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Microsoft's Top Devs Don't Seem To Like Own Tools
ericatcw writes "Through tools such as Visual Basic and Visual Studio, Microsoft may have done more than any other vendor to make drag and drop-style programming mainstream. But its superstar developers seem to prefer old-school modes of crafting code. During the panel at the Professional Developers Conference earlier this month, the devs also revealed why they think writing tight, bare-metal code will come back into fashion, and why parallel programming hasn't caught up with the processors yet." These guys are senior enough that they don't seem to need to watch what they say and how it aligns with Microsoft's product roadmap. They are also dead funny. Here's Jeffrey Snover on managed code (being pushed by Microsoft through its Common Language Runtime tech): "Managed code is like antilock brakes. You used to have to be a good driver on ice or you would die. Now you don't have to pump your brakes anymore." Snover also joked that programming is getting so abstract, developers will soon have to use Natal to "write programs through interpretative dance."
Advanced developers who learned how to code on what would be considered bare bones IDEs don't feel the need to use tools that are meant to let low level developers produce functional GUI applications without having to dedicate tons of hours.
News at 11!
That's because you weren't reading the ads - direct or indirect - of these MS "dev tools" (in magazines etc)
And you haven't been affected by managers who were reading them.
Many companies aren't big enough (or use Windows extensively enough) to get a volume license. And besides that, the significant cost is not the license, but replacing the hardware, and all the man-hours of work getting all the old apps up and working again.
Windows 9x will remain for many years to come, on business PCs with modest needs. And yes, there periodically need to be new programs written, as well as several old programs maintained.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Huh? If you don't want .NET, don't use a Managed C++ project, use a native C++ project. You can control exactly what libraries are included, and no, it doesn't include .NET libraries by default. I'm not sure how you can claim to know anything about Visual Studio, if you don't know this.
I've used SDL, which provides for audio, 2d graphics, controller input, network communication (I think), among other things. Basically, it's a multi-platform toolkit similar in use to DirectX....of course, I'm not claiming that it's a full feature-matched equivalent, but it's pretty useful.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
"Even $3 embedded devices will have 100s of meg ram to play with."
As a rule, no they won't. SOME embedded appliances, marketed for homes and sheltered geeks will have that, because they have the luxury of being connected to the powergrid all the time. Embedded stuff that don't have that luxury will not, for power saving reasons. That's why there are still embedded devices that use 1980's bare-bone processors and less than 100KiB RAM.