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

This speaks for wizards in DrScheme. They'd be easy to add. We could 
spit out tons of scaffolding in no time. -- Matthias


On Jan 30, 2004, at 2:52 AM, Brent Fulgham wrote:

>  For list-related administrative tasks:
>  http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/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