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Comparing Visual Studio and Eclipse
An anonymous reader writes "Getting started with Eclipse can be confusing. New concepts, such as plug-in architecture, workspace-centric project structure, and automatic build can seem counterintuitive at first. Without waxing too philosophical about IDE design, this article presents the main differences between Visual Studio and the Eclipse IDE."
was advocated by Larry Craig in 1993
(in the style of lex luthor)
WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!
Well, by definition, you cannot see the object if it is eclipsed. If something is visual, you can see it. Easy enough comparison.
Now, to get the folks that can add studio into the equation....
Hey guys before the flame start the article is not a comparation between VS and Eclipse, it's a Intro to eclipse for VS users...
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
I would rather have seen an apples to apples comparison of what VS is used for, ie development in C# or VB. Although Eclipse was primarily designed for Java, like the article mentions, various plugins do exist to C# and VB development (likewise Java development in VS). It also would have been nice to see screenshots of the VS comparison.
The compare and contrast was superfluous at best. This was merely a "my dad's better than your dad" analysis.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
How does Visual Studio compare with Eclipse in terms of resource hogging? Eclipse can slow my, not old, dual-core lappy to a crawl just opening a test project (before I went back to using Vim), does Visual Studio do the same?
I've been using Eclipse for quite some time now, and must say that it's by far the best IDE I've ever had the pleasure of operating. Because of superior modularity, I can use different Plugins to simultaneously edit projects in C++, Perl, and Fortran with full syntax highlighting and real-time error checking. This saves alot of time in recompiling your apps!!!
The most important thing to me in moving to Eclipse was that it would fully support the Vi command set. There were several different Vi-type plugin options available, but after trying them all I ended up using the only commercial download of the bunch, which was availble for $20 here:
http://satokar.com/viplugin/
The only other IDE I've ever found that was acceptable before Eclipse was Visual SlickEdit, which had most of the same features as Eclipse but was very expensive and didn't have the F&OSS plugin community of Eclipse.
Now that I'm into Eclipse, I don't think I'll ever look back!
-Will the Chill
*please insert 10 cents for one additional sig*
Creator of RPerl, Scouter, Juggler, Mormon, Perl Monger, Serial Entrepreneur, Aspiring Astrophysicist, Community Organiz
Well, I've been using both every day for years now. As always there is no black and white but there is a lot of grey there in between. If I need to chose, I would chose Visual Studio any day. That doesn't mean that it's perfect: it's not, but it simply feels better for my needs. My subjective opinion is that VS feels a lot more "solid" to me, faster and "logical" to my Borland eductated tastes. Havig support for C# is also a big plus to me, but that has nothing to do with the point of the article. Being OS is nota plus in my book, because I really don't prefer OS over commercial or the oposite just for the sake of it... I'm not religious in any shape or form. My 2 euro cents.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Personally I love Eclipse. Working in an environment where I was required to rapidly switch between Perl, C++, Java, and Oracle, Eclipses perspective system is a godsend.
.NET. I think the main reason for this is that Microsoft holds all the cards. They don`t have to accommodate a million developers tool preferences, because they define the tool set. I`m not saying this is a good thing, just that it makes a perfect foundation for building a powerful IDE.
The only problem is it's so damned bloated. It wasn't until I used it on a powerful server-turned-into-a-workstation box that I found eclipse usable. On a standard system, it's just too laggy.
Even disabling some of the heavier features, I find it hard to get any work done when not using it on a system with 4 GB of ram and two processors.
Visual studio on the other hand I think is the perfect IDE for
so you're saying Eclipse eclipses Visual Studio?
Eclipse>Visual Studio
Which would be funny, except that for the languages supported by Visual Studio, the correct version is Visual Studio >> Eclipse.
Eclipse does fine on its home territory as a Java IDE, but the plug-in system is way too disorganised and underpowered for serious development in, say, C++ or C#. Even if you use CDT for C++ work, it's basically hopeless unless you're combining it with GNU tools, and things like the debugging tools aren't even close to the power of VS.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Eclipse rules, I use it for PHP and Java development. The summary != what is linked to though...
So a marketing article by IBM (the friggin' owners of Eclipse) compares Eclipse to Visual Studio. How can anyone expect this to be objective? If Microsoft had written this article on their website, there would be charges of FUD, FUD, FUD
and Intellij > Eclipse
Yeah, but Eclipse does Python. (with the PyDev plug-in)
Eclipse + Python FTW
I've been using Eclipse professionally for some time and the only recent Visual Studio experience I've had has been working on some sparetime C++ project with a buddy. But from that I seemed to notice that the intellisense kind of feature and other assisting tools seem far more evolved in Eclipse. For instance, Visual Studio will sometimes fail to find the members in an object when I type <object><dot> and this rarely fails in Eclipse (unless there's a syntax error).
Eclipse also assists in further ways I'm missing from Visual Studio. It highlights syntax/parser errors, a feature which might seem annoying until you realise that Eclipse will help you solve it. This will save you from a lot of typing effort if you use it to your advantage. If you assign a value to an undeclared variable and press Ctrl+1 on the error Eclipse will offer to declare the variable either locally or as a field. If you instantiate a class, or access a method/field that doesn't exist Eclipse will offer to make a stub for you.
It's features like this that has turned Java from a hideously verbose language into something that's almost easier to develop in than Ruby (imho), and Visual Studio seems almost antiquated on this subject (there's no excuse for not implementing these features for statically typed languages such as C/C++)
It's a great platform but it's an utter pain dealing with the plugins and the varying degrees of compatibility. MyEclipse makes it substantially better though.
multiple language support, plugin support, open source:
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
I use the call graph and type hierarchy views in Eclipse all the time. They're particularly useful for learning the structure of code you haven't written or come into contact with before and they allow you to navigate code almost effortlessly. Visual Studio's equivalents are pretty dire in comparison, the 'Find References' view just gives a flat list and lists methods with the same name but different signatures and as such I often resort to compiling C# and navigating it with the excellent .Net Reflector tool.
Oh and automatic insertion of import statements and import re-organisation is pretty useful.
Also Eclipse's incremental compilation generally seems to be of a higher quality than VS, e.g. it shows you errors as you type whereas VS does so only after an explicit compilation. VS's incremental compilation appears to be limited to driving syntax coloring of class names and code completion (AKA Intellisense(TM) I believe).
Eclipse's local history of file changes has saved my arse on one occasion (no equivalent in VS) and the file comparer when checking into CVS is pretty cool, far ahead of the (admittedly dated) Visual Source Safe V6 we still use at my workplace (Team Studio was too expensive apparently).
Speaking as a mainly VS user I find that setting up projects in Eclipse can be pretty bewildering at times, but that could just be lack of experience.
Eclipse has *never* crashed on me. VS crashes very occasionally now, but it does still happen.
On balance I would say Eclipse is a far higher quality product than VS, and considering it's free it's a pretty amazing IDE. You can of course get VS Express editions for free now with some functions disabled, multithreaded debugging and compilation for 64bit environments being the missing bits that I have come across.
Eclipse as my personal favorite. Now granted I'm no programming wizard and I'm not part of some OSS project. I create plugins for The Foundry's Nuke film compositor.
Up until about 4 months ago I used nothing but gedit for all my programming. Then I ran into the problem of to many tabs open and the need for using version control. I like Eclipse with CDT, it does it's job for me and the Subclipse plugin works quit well for my small needs. One feature I really like is the perspectives that Eclipse has, one of the first things I did was setup a few for while I am working.
After I had released only Linux versions of my plugins for a while I picked up a cheap copy of Visual Studio 2005 at a computer flee market. So I setup VMWare to do all my Windows compiling and bug fixing things that would compile ok under Linux but Windows would throw a fit. I agree my opinion isn't based from in depth knowledge or long term use of Visual Studio but for my needs I just prefer Eclipse.
I'm sure Eclipse has its pitfalls just like Visual Studio does, in the end they are both just tools and like anything in this world it comes down to personal preference in the end.
Add a python plugin to Visual Studio and it will do python, too. (Does one exist? I have no idea. My point is that plugins do not affect the suck or lack thereof of an ide.)
There is so much religion involved on this topic that this discussion is likely to evolve into a big flame war. Some people really like Microsoft products, while other people hate them.
You may call me religious, as I have never really liked products from Microsoft, and my knowledge of Visual Studio is limited.
I use Eclipse on a daily basis and I'm quite happy with the IDE unlike other IDEs I've got to know, like NetBeans.
Having said that, the article from IBM looks fine to me. If we ever get a new employee who knows Visual Studio but not Eclipse, I would point him to it hoping that he would spend a few minutes on it (but no more) and that it would help him getting started a bit faster in the Eclipse world.
Well, that's the first page, where the fuck is the rest? Wasted my time. What do you think I have, the attention span of the mtv generation?
Yes, there's an extension which supports Python.
(Oops -- you mean VS supports extensions? But TFA says that's unique to Eclipse!)
Iron Python count? http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName =IronPython
Eclipse does require a lot of computer resources, but when you consider the job it does, its actually an amazing bit of kit. also there are memory management plugin that can keep it under control if are trying to get it to run on a celeron with 256m ram.
as tfa, once you get over the initial hassle of setting the thing up, its a joy to use. also, its dammed stable.
the svn, the code completion, error checking, and the countless lovely little features (i love you all) work a treat, and make it a winner every time. i don't know a single developer thats used both who doesn't recognise visual studio to be a vastly inferior product.
It seems there are compiled versions of Eclipse, maybe that will help with some of the bloat.
http://sourceware.org/eclipse/
However I do find the autocomplete features quickly grind to a halt whilst using APIs with large numbers of methods such as jogl.
I hope Ecipse gets better and better because it really is an excellent IDE, and at the moment the only thing holding it back is the performance issue.
I use Eclipse for PHP development using PDT, and it's great. Zend Studio Pro costs $299, and comes with debugging support, but you can get the same thing with Eclipse for free, and support various other languages as well.
.NET development, or developing specifically for the Windows platform using an MS supported language then of course VS.NET is the obvious choice, but Eclipse is good too.
If you're doing MFC, or
It's also encouraging that enhancements can be written for Eclipse easily without IBM worrying that your enhancement will stop people upgrading to the Pro edition.
I think that because IDEs for any language all share so many requirements, and because they're used by developers who will want to improve it, it makes a natural open source project, and I expect as time goes on it'll get better and better.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Last I checked, Visual Studio only runs on Windows.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Honestly, I think one of the nicest features in Eclipse is the highlighting of a selected object/class/variable. I never realized how annoying using "find" or "bookmark all" was until I moved to eclipse.
Development notes at http://devscribbles.blogspot.com
First off, the article is *not* about Eclipse vs. Visual Studio.
Secondly, people keep talking about how Eclipse is used via plugins, mostly, and with plugins, it's better than Visual Studio. Well, if you're going to have plugins/add-ons for Eclipse, let's make it fair and do the same for Visual Studio. Let's toss in Visual AssistX and Incredibuild.
I'm not saying one is superior to the other, since I've never used Eclipse, but I am saying that if you're going to compare them, be fair about it.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Why do we see do may articles that mention Eclipse as though it's the default IDE for Java development and whatnot, when so many of the professional programmers I know say they prefer NetBeans because it's a more intuitive, less busy interface?
...KDevelop wins!
Performing sanity checks on your own beliefs is vital in avoiding poisoned koolaid.
Real programmers do not need debuggers ;-)
Seriously, I have been using eclipse for years and I don't even know how to invoke the debugger. Nothing I hate more than an IDE falling into debugging mode when an error is encountered. A stack trace is fine with me. When really stuck, I insert debugging statement in the code in the relevant places.
Of course, I realize that this is my old way to view things. I also know that modern development teams would go on strike if I tried to impose them an IDE without a debugger ;-)
So, view this as my 2 cents, nothing more ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
That all depends. The suite we were using in CS had a debugger, but it didn't pop up unless I explicitly added the break points. It was an irritating IDE in many ways, so many times I would on short code be left to boggle as to why it wasn't able to read what was typed. Sometimes it would inexplicably fail to read the closing brace even if it were only two lines down.
A good debugger can be a time saver, but one should really only need it if the program is large enough that it isn't clear as to where a variable changes to something naughty. Yes of course, one could do that by hand, but that isn't necessarily the same, every once and a while there is a genuine bug in the compiler or something isn't being done the way that it should be, and paper tracing isn't going to find that.
I would be curious as to how you handle code which is separated into many files to keep things small and comprehensible. Of course each file is easier to fix, but I am somewhat curious as to how you deal with the interactions between multiple source files. And more specifically all of the flipping between source files that can happen with a more complex program.
The thing I like best about Eclipse vs Visual Studio was refactoring. I tend to, ahem, revise my thinking during programming, and the ability to rename everything from the project itself down to the lowest-level variable was like heaven. Having to go back and use VS where I can't do that (at least, not easily) is torture.
But it always feels slightly off. I think half my problem is just their website really stinks. There is no diffinitive "this is eclipse, click here to download". And by download, I mean "setup.exe". Right now it is more like "here is a bunch of random eclipse like stuff with random names and no sense".
Am I right to assume eclipse is kind of like the linux kernel, and you need to pick a "eclipse distribution" to get any kind of coherent package?
Mix up this recipe:
Eclipse starts Tomcat in debug mode by default. Automatically compiled classes in Eclipse are piped over the debug socket to the container. The class is swapped out in real time, and you've got a brand new piece of code to run without having an entire build/deploy cycle. Better than that, you can be stepping through your code debugging a method, see your mistake, fix it, hit ctrl-S to save, and the debugger backs up to the top of the method and evaluates your new code!!!
VS.NET (v1.1 when I used it) simply could not do that. IIS was not as cleanly integrated with VS.NET (as far as I am aware, maybe I'm wrong)
Eclipse plug-ins exist for all major containers. MyEclipseIDE makes a killing marketing a bunch of them. Even IntelliJ (my preference for Java development) cannot match it, because you have to explicitly build (which can hot swap) but it'll take seconds, as opposed to milliseconds in Eclipse. big big fan of the hot swapping ability.
I used to use VC++ for all my C++ development work. I have switched to Eclipse/MinGW.
- There is SVN integration, task integration with Mylyn which can help you focus on only one task at a time, etc. - stuff you simply can't do in VC++ or, if you can, not without paying a lot of money
- The ability to compile one file on each CPU is, laughably, apparently worth $5,000 to Microsoft. Even then, I've heard it doesn't work properly
- I can easily make automated compile/test scripts thanks to switching to MinGW from VC++, and run them automatically on a Linux server which will notify me if a build goes awry
- EASILY extensible. I can compile every bit of the C++ toolset in about 30 seconds, since it is written in Java. If your machine can't run it, you deserve a better machine anyway to soothe compile times...
- The intellisense in both are pretty much comparable with the Europa release.
- If I decide to switch to Linux, all my hotkeys, knowledge, and features are still available.
I could go on and on, but those are the main reasons.
If there's anyone I hate more than stupid people, it's intellectuals.
Seems to be the biggest difference.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I was thinking about trying out eclipse on my C++ projects, but I find this thing of integrating folders and projects to be highly irritating. I like to keep common source files in a directory and include them as needed on different projects. Not every project needs to link to every file in my common directory, but that's how you have to do it in eclipse. I spent a weekend trying to get going with eclipse on ubuntu (visual studio user), but when I realized that I'd have to reorganize my whole code base to have the folders and projects be the same, I got pissed frustrated and had to quit back to windows for a while. Trying to get SVN and eclipse to cooperate is a complete nightmare too. You say you want to check out your whole SVN repository and then work with individual projects within it? Good luck with that. Only top level directories are projects. Gah. There's some hack you can do with making one project that checks out the whole SVN tree, then have another project _outside_your_svn_repository_ that refers to a project within the SVN repository. I guess you have another SVN repository for those eclipse projects?? It makes my head hurt. I've thought about transitioning to eclipse at work, but the idea of revamping the company's whole SVN repository just so folders and projects are identical is just fucking retarded, and I would be justifiably mocked were I to bring up something like that to my coworkers. I want to like eclipse, I really do. This folder thing just sucks too much for me to like it.
Sounds GRRRREAT! So I download the latest Europa, fire it up. Hmm, it comes with a "hello world" project preloaded. Fire it up!
Oho! Syntax errors! Clever demo, must use editor. Editor works, build again.
Launching helloWorld.... java.lang.NullPointerException...
And this.. is the demo.
Clue me in somebody, please, humbly. What am I missing here?
--
phunctor
I've used both environments for different tasks and have been happy with both. Essentially, they serve the same function which is to make developing far more enjoyable and error free.
.net and this is shocking since I rarely did MS development before VS 2005.
Personally now I use VS.net more often. From where I work I have an MSDN account and get free downloads of all their developer tools to play around with. So I've spent a lot of time playing with things.
I like the integration of everything. From the SQL browser to Team Foundation Server, it's really streamlined to have access to have everything all at once. Honestly, I've been pretty impressed with most of
Obviously the biggest problem with it all is that it costs money. A lot of money if you want the IDE with all the architecture tools, design tools, testing tools, compilers, SQL server, TFS for source control and deployment, etc. You're locked into a MS environment essentially. And sometimes this isn't a problem at all. Maybe you're developing an ASP.net site or something. But you're spent a lot of money on tools and when multiplied by 50 developers, this can add up to a lot. However, you get MS support and for a lot of business companies with developers that aren't the greatest thing around, this is very valuable.
Eclipse has limitless plug-ins and can do everything VS.net can in terms of hooking into things. I don't find it as seamless and the whole package isn't there for everything from sharing documentation to deployment, etc. And there isn't support either. So a company is essentially on their own. But it's empowering to be able to ala cart the components you want.
I like both but have been really impressed with Visual Studio and all the related tools.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
With debugging statement:
FileThatObject.thatMethod(): x=1, y=2
Of course, you have to be in pretty good control of your code, plan and visualize in advance, before you actually start to write the code so the few times where you will need to write debugging statements is when you made some typing mistake (or almost).
It is a different approach to coding, but it leads to more robust code in my humble opinion. The down side of a debugger is that sometimes, it happens that some developers do not know what they are doing, they start writing code without prior planning and they manage to finally get it to work with the debugger. Typical time consumption ratio will be like 20% for writing the code and 80% to debug it and some bugs will go undetected.
My old way to do things is 50% planning before starting to code, 45% coding, 5% debugging. So the availability of a debugger is less important.
Note that I DO use debuggers if I need to reverse engineer code.
Again, I realize and I know that a debugger has become a standard tool in modern development teams. I am just saying I do not use them often so it is possible to get away without them.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I think I'll wait for an article comparing the two from someone who doesn't have a dog in the fight. As much as I'm loathe to use Visual Studio, Eclipse isn't much better. Perhaps the term "sucks less" is apropos.
I wouldn't really fault Visual Studio for Source Safe's failings, it isn't a required component. Personally, I wouldn't touch Source Safe with a very long pole in any voluntary manner (only if I was required to). Considering it is the only system marked as a system to avoid over at the Better SCM Initiative and even Forrester won't consider it anymore in ranking SCM products, I'm surprised it is being considered for any kind of current solution.
There are some decent tools for Visual Studio to work with CVS and Subversion, among other version control systems, and they work out fairly well. At work, we are using Subversion for our VCS, with AnkhSVN to handle the management inside Visual Studio. Except for some issues with using AnkhSVN back when it was first getting started (and was rather buggy), we have been very happy and productive with the solution.
In the article it mentions Visual Studio doesn't do automatic building. Well, that's kinda true. You can however, create a macro that will execute a build every time you press "ctrl-s" or press the "save" button. Visual Studio will only rebuild and re-link what changed, eg. the file you just edited. I did this for one of my projects and it worked pretty well.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
Eclipse 3.3 (Europa) really sped up the autocomplete features... Here's a little review of it. http://rf2-dev.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!33114F6710 97246!136.entry
and the europa site: http://www.eclipse.org/europa/
Have you tried NetBeans?
I find it is rapidly over taking VS.Net and Eclipse with things like its improved intelli-sense, built in profiler, tools for building handheld apps and many more improvements.
I'm a bit confused....this 'planning' thing you talk about...what is this?
Is this concept similar to another strange one I heard about the other day.....'documentation'??
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
lol...
you should probably stop drinking Stallmans sweat...
Compiling Java Code to x86 before run-time won't make it faster but a _lot_ slower. A JIT can do a lot of run-time optimization that just isn't possible with GCJ. For example, functions often cannot be inlined at compile-time, while they can at run-time. Also, you can use the whole instruction set when you JIT - if you don't, you're limited to i586 or i686. The next thing is that a JIT knows what kind of data is being processed allowing further optization, while an ahead-of-time-compiler can only guess about this. And GCJs garbage collector just sucks, since it's a non-moving Collector, which was originally developed for C and C++. Thus, it doesn't exploit the fact that java references are completely opaque, allowing yet more optimization (read: moving garbage collectors).
On the downside, a JIT uses more memory, because the code is in the memory twice (once in bytecode form, and once as native code). And of course, you have to do the actual JITing, which is negligible on today's machines once the program is up and running.
The only reason why Red Hat ships x86 binaries instead of java byte code is that for whatever reason they didn't want to include Sun's JRE (probably the same reason why they don't ship proper multimedia support or NTFS drivers).
Right. Because no one who knows the language makes typos in a method call. No one who knows the language ever forgets to close a parenthesis or drops a semi-colon. Indenting code automatically is stupid pre-optimization--let me hit the space bar myself. Refactoring support? Please! Let me refactor those 4 similar classes by hand--I'm sure I'll get it right. Who needs an IDE anyways?
Ummm, are you on crack? Sorry, but why on earth would you NOT want an IDE? It saves tons of time, prevents easy mistakes, helps you debug your code, helps you keep things organized and on topic, and can promote good habits (for example, assuming "well, you're making a new class--let me set up a unit test outline for you"). What's not to love?
Or do you write all your code in "edit" because visual tools like vi or emacs are for babies?
You forgot to mention that we should all be using assembly, because it's more efficient that way if it's done properly. These high level languages are for the birds.
I'm fond of the log4j library. Set it up, then litter your code with log statements - logger.error for serious events, logger.debug for reporting nearly every step of the code. First, it documents the code right in the code, and it's much easier to keep the log statements updated when you make code modifications. Second, when something breaks you just change your logging configuration file to turn all logging on for the affected code and re-run your tests. Third, in those (hopefully rare) occasions when a bug appears in production that didn't appear in development, you can turn up the logging level on your production software too.
Of course, unit testing is also good.
Is python dynamically typed? I've never got around to playing with it. If so, I'd be curious how VS2005 does it's intellesense magic with a dynamically typed language.
Fun fact, though I dont have the MSDN link, from what I understand Visual Studio provides all kinds of hooks to get it to "understand" your language of choice. Besides the python thing, aint there a PHP one?
Eclipse is wonderful for Java. Great completion, "intellisense", etc... However, I really miss what VS has for C/C++, which is basically intellisense for the complete MSDN library. Whenever I've used Eclipse for C/C++, simple things like fopen and printf have no "help". That is the one thing that I would love to somehow see integrated into the CDT.
Link to it for crying out loud. Don't make us work for it.
I think there are actually a couple different PHP environments out there for Visual Studio. You can find the full list of addins and packages to complement Visual Studio on our VSIP partner catalog.
No, but I used to work for Microsoft.
Maybe if an 'Eclipse for VS users' tutorial was available back then I would have given Eclipse more of a chance, but for something that works straight out of the box, VS had Eclipse beat hands down.
(Disclaimer: I'd spent the previous 2.5 years working with VS)
Sweet.. I didn't know there was so many languages (like php).
You should tell your marketing dudes they need to make this website more prominent on the MSDN site. I had no idea this site even existed!
Yes, Python is dynamically typed, and, yes, intellisense can't work in cases where the signature of a type is changed by the program during execution. That's also true of C#, however; reflection affects all syntactically-driven editors.
You should check out VS2008's Javascript intellisense to see what Visual Studio can do with dynamic types. Its not perfect, but its pretty slick overall.Also in .NET 3.5, there's a new dynamic type enhanced runtime, so quite a few dynamically typed languages are popping up for Visual Studio, too.
Sorry if I sound stupid, I should probably go bust out something in python... by dynamic you mean python is more like Perl:
:-).
my $var = "Could be a number, or a string, or a hashref";
or more like C#
int var = 102;
string astring = "My Happy String";
I'd think with the former perl like syntax the only way you could really parse the language in the editor and do good intellesense is to damn near compile the code in real time somehow. With C# and language like it, the editor only needs to look "skin deep" for the most part to determine the structure of variables and the language.
That said.. I'm no CS major, and alas I cannot write my own compiler. Not a superstar programmer here
More like perl.
class foo:
blah
blah
def outsideFoo(gnoo):
return gnoo
foo.noo = outsideFoo
print foo.noo(7)
is valid Python.
Agreed. Visual Studio, while having its faults (Windows only [duh, right?], pretty large footprint, and some rather unhelpful "help" features) is better than Eclipse. Visual Studio is quite nice if you just want to write Windows apps. C# is excellent. .NET is great. I just have too much cognitive dissonance when I totally ignore other operating systems, though. If MSFT would just provide .NET plugins for Linux / Mac they'd help themselves out a lot (and yes I know about MONO.) The annoying start page, and the MSDN search that returns nothing of use, and the !helpful code formatting notwithstanding, Visual Studio is pretty good.
I have gone through periods of trying Eclipse. People are incredulous when I tell them I hate Eclipse, so I feel like I have to see what I am missing and install it. Every time, EVERY TIME, I uninstall it, totally disgusted with the amount of RAM it takes and how heavy it feels. It's just another example of why I hate Java apps. Java on the server is fine, but on the client it just falls flat. Clunky look and feel, slow performance, and weird UI quirks seem to be the hallmarks of Java apps (and when people start using terms like percieved slowness, I reach for my Browning). Doesn't anyone else get annoyed by how slow Eclipse feels? Anyone?
To me, an IDE shouldn't get in the way of development. It should like a good waiter -- there when you want but otherwise out of your face. That's where both Eclipse and Visual Studio fall short.
My IDE of choice is jEdit. Yes, I know it's Java based. I do hate the fact that it's Java and it looks like every other Java application: butt ugly (and even with the Look and Feel plugin that is supposed to give more of a native OS look and feel...stupid swing components). But most importantly, it's a mighty fine text editor which has IDE essentials like syntax highlighting, comprehensive searching, and lots of powerful text editing tools (like block select, which my coworkers who use Dreamweaver just drool over.)
If you use Eclipse but hate it for being so heavy, I'd recommend jEdit. It's just the right amount of IDE. Not so much IDE cruft that writing code is less writing code than it is learning how to use the IDE, yet it's got enough utility to facilitate the business of writing code. Any web development I do (ASP, PHP, Cold Fusion, html, css, javascript) is all done in jEdit and I can code a page in the time it takes Eclipse to open a file.
blah blah blah
I cant believe this article is on slashdot
One of my gripes early on with Eclipse was that it used a ton of memory. One tip to minimize the memory load is to CLOSE THE PROJECTS YOU'RE NOT WORKING ON. I had been using Eclipse for a year before this was pointed out to me. Now that I close all projects but the one I'm working on, Eclipse is about 2-3 times more responsive than before.
I don't know why this isn't brought to the user's attention (via a startup tool tip or something). "You currently have 60 projects. You should close projects you're not currently using." That said, Eclipse is a lot like Photoshop, it will use up whatever memory you give it. For me, the sweet spot seems to have 2GB in the machine I'm using.
I think the Eclipse vs. Visual Studio debate has a lot to do with languages being used than features (it seems to me that both have comparable features).
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Here's the thing. Visual Studio 2005 for C# is probably the most "cushy" environment out there. But, if you are writing in C++, then, I've found KDevelop to be pretty damn nice. For 64 bit C++, KDevelop and Linux are a long way ahead of Windows. For assembly language, KDevelop does remarkably well. OTH, Visual Studio is a huge pain in the rear and getting more so.
Autocomplete in C++ sucks, and a lot of that has to do with the language itself, but, in terms of the compiler telling you exactly what is wrong, I think GCC is better than Visual C++. I really think, for a number of reasons, even though I do like Windows, that Linux is the place to be for C/C++ 64 bit development, or for that matter, SSEn development, and I think most developers would prefer it to.
Visual Studio sucks for C++, what more do you need!
This is my sig.
Which would be funny, except that for the languages supported by Visual Studio, the correct version is Visual Studio >> Eclipse.
error: invalid operands to binary >>
I use Kdevelop as exclusively as possible Compile in windows on the command line.
Naturally, when chained to a windows machine, I search for a comparative tool. I had been a party to more than one VB monstrosity, and the thought of going back made me want to retch. I used em all. CodeBlocks won out but only just.
The point of this story is Eclipse vs VisualStudio, So my Comparison: Based on previous the release of Eclipse CDT Hated it period next option. (I'll try the new one, but no big hurry) I am a fair person. I tried Visual Studio Express due to its new license. Man was it a breeze. It did exactly what is was supposed to and was completely free and unrestricted. I used it for two projects (1 was an upgrade to a previous VB monstrosity, Oh they all are.) I cant stand the .net framework, But I have to admit if you can stand it Visual Studio is the way to go.
I wish the guys at sharpdevelop and Monodevelop all the best and I know in the end you'll get it just perfect and Microsoft will change Back to real coding hence the codeblocks c++. Nice QT editor for windows. Cannot wait for KDE4 kdevelop on windows.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Java is implemented as a plugin, and some language extensions are better developed than others. It isn't a question of the power of the plugin architecture. E.g., see the Ruby plugin, supporting full debugging, refactoring, etc.
You just don't name a piece of software "Package Explorer". It invites jokes up the wazoo (oops, bad pun).
Table-ized A.I.
Here is the list of operating systems that will run Microsoft Visual Studio 2005:
In addition to the list of operating systems above, here is the list of operating systems that will also run Eclipse:
You have to put and Vim in that comparison!
just did, thanks for the suggestion! :)
No, but I used to work for Microsoft.
Both Eclipse and Visual Studio are a mess; programming doesn't need to be that complicated.
Which pretty much makes Eclipse > VS in itself. Not that I like anything that heavyweight. Java is such a slow platform, why I hate azureus too.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
When I originally posted about PyDev and Python, I was referring to the standard CPython implementation, not IronPython. But thanks for the link, it was informative.
This would have worked if it had not been discontinued because of the requirement for it to be closed source. Regardless, I'd expect Python to be a second-class citizen in most IDEs, other than the ones where it is most commonly used.
Haha, its curious that this article comes up now. I have been used Eclipse for quite some time (5 years now) and used VisualStudio .NET 2003 for some time too (while doing C# .NET WinForms and some WebForms apps for a real company) and just the other day I was really (gladly) surprised by one feature of the autocomplete intellisense in Eclipse:
First, create an Enum (must use JRE >= 5), then in any function create a swtich testing for a variable with the created enum type. Then start to add the 'case' terms and presss CTRL+SPACE to autocomplete them. You will see two things: first the autocomplete will show you the pertitnent Enum members as options for the "case", BUT it will *omit* those cases that you have already in the structure!
Granted, it is a small detail but it really made me go AAAAhhh!
Having said that, I have tried to use Eclipse for C++ or PHP development and I did not found it as good as VisualStudio or ZendStudio... of course those two are not free. Oh, and I also thing it suffers from the bloatiness of every Java program (hey, dont flame me, I *love* programming in Java, and do it everyday for a living =o] )
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I've always preferred the simpler stuff. Geany for Linux and Dev-C++ for Windows, they have a compile/build button and syntax-highlighting (although Dev-C++ only emboldens type clarifiers like int and char). More than enough for me :)
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Trying to develop a million lines of code project in C++ without a good debugger is more difficult than trying to build a house with a leatherman. Real programmers use real tools, noobs use printf() statements.
Is that it so often makes the wrong guess as to what you want. I have to type StandardId dozens of times per day at work, and Microsoft always changes the variable name to Standarded like I'm tying a damn letter to my mother. Then when you go back and change the text to correct what Microsoft intentionally corrupted, Microsoft will then intentionally corrupt it again. You have to cut and paste the text from Notepad to keep Microsoft from molesting your input. I literally spend more time correcting Microsoft "corrections" than I do programming or testing. Of course because Microsoft is paying our company money to demonstrate that their crappy products will work (and no they won't, we've still got more Solaris/Linux systems than Windows) in this field, we have to do everything that is customer-facing in C#.
I missed the best function in Eclipse - if you double click on a variable all uses of that variable are highlighted and the RHS margin shows you were they all are in the current document as a whole. That margin also shows you where all the errors, warnings, TODO comments, etc are. Not being able to do that one simple thing in VS is actually starting to annoy me. :( Fingers crossed for VS 2008.
But you have to install resharper v3.0, then you get amazing IDE. As a bonus point, both reshaper and IDEA (by the same company, IntelliJ) use same keyboard shortcuts, so if you do Java and C#, you only have to remember one set of shortcuts.
:)
btw, once you get used to it, you cannot live without Alt-Ins, (vs.net) ctrl-click and ctrl-shift-alt-n
If you do want:
=> to make applications quickly in C++
=> not to be Bill's bitch
=> to be able to write cross-platform code without having to worry about it
=> to be able to compile using mingw or MSC
=> to have an IDE like VS
=> to be able to see and modify the source code of the components you are using
Do yourself a favour and take a look at Ultimate++ on source forge. I discovered it a few months ago and haven't looked back.
(I looked at developing a plugin for Udigg under eclipse but found that in spite of what everyone says about java being fast, udigg was incredible slow. My GIS app in U++ is way slicker and is still cross-platform.)
This is a shameless plug but I feel justified cos those guys are doing incredible work for no money and it is truly open source unlike other offerings such as Qt.
NickMoving to an IDE is just not intuitive. I'm what you might call a part-time developer and I've always used notepad.exe and a Windows command prompt when I have to write Java code at work. I thought I'd try an IDE and the very first thing it wanted was "Existing or new project?" WTF is a "project?" I invented some name like "Myproject" to keep it happy but I'm still not totally sure. What I actually thought I was getting was a better way to compile my existing source files and I already know where those are located thanks. There are numerous other gotchas just like this.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
This looks like a shameless plug, trying to get you to buy this Eclipse Sucks t-shirt, but really it's just anti-Eclipse evangelism (or is it, "Eclipse anti-evangelism"? ;-). It will fall on mostly deaf ears hear in Slashdot-land, where I expect most people who give a crap about Eclipse one way or the other will be of the uber-geek type who LOVE it.
But, what the hell. Maybe some will get a chuckle out of it. :-)
Here's a bit of the text from the "back of the box" image:
Cool funny t-shirts for geeks, gamers and everyone else
If one can't find it by paper tracing, I really doubt he will do with a debugger. A person that doesn't compreend the code well enough to paper trace it will also not know what to look on the debuger.
Despite that, debuggers are really a time savers, mostly because it lets you refine your traces without the need of inserting statements and recompiling every time. It also saves the shame of not locating all the debugging statements (altough there are other ways of avoiding it).
Debuggers are also very nice for reverse engeneering. But I think they should be used after most of the work is done. First, you read documentation and see the program running (black box), then you find the main functions and read them, then you use tools to create the needed diagrams, only then, if still needed, you launch the debugger.
Rethinking email
Insightful? While the great Java Development Plugin made Eclipse famous, the C/C++ Tools are now in a state that make Eclipse one of the best C++ IDEs around. They get released the same time as new versions of eclipse, and together with other plugins (Bugzilla Integration etc.) you get a very very powerful dev tool.
What possible features could you be using that require 4 gigs of RAM? I'm not going to pretend Eclipse is lightweight, but I find that it's memory footprint has been under 300 megs.
Does anyone else find it disturbing that we're talking about glorified text editors running in "under 300 megs" as if this were some sort of praise?
If ever there was any doubt that the current trend towards prioritising developer productivity over performance of the resulting product was damaging the software business, and the idea that "the hardware will get faster to make up for it" was nonsense, modern IDEs are it. Sure, they do more than just display text these days, but not that much more. A lot of this, I suspect, is down to these modular, plug-in-friendly, VM-based architectures, which seem to be so over-engineered and generic that it might actually have been faster just to write several different, specialist tools, with the use of common libraries as appropriate.
This is not just Eclipse bashing, BTW. VS2005 loading my current project at work also requires nearly 300MB and runs like a dog. The total size of all the source code in the project is less than 1/10 of that.
What is perhaps most disturbing is that VC++ 6 offered me much the same useful functionality in the IDE, except that in those days, Intellisense usually found what I was looking for, help came up almost instantly and was on the page I wanted 99% of the time, it didn't pause for several seconds every time I opened the Tools->Options dialog, etc. Oh, and it was running on a machine less than 10% as powerful as what's on my desk today.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Notice that the comparison didn't talk about actually RELEASING the product.
I've spent some time building an application in SWT, which is reasonably sweet and sophisticated -- however, now that I'm looking to release my application, I'm having to experiment with applications to bundling third-party products, experiment with batch launchers, learning how to manipulate jar files, etc.
I wrote a C# program in VS a few months back, and on top of the immediately present and obvious GUI manipulation tools, the ability to just take my exe and run it on another machine without doing further research was a nice benefit.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Because I think that's very much the case for Visual Studio too. Stock VS2005 is usable, but look at some of the "plugins" made by jetbrains (ReSharper and dotTrace -- from the same guys that Make IntelliJ), devexpress (Refactor! and CodeRush), wholetomato (Visual Assist X) and a bunch of others.
I haven't seen such great plugins for any other IDEs.
///<sig
But do not litter your code to much since it might affect performance if you really over do it. We usually comment off seldom used debug log statements and even delete them from the code once a one time fix has been applied to a weird bug that doesn't have many chances of showing its ugly face again.
Used according to standards and best practices, unused log4j statements ( when debug is set to off) won't affect performance much (maybe 1 or 2 %).
Log4j affects performance because even if you set debug=off, there is still one method call to check that the flag is off for every debug log statement. Try at least to comment off log4j debug log statements in computational loops ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Yeah. Its a pretty good little python too. Its not *quite* cPython compliant to the level of Jython (last time I checked, which was some time ago), but I'm told the clr is pretty flexy if a little eccentric maybe, so that could change. That said, Jython is brilliant and really does leaverage the JVM very well and presents a damn good alternative to a full blown java trudge for gluing java bits together into a real app.
:)
Oh yeah fun hint: Jythons XML-RPC server + Your Java monstrosity of choice = xml-rpc API for your app in under a page of code. Its really really really neat being able to leaverage Python that way. If Ironpython manages to port pythons fantastic library to dot net, you'll see some pretty cool stuff like that too.
Yeah. Im a python zealot
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
If you think that using VC or Eclipse is required for good programming than I hope *YOU* don't work on code for my local bank or nuke station. I do (banking software at least), and it is inevitably those people who only know the IDE's who are the worst programmers. When I do interviews for new hires, I never ask them "how do you setup a new project in Visual Studio", I ask them "how do you sort a list of strings backwards in C++".
I used Eclipse a lot in college for the Java work that most of my classes required, but when I graduated I started working for a C# shop using Visual Studio 2003/2005. I have to say that for most things I do, neither IDE is remarkably better than the other. That said, I really miss Eclipse's superior refactoring support and error checking. I was quite surprised when I opened a VB.NET project in VS and found that it has similar features to Eclipse in that regard. If there's one thing they should be working on more than anything else for the next VS it is improving that feature.
Actually, its more complicated than that, even for C#. In .NET 3.5, C# has a new feature, called anonymous types, which are defered at compile time from the context, so Visual Studio has to do some work anyway.
Something like (I forget the exact syntax):
var anon = {first = 2, second = "test", third = 32.2};
And then if you type anon followed by a period, intellisense will correctly pick up the types of the object and each of its members, defered from the initialization. Though even if it wasn't for that, Visual Studio 2008 supports stuff like javascript intellisense, so it "tracks" whats happening to the object at a given position in the program... pretty clever.
Why is this modded informative? All the features in the first paragraph are in Emacs/Vi, and the the 2nd paragraph is pretty much bollocks.
This idiot has clearly never used anything other than an IDE.
Why UNIX?
Um, Eclipse does not "fall into debugging mode". You have to intentionally start your app in debug mode.
Age has nothing to do with it. Your "way to view things" is simply wrong. Please demonstrate even one way in which manually added "debug statements" are superior to using Eclipse's debugger.
Here are just a few reasons why the debugger is better:
If the problem is that you simply haven't taken the time to learn how to use a debugger, please don't try to pass your ignorance off as some kind of "old-timey" virtue.
Can the enlightened /. crowd tell me if Eclipse also handles (decently!) non-mainstream languages like Haskell or OCaml? I am particularly interested in the latter, and I'm curious to know if this Eclipse thingy will do a better job than vi at handling OCaml programmes.
my $var = "Could be a number, or a string, or a hashref";
or more like C#
int var = 102;
string astring = "My Happy String";
I'd think with the former perl like syntax the only way you could really parse the language in the editor and do good intellesense is to damn near compile the code in real time somehow. With C# and language like it, the editor only needs to look "skin deep" for the most part to determine the structure of variables and the language.
That said.. I'm no CS major, and alas I cannot write my own compiler. Not a superstar programmer here
my $i = 4;
$i = func( $i );
$i = $i * 2;
What's to say that the value of $i doesn't become alpha in func? That could be optional...
Intelisense sucks anyway. Use vim and ctrl-n/p, it's much more sane than that method completion anyway. There's so many benefits to learning how to use vim that it's just silly to list it all here. I have to spend all day listening to people crap on about the latest addons to VS or whatever everyone is wanking over these days that it makes one just want to switch off and use something that doesnt come complete with hype, and it's more productive.
VS is just a toy.
Why UNIX?
I love Eclipse CDT, but in terms of auto-completion speed, it doesn't even compare to Visual Studio (yet). While Visual Studio Express instantly evaluates The . -> and :: operators, Eclipse CDT v3.2.2 uses between 10 to 15 seconds. It has been like this as long as I can remember. Also, the indexer triggers on a lot of weird things, like the operators >> and >, and even freezes when it encounters a new identifier name.
I'm using good old Vim until this is sorted out.
Eclipse is great, so it's sad that this feature alone ruins everything. It's impossible to get work done, when the IDE freezes every other line for 10 seconds.
If anyone knows how I successfully can disable the indexer, please let me know. Neither the option in the project settings, nor the option in the preferences work.
Congratulations, you must be a real genius for having figured out how to use a debugger ;-)
Read my other posts on this thread, I said I used debuggers mostly to reverse engineer code. I have used them mostly with assembly languages. With stack traces, log4g, the jvm being able to run in debug or trace mode itself, etc.. I do not need to use them with eclipse.
It doesn't take very long to learn how to use a debugger. Learning to code properly takes considerably longer. As a matter of fact, when you know how low level languages like assembly and machine languages work and that you are also familiar with the internals of the jvm, you don't even have to "learn" how to use a debugger, you just use it.
If being able to switch debug on the fly on a remote server is so important to you. Is that because you debug your programs while they are in production ? Note that, as another poster mentioned, it is perfectly feasible with log4j as well.
Thanks for your advice, I'll go buy myself debuggers for dummies. ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I enjoyed your rambling, self-aggrandizing version of "no, I can't give you even one reason why hard-coded debug statements are better than using a debugger." It was also nice how you worked in as much "old-school programmer street cred" as possible. It really impressed me.
That's precisely why it is incredibly stupid to avoid using a debugger. Learning and using a debugger doesn't take away from design and programming time and it can help you to learn what your code is actually doing. In other words, a debugger can help you to learn to code properly. Why you see these as opposing rather than complimentary activities remains a mystery.Hahaha! Love the crudely veiled insult there. Here's a somewhat less veiled insult for you: if you have never experienced a bug that manifests itself in a production or staging environment but not in development than either you haven't been programming for very long or have only written the most trivial of applications. Remote debugging is an invaluable tool in certain situations and only a fool would deny themselves its abilities.
Shockingly, I use both logging and a debugger! That's because a logging API and a debugger are two different things with different strengths and purposes. If you're trying to use your logging API as a debugger, you're simply making troubleshooting much more difficult than it needs to be, and for absolutely no good reason.
Let me know when you come up something that at least resembles a rationale for your bizarre bias against using a debugger for Java. Until then, I'll take you at face value and assume that it's a manifestation of your lack of confidence in your manhood -- or something like that.
I have absolutely no bias against people using a debugger. Where did you get that idea? I just said I rarely used one in my J2EE projects, so rarely that I don't even remember where it is in the menus. I jokingly stated "Real programmer don't use debuggers" as some kind of bragging, I could admit that. It's not my fault if you took it so seriously and that you seem to have decided to teach me a lesson about how stupid I was not to use a debugger.
Since I do not use a debugger that often, the functionality of it in eclipse is less important for me, that's all my post was about.
To make you happy, should I start using one and post back here telling you how great it is ?
Am I automatically an idiot because I do not use a debugger ?
Do you want to force me to use a debugger so you may then respect me ?
I won't ask you if you are jealous because I get away without a debugger given your former replies ;-)
About my experience with debugging big and complex projects, I won't go there but I will give you a hint, look at the source code. The fact that you seem to want to challenge me about the size of projects I have worked on makes me suspect that you may not have worked on such big and complex projects. Otherwise, you wouldn't feel the need to challenge me on that.
Take care and don't get all excited so easily ;-))
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Speaking of languages supported by VS, which of the following do you mean?
@WebService()
public class WebServiceAPI {
@WebMethod
public String callSomeAppFunction(@WebParam(name='param1') final String param1,
@WebParam(name='param2') final String param2) {
return someAppFunction(param1, param2);
}
}
Oh, and to make that an XML-RPC API, just add the line:
@SOAPBinding(style=Style.RPC, use=Use.LITERAL, parameterStyle=ParameterStyle.WRAPPED)
right after the "@WebService" annotation.
Just junk food for thought...
By stating that not using a debugger is something to brag about (which you admit to above), you clearly imply that programmers who do use debuggers are somehow inferior to you. So I got the idea that you have a bias against people who use debuggers from your stated bias against the use of debuggers.
My point, put as simply as possible, is that choosing to be ignorant of the powerful tools available to you (a debugger among them) is something to be laughed at -- not bragged about.
No, it would be enough if you stopped trying to spread the ridiculous myth that the use of a debugger is, in some unspecified way, linked to inferior programming abilities.
Yes, absolutely, assuming that you've ever had to debug something. It's no different than insisting on using vi instead of an IDE because of some misguided, ultimately self-limiting belief that "really good" programmers don't use certain kinds of tools even when those tools offer tremendous advantages.
No, but I feel compelled to respond to your suggestion that programmers who do use debuggers are inferior to you. A younger programmer reading this might otherwise get the idea that you are right.
So there it is again. Another clear suggestion that one should be jealous of you because you deny yourself the use of a debugger. It doesn't matter how many different ways you say it, it still makes no sense.
So you "won't go there" but then you immediately proceed to go there but somehow fail to back it up with anything. What source code are you talking about? I don't see anything. Does this source code you speak of exist only in your mind? That would explain your strange attitude toward debuggers...
Maybe if you add a few more smiley faces I'll forget that you still haven't responded to my initial, simple challenge: please point out even one instance where using a "debug statement" is a better choice than using a debugger. And feel free to turn that around. Rather than simply implying your superiority through the eschewal of a debugger, please actually explain why a debugger is in any way harmful or inferior to your awesome debug statements.
"by CryBaby (679336)"
Quite possibly the most accurate name. Ever.
Just to please you here is a perfect example where the debugger is going to do SFA compared to a hardcoded debug statement.
I was working on an application a few months ago that would randomly crash when it presented the file open dialogue. Every time I tried to repro in the debugger it worked flawlessly. Ended up I was running into a race condition that was always satisfied with the slower speed of running through the debugger. Took a few minutes of scattering some printf's to track down the issue.
Absolutely, you win the prize. However, that's not a "perfect" example -- that's about the *only* example. Obviously, if the use of a debugger masks a bug you have to find another way to track it down.
I assume you didn't start out with printf's because the debugger provides you with more power, flexibility and ease of use compared to hard-coded debug statements. Plus, the debugger doesn't leave you with a bunch of scattered printf's that you have to clean up afterwards. You're not arguing that because of that one, rare edge case, you've now sworn off the use of a debugger in favor of hard-coded printf's or logging (at least I don't pick that up from your comments). You also didn't try to imply that using hard-coded printf's was something to brag about -- only that is was necessary in this case.
My point was simply that a debugger is a better debugging tool than printf's or logging and, if you choose not to use one, it's not something to be proud of and it doesn't make you a better programmer. You haven't said anything to argue against that. I issued the "give me even one instance..." challenge to prove that the OP didn't have any actual rationale behind his statements and implications. Based on the personal insult you started off with, I can only guess that you mistook my tone for an argument that I was not trying to make.
At the moment, I'm running 3 instances of Visual Studio 2003 (I know, I'm a luddite, I've only moved one project to 2005 and already 2008 looms). They are taking 25 MB, 61 MB and 92 MB. I'm running a much smaller project in Flexbuilder/Eclipse and the javaw.exe process is taking 189 MB.
So, yeah, Eclipse (java) takes from 2-6 times as much memory. But so what? It's not like 189MB or 92MB is a significant chunk of the 2,500MB available on my aged and crusty desktop PC.
My gripes with Eclipse are:
1. Eclipse gets in my way when I'm programming. The editor is just plain slow. I am not The Flash on the keyboard, but I can often get ahead of Eclipse and I have to wait 2-3 seconds for the damn thing to catch up. This never happens to me with Visual Studio 2003.
2. The variable inspector in debug mode absolutely sucks. It often throws errors, is insanely slow and there's no way to evaluate an expression, or, if there is, it's not apparent.
3. Visual Studio provides better "in-line" help with methods and arguments.
If you think Eclipse is just as good as Visual Studio then you've not used Visual Studio or you've got significant mental deficiencies.
Hey CryBaby,
I just came across this ;-)
This is another very stupid guy like me that doesn't use debuggers. When he does use them, it resembles quite strangely the usage I do when I DO use debuggers.
Have a nice one ;-)
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/linus-im-a-bastar d-speech.html
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
CryBaby, where are you ??? Since you replied to ALL my other posts, I am still waiting for your argument on my last post, which was just a link to Linus opinion on the matter ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.