[plt-scheme] Re: Visual Studio .NET ...easier than PLT Scheme

Gordon Weakliem wrote:

>FWIW, I've heard that most devs working on actual products (not one-offs and sample code) at Microsoft don't use Visual Studio, partly because VS doesn't handle large projects well, and partly because VS doesn't integrate nicely into any sort of automated build.  And partly because a lot of those guys already have a favorite editor and don't want to switch. 
>
I can vouch for the fact that VS is not my first choice for large 
projects for these very reasons.  The GUI is nice for debugging specific 
modules, and provides a very nice text editor and linkage to help 
files.  However, large-scale project builds require a lot of hands-on 
tweaking (since the project files are not real amenable to integration 
with third-party tools).  nmake is inferior to most UNIX-style makes, 
and so it's very time consuming if your projects involve multiple tools 
or languages.

But of course, this is the antithesis of the .NET ideal of "everything 
is .NET -- why shop anywhere else?", so it's to be expected.  We 
basically have ClearCase drive builds for the AIX end of things, then 
allow our trained "CM Professional" load the project files and press 
"BUILD" and then take various actions when things break.

>  
>I saw a presentation by the former head of the Visual Studio product line (back in Version 2.0) who readily admitted that MS' compiler was nowhere near as good as the competition, but the AppWizards were the hook that got a lot of people into C++.  Basically, you'd hit a button and have something sort of working in a minute or so.  I distinctly remember being impressed by that back in the day.
>
This is exactly what prompted our FORMER VP of development to force C# 
on us.  Alas ;-), she is no longer with the company.  But the legacy 
remains.

>  The Scribble tutorial was great as well, because it worked you through implementing a lot of common features (at least for editor apps) in a pretty painless way.  That's a lesson MS learned from VB, most programmers are in a hurry and given the good-fast-cheap triangle, they'll always pick the last two.  
>  
>
Long live worse is better!

-Brent