Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (Standard Edition) (PC)

I was using VC++ 6.0 (I skipped the VS2003 experience) up until last Friday when I received VS2005 Standard Edition from Amazon. All of my comments will refer to the IDE, and I did not have a prior version of the .NET framework on my (Win2K Pro) system. I have also not had a chance to to any .NET stuff.

Shipping from Amazon was as promised (I specified next day), and the product arrived in excellent condition.

0) Comes on five CDs, and I didn't notice an option anywhere to purchase a DVD version. Microsoft's marketting hype claims 1 disk. Maybe they only have one DVD burner in Redmond, and it's broken. I pitty the Pro Edition buyers if this is the case.

1) Takes about 40 minutes to install on a AMD64/3500,1gb RAM system.

2) Will install on Win2K Pro as long as you have Service Pack 4 installed.

3) It consumes about 3gb, counting MSDN.

4) The IDE does not conform to theme settings of OS (annoys the hell outa me). The most glaring part of this is that the font I specified for menus on my system is being ignored. Secondarily, it uses the Office 2005 theme, and I think it looks like crap.

5) Class Wizard is dead (and I am not fond of that fact).

6) Syntax highlighting is stunted. I can't change foreground AND background color on several items. I also don't get to set syntax coloring on Wizard lines. I hate that.

7) The compiler caught several errors that VC6 ignored (such as defining a const without specifying the type - GASP!)

8) The compiler also caught a handler function in the CPP file for a user-defined message that did not have the correct return type specified (I was incorrectly using "void" instead of "LRESULT"). However, the matching (and also incorrect) prototype defined in the H file was not detected.

9) When you un-pin workspace windows and turn off interface animations, hovering the mouse over the side-tabs still has a 1-2 second delay before rolling the windows back out.

10) When an un-pinned window is rolled out from the sides, the interface is not correctly invalidated, causing the side window to partially obscure the bottom window (if it's pinned, of course).

11) When you want to create an "event" handler, you have to have the caret positioned over the MESSAGE_MAP block in either the H or CPP file before you can even see the list of available events in the properties window.

12) While I'm talking about the properties window, I gotta say I'd rather have the old properties dialogs back than be forced to scroll the "never-enbing-list-of-properties".

13) If you're moving from VC6, be prepared for a bunch of warnings about deprecated code. MS has new "more secure" versions of our old favorites, like strcpy, itoa, printf, sscanf, etc. You can add a compiler definition to the project settings to ignore these warnings (and you might want to at first).

14) Some of the MFC macros have different parameter types. Be prepared for that.

15) I was surprised to find that you have to #include a file in stdafx.h in order to use the CListView class.

16) I looked over the Feedback page at Microsoft to see what kinds of bugs/suggestions were being reported, and it appears as if MS is making a concerted effort to reject all issues regarding the IDE's performance and usability. Status quo, IMHO...

17) They're already supposed to be working on a patch, but we probably won't see anything for at least six months.

18) Intellisense appears to work quite well, and it has not yet refused to show me class members. In VC6, you never knew when it was going to work or just stare back at you with a dumb look on it's face.

In closing, if you feel the need to get up to speed with the latest MFC stuff, want a better C++ compiler, or have the need to write code for .NET 2.0, don't hesitate to get this product. I think it's a worthy purchase regardless of the little things I've found.

PS. No, I haven't got a clue as to what a "streamlined" user experience is, nor how it compares to the Pro version's "full" user experience.

Hi all, I've been writing code for over 5 years now and work as a developer for a software company. I'm also MCAD Certified. We use VS.Net 2005 exclusively and the reviews that you will read below about this program sucking are not true. I believe the reason users may think this program sucks is because they don't know how to use it. It's just like anything else, if you don't know how to use the program you won't benefit from its features. Now one thing I will tell you is that when you want to create a Windows Service you WILL need the Professional version of VS.Net 2005 to do that. Other than that I have created atleast 25 web sites ranging from personal sites to enterprise e-commerce, numerous desktop apps that range from single managed apps to apps that use WIN32 API, ie old COM stuff, Class libraries, Server Controls and .Net Remoting objects. So unless you need to create Windows Services this is the package for you.

I primarily write in VB/VBA -- not at a really advanced level, mostly focused on data management -- and am trying to make the transition to asp.net. So my comments are directed along these lines.

The IDE itself is generally very good. Layout, menus, etc. are fine, intellisense is fantastic and the error messages are actually pretty useful.

That said, getting asp.net to function the way you want it to (if you're moving from VB) is still quite challenging and time consuming. Some examples -- if you add a database to your project, VS won't recognize it until you exit and restart; changing column widths on a grid view is a bit of a challenge (just google "Gridview column widths" and read away) -- mine wouldn't work until I shut VS down and relaunched; master pages are great, but incredibly finicky -- some of my pages appear with the designated breadcrumb, some don't, go figure; three tier data architecture is incredibly challenging b/c the ObjectDataSource is very picky -- after a few days of playing around with it, I abandoned a three tier set-up for a two tier one. Etc., etc.

MS is doing quite a bit to push people from the COM world into the .Net world and certainly VS 2005 is much more accessible than VS 2003. But when the language itself is still so buggy, the best IDE in the world only helps you to better focus your frustrations. My op is VS for asp.net still has a long ways to go before it becomes nearly as accessible as VB/VBA.

As a follow-up, some of the issues that I cited above are easily addressed by a better understanding of the IDE (i.e., fixing my unfamiliarity with the IDE). However, there are still numerous areas where the separate pieces of asp.net take an inordinate amount of time and effort to fit together properly (the object data source being the best/worst example I've hit). Six mos. of pretty regular use have only reinforced the views that I originally expressed -- very good IDE, an ambitious concept, but one that still needs a fair amount of work.