environments then the one that you are programming in.

No, he's developing .NET apps using Windows. His database is SQL Server. He doesn't want to use Mono. So he's almost definitely developing for Windows. Mac apps have far better native options for development.

The only tip someone might find useful in this blog post is his informal test of memory settings in Parallels.

Even simpler

[NineNine]

Why not get a PC for $25 at your local thrift store and use a $100 copy of Windows? I mean really, it's like going around your ass to get to your elbow. This is just dumb. If you're developing for Windows, you have to be a real masochist to try to do it on another platform, especially when you can use any ol' PC that you find laying around. It's not like a Windows PC is exotic or hard to find or expensive.

Re:It does to me.

[misleb]

As a guy who once worked in a VS.NET/X-Tools shop (the app had both a Win32 and a Mac version), it's kind of cool to see someone using both IDE's on one box w/o having to reboot to switch between 'em.

Running 2 IDEs isn't the challenge. Parallels has been out for a while and now there is VMWare Beta. I'd be surprised if you COULDN'T run VS.NET in virtualization.

I'd actually be interested in hearing how you managed to get a project to build in both XCode and VS.NET. I mean, just the lanaguage barrier alone would be a problem. I mean, you have Objective-C/Java for XCode and C++/C#/VB in VS.NET. Were they different code bases, or what? That is the kind of thing I wish this article talked about. Just running Parallels on a MacBook is uninteresting.

-matthew

MacBook & Parallels is a good combination...

[__aaclcg7560]

Right now, as I post this comment from my sexy black MacBook, I'm working from home using a Parallels VM with Windows 2000 (no activation issues) and all my job related applications. It's really nice as I wait for incoming help desk tickets to arrive while playing around with my typical Mac applications without having to reboot the system. As added job security, I'm considered to be a "Mac Guru (TM)" since I'm the only person who in my office who owns a Mac. Seriously, you can't go wrong with a Mac! :P

Re:A summary

[Paradise Pete]

IANAW

Walrus?

I found the article very useful

[MoonFacedAssassin]

I'm going out on a limb here and stating that I like the article and found it very useful and informative. There are plenty of .NET developers in this world and I am one of them. I also love Mac OSX and it is great to see a semi-detailed and informative account of someone who set up the very environment I have been researching as a possible development platform. A large part of the applications the author uses on OSX and Windows is exactly what I would be using in the same setup.

It will be very beneficial to me when I finally get this platform set up to test the memory allocation in the manner the author describes, and assuming I don't take the plunge and get a Mac Pro, 2GB RAM will be the amount of RAM I choose for the Macbook Pro. After reading the article I can now purchase a new Mac and know that I can do everything I'm wanting.

Geee....

[Savage-Rabbit]

No, he's developing .NET apps using Windows. His database is SQL Server. He doesn't want to use Mono. So he's almost definitely developing for Windows. Mac apps have far better native options for development.

The only tip someone might find useful in this blog post is his informal test of memory settings in Parallels.

That's a bit harsh. I do the exact same thing as this guy does. I Prefer working with OS.X or failing that Linux as a Desktop OS to working with Windows and I sometimes develop for OS.X and Linux in my spare time using native tools. However at work I also have to use Windows for development purposes as well as for testing and for Windows only apps so I have solved the problem with Parallels and it suits me just fine for all sorts of reasons. For one thing I don't have to deal with the headache of having to juggle a Windows laptop for work as well as a the Mac because Parallels enables me to cram the whole lot, Windows, OS.X and all the devel tools onto my MacBook and a pint sized external drive for the Parallels image files I am not using at the moment. At home I have a more powerful development system built on the same concept but running VMWare for doing stuff my MBP and Parallels can't handle but unfortunately my employer is not that progressive and does everything via test systems managed by the IT department through an inflexible bureaucracy. Fortunately I am usually able to quickly set up a pre built Linux/Windows/Unix testing/development environment on my Mac and get a whole pile of work done in the time it takes the overworked guys in the IT department to find a machine and get a test environment up and running. Basically, thanks to Parallels, I can whip up a prebuilt instance of any operating system that runs on an Intel processor with in a matter of minutes without having to endure Windows as my primary Desktop OS and all this without ever rebooting anything other than a VM, which from my point of view is paradise. I'm not saying this is something every developer should do but this approach has it's advantages.

Re:Geee....

[truthsearch]

Oh, I use Parallels too. But I still see no value in the blog post. Plus the statement in the summary that this blog post gives insight to cross-platform development is just silly. He's developing inside a Windows environment to create Windows applications.

Did I mention it will be on Amazon.com ?

[BeeBeard]

... he had a lot more to say than you.

Then perhaps you haven't heard of my soon-to-be-released autobiography, entitled Memoirs of a Slashdot Bystander: The Search for +5 Funny. Basically, it's 237 pages of filler that detail my computer hardware and software configurations, followed by another 82 pages that give interested readers insights into what I was doing between the ages of one and four. I am conservatively estimating that I will sell between 35 and 65 million copies, with a Michael Bay film based on my life (working title is "Transformers: The Movie") to follow in '07.

Re:It does to me.

[Brandybuck]

Both IDE's support C++. I'm doing crossplatform development with Qt/C++ on Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and Unix. No problemo. I've had a few clients I had to rescue because they believed that Microsoft tripe that .NET was crossplatform.

Re:It does to me.

[evil_Tak]

Or you could use mono + gtk# on windows, mono + gtk# on gnu/linux, and mono + gtk# on mac.