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Changing Climates for Microsoft and Google
ReadWriteWeb writes "Weather metaphors abound as this article looks at the evolving software environment — and in particular the competition between Microsoft and Google. Milan says that while Google enjoys relative dominance on the Web platform today, two fissures exist that will force them to move. The first is Microsoft's ability to use the exact same HTML based strategy as Google (like Microsoft's current Live initiative); and secondly Microsoft leapfrogging the current environment by solving rich application installation/un installation and enforcing an acceptable contract regarding what rich apps can do on a user's machine.
Unfortunately for Google, Microsoft is a lot closer to solving these two issues than people think. Microsoft has the best virtual machine with .NET, the best development tool with Visual Studio and the best access to developers with their MSDN programs. And they have a notion. Steve Ballmer himself has started touting the exact strategy they need — Click Once and Run."
I'd have to say that Visual Studio pretty much rocks. I use it for c++ development only, and am very happy with it. If linux had any dev environment that was ANYWHERE NEAR as good as VC++, maybe I wouldn't despise working on it.
You can argue about .NET, and about Visual Studio dude, but there is NOTHING that compares to MSDN, and the resources Microsoft makes available to developers. On this, there is no contest.
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sad
Have you actually used visual studio? it degrades to a useless piece of rubbish after a few months.
.NET I would say that they are on equal footing, except Java is more mature, open source has things like EJB etc....
It may be better than Googles offering (nothing) but probably isn't better than eclipse/jbuilder.
And after using both Java and
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
While I generally agree that VC is one of the best development IDEs out there (and I have used several open source alternatives, namely for coding in different languages), it has some glaring bugs that make me want to rip my hair out.
VC 2003 had (and still has) an extremely annoying bug in its shortcut code whereby a compulsive ctrl-c and ctrl-v user like myself (in fact I've never quite determined which shortcut combination triggers it) can result in the end of a source file being duplicated twice. (So, for example, a header that ends in "}" may have another "}" appended. This would be OK if it wasn't for the fact that you couldn't actually see the additional "}" until you restarted VC (or opened the file in another editor). Alas, I've wasted many hours pulling my hair out trying to find errors in my code caused by superfluous braces etcetera that don't exist.
I thought VC 2005 would save the day and solve this issue, which it did at the expense of an even more annoying one. I'm talking about the new intelli-sense in VC 2005 which, in large projects, can spend almost a minute "updating" after the most trivial of changes drawing 100% CPU power and bringing your work to a grinding halt. To make matter worse, using the ctrl-s shortcut to save a file freezes the UI until intelli-sense is done updating, and even then intelli-sense doesn't work half the time or is too slow to be of any use. For example, if I declare an instance of a class then attempt to use it, its methods only appear if I type slow enough for intelli-sense to keep up. In another brilliant move, intelli-sense cannot be disabled without renaming a .dll, and even when you do disable it you'll be surprised to find that other features suddenly stop working (for example, the form designer), which means you have to restart VC every time you want to enable/disable intelli-sense.
This "best" development environment is enough to make me want to throw my computer out of the window sometimes. I wouldn't be the least bit suppressed if this is what's taking Vista so damn long?
I'll concede that MSDN is a very nice collection of CDs, but I'd trade those CDs for source code any day of the week. On that note, the Linux stack has a wealth of documentation ... but at your local book store.
MSDN is not just a nice collection of CD's - it's all available on-line, and free as in beer. No ads, and it works well in Firefox! That's more than you can say for high-quality documentation for any other platform. I challenge you to prove me wrong.
I personally find the CD collection inferior because you have to update it. Fortunately, the MSDN integration in Visual Studio also uses the on-line MSDN if the sought information is not available locally.
Now, on that note, typically, the architects, developers, and testers you're referring to wouldn't know what to do with source code if it hit them in the head. They represent the lower ranks of the tech profession. Those of us who work in pushing the envelope of new technology almost unanimously reject MS products because they are far too contraining.
That's a pretty unfair and ignorant way to look at people who use Visual Studio. Not only are you ignoring the fact that the most commercially successful pieces of software ever conceived - Microsoft Windows and Office - were developed in Visual Studio by people who certainly do not deserve to be called "the lower ranks of the tech profession" (well, some of them perhaps), you are also ignoring the many other companies who have created successful products developed using Microsoft's tools. I work at such a company, and we are in fact pushing the envelope of new technology in our market. While I would not call Microsoft's products perfect, they have been instrumental to our success.
If your tools constrain you, you may be using the wrong ones; or you may be using them incorrectly. I think you have to try very hard to fail at using Visual Studio.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
No, they can not do that. You need to read about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust/
Does .net "off the internet" prevent COM or Win32 calls?
.net team might just have covered in in the last 5 or so years.
.net is just a poor copy of java.
That is correct: It would require the UnmanagedCodePermission, which code in the Internet or Local Internet zone does not have. You know, if you can think of a hole in 5 minutes, the
In my experience
Well, I prefer c# to Java, I found it to be an improved copy. But your mileage may vary.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog