Microsoft Declines To Make a 64-Bit Visual Studio (uservoice.com)

OhPlz writes: A request was made back in 2011 for Microsoft to provide a 64 bit version of Visual Studio to address out-of-memory issues. After sitting on the request for all that time, Microsoft is now declining it, stating that it would not be good for performance.
After almost five years, the request received 3,127 votes on the UserVoice forum for Visual Studio. Microsoft instead recommended the vsFunnel extension to optimize memory by filtering low-priority projects, adding "we highly value your feedback." They cited a December MSDN post that had argued "smaller is faster," and that no performance benefits would be realized for users whose code and data already fit into a 32-bit address space, while most other issues could be addressed with better data design.

Comments

visual studio

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a quad core 3.5Ghz with 32GB of RAM, VS2015 installed on an SSD. It takes over 15 seconds to get to a working state. After the last update (2), then the Update patch, it now pops up some idiotic error about scc something-or-other every time it starts, and every time I open a project. An update for this POS software takes at least 15 minutes -- with far and away most of the time spent sitting at 99% complete with the status message: "Visual Studio is configuring itself -- this might take a while."

Yeah no shit it might take a while.

In summary Visual Studio has become one of the worst programs I use. It is horrifically bad in all aspects: Hard to use, impossible to navigate, useless documentation.

When I wander over to the C++ forums on reddit I frequently see their runtime library/compiler guy -- I think his name is STL, sheepishly saying what an antiquated POS their C++ compiler is. That doesn't give me warm fuzzy feelings either.

It's all just more nails in the coffin as far as I'm concerned. I rarely develop for Windows anymore and when I have to it's because I'm forced to. The entire Windows platform is a complete disaster from a developer's point of view. All the years of MSDN trying to sell whatever the current darling language, what's-old-is-new-again (C++ is back, did you notice?), terrible, TERRIBLE API design, and just general CRUFT (did I mention that COM is back too..?) have finally caught up to them.

Re:visual studio

[Dutch Gun]

I've been using VS 2015 since it was released, and using VS professionally for close to 20 years. The quality of VS and the compiler has waxed and waned over the years, but I'm pretty happy with the way the current version is looking, given the general responsiveness, functionality, and stability of the IDE and the C++ compiler itself. It has pretty close to full C++ 14 compliance at this point - and certainly has the features *I* care about. If you're seeing such poor performance and odd error messages, there's something strange going on, as that's not a typical experience. My machine is rather *less* powerful than yours, and I just counted - it takes six second to get VS up and running for me.

Stephan T Lavavej is the maintainer you're thinking of, and he maintains the standard C++ library, so it's pretty awesome his initials are STL. He's one of the few MS devs that interacts regularly with developers and speaks candidly about MS's development, and has given some pretty interesting talks. True, the MS C++ compiler is quite old, but they've been modernizing it in light of C++'s renewed interest and features, with pretty decent results (if slower than many wish, probably including STL). GCC is also quite old, if you recall, but software can be updated. Clang is the only "new" C++ compiler in widespread use I'm aware of, so it obviously benefits from a more modern implementation, having lessons learned applied during initial development.

And COM never really went away (very few things in Windows do), but it's claim to fame was interprocess-communication and a language-independent execution model. New libraries have superseded the former, and .NET has largely replaced the latter. I'm not sure what constitutes "is back", but I've not heard anyone talking about it, and certainly nothing *new*. Maybe you're just hearing more about what's always been there since natively compiled code is making something of a minor comeback, with interpreted code like .NET never really having met promised performance expectations, even when JIT-compiled.

As for 64-bit Visual Studio, it's strange that they're not looking more seriously at this, but my guess is they ran into some severe technical hurdles in early efforts to port it, so are downplaying the importance. I mean, who doesn't develop on 64-bit machines at this point? I'll bet they're working on it internally, but are not ready to commit to anything.

Re: In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about doing the work, it's the outsourced Indian team doesn't know how to do the work.

Re: In other words...

[Austerity Empowers]

It's not about doing the work, it's the outsourced Indian team doesn't know how to do the work.

I am pretty sure this is the actual reason, not just cynicism. MS has fired or encouraged significant attrition amongst it's can-do types, focusing those few who remain and who know how to do things into certain areas. The rest...they've backfilled with H1B or outright offshoring. Any other company would have collapsed by now, but monopolies are a powerful thing.

Re:32-bit visual studio

[Fragnet]

I've been a developer for 15 years and I can say Visual Studio environment is way better than anything available on Linux. The code dependencies can be resolved in 64 bit but Microsoft is a business and there's an opportunity cost associated with doing that rather than something else more people actually need.

Re:32-bit visual studio

[MachineShedFred]

It would probably suck worse, because the memory leaks and plug-in bloat would be only bound by physical memory, rather than the enforced 32-bit memory space.

If Microsoft is telling people that they should just write better code in order to stay inside of a 32-bit boundary, they should start practicing what they preach and lead by example.