Visual Studio 2008 Express For Mac

Visual Studio 2005 Express, the first version of Visual Studio Express, was released on October 2005, with support until 2015. It runs on Windows 2000 SP4 and later. Service Pack 1 for 2005 Express was released on December 2006. Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition is a development studio for student and beginner programmers where they can create all kinds of programs for Windows. With this light version of Visual Basic you can use tools that take advantage of the APIs in Windows Vista, that transmit data via the Internet using P2P, or that integrate video and audio in.

I'm traveling right now and don't have access to all of my normal development tools but since I do have my handy MacBook I figured I would try a little experiment. Here's what I have set up right now:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Download

I allocated 1GB of RAM to the VM for Windows XP and it worked great - plenty of headroom to run applications. I've said it before but it bears repeating since I know based on the comments that a few people that are Windows folks are considering trying out a Mac:

Visual Studio 2008 is a pack of programming tools that are simple and very easy-to-use. Don't wait any longer to download Visual Studio 2008 free on your PC. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Express for SP1 offers several free tools so that even. I have two genuine MS products (Windows XP and Visual Studio 2008 Upgrade). I follow all there best practices (Installed all Express Updates, and on a previous try I even installed all updates), so it is a clean machine (downloaded the genuine MS product Visual Studio Express (which works) nothing else done on these machines (no antivirus.

Windows runs really well, even on my lowly little MacBook. I did bump my memory up to 4GB, which I think is really important, but standard Windows applications (not games mind you - not even attempting that on a MacBook) work great.
To maximize screen real estate - really important on a MacBook - I run Windows XP in full screen mode. This still allows me to access spaces easily.
Visual Studio 2008 Express For Mac
I was able to get Visual Studio 2008 Express installed without any problems. Early in the setup VS08 rebuilds much of it's library, so it's a chance to see the impact it has while running full bore. On my machine during peak compile times the CPU ran a steady 50% utilization. I jumped into other Mac applications, including Safari while it was working and experienced no noticeable degradation in performance.
Once I had VS08 up and running it ran really smoothly. I didn't stress it too much - just a couple of browser based applications - but it was able to load them up in IE and I could run through the debugger just fine. During these minimal tests the CPU barely broke a sweat.
To give you a sense of what's possible to run on a little MacBook, here I am using Spaces to run NetNewsWire, iTunes, iChat, Safari and finally a full screen Windows XP (lower right) with Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition loaded and running.
What's great about this is that I can rapidly switch between environments. Windows performance - even in a VM - is snappy. I notice a little window 'tearing' when dragging windows quickly. I think that's probably a function of the way graphics are handled on a MacBook - no dedicated video card. The MacBook Pro does have a dedicated video card so it may not have this issue.
One thing I have noticed with the MacBook is that I do take a pretty decent CPU hit when viewing flash based sites. It's not nearly as bad with QuickTime video (interesting, huh?). When I speak to friends that have iMacs or Mac Pros they don't see any CPU hit when watching Flash based stuff.
Based on the results I've had I think I'm going to try loading up VS05 with my current product build into a VM and see what the performance is like. My project has gotten pretty large and uses some aftermarket controls for UI, so it will be a good test. I also am debugging my application using SQL Server Compact Edition so it's a pretty tall order.
On my Windows XP development box - a beast of a machine with an EVGA 680i mobo, Intel QX6700 processor, EVGA 8800GTX video and matched Corsair memory I take a significant CPU hit when VS05 decides to refactor my code while using certain design surfaces.
I have no doubt the MacBook will also strain under that burden but it will be interesting to see if it is still useable when that happens.

A few months ago I heard “Visual Studio is coming for Mac.” At first, I did not believe the person who told me. But once I gained confidence in their sensibilities, I was thrilled. And now that it has arrived … well, it really isn’t Visual Studio for Mac. This is Visual Studio Code.

The idea was great. I was going to dump my slow Windows 7 box containing my decked out Visual Studio 2012 — extensions and all — and my dev onto my super fast 4K iMac. All without conceding to Boot Camp; but it looks like that time has not yet come.

Visual Studio Code is an integrated development environment (IDE) that runs on Mac — as well as Linux and Windows (for some reason). But Visual Studio it is not.

I gave it a good three hours of testing: the install was easy, until I needed to update Mono. And opening the first project from GitHub was easy as well. Here is what I found:

Pros

Light Weight

Yep, it is totally light. It is all about get in, code, commit and leave. Which is nice, because if you are used to Visual Studio, you know it can be very heavy. Visual Studio Code takes much less time to launch, and auto-complete is way faster.

JSON Settings

Love the fact that all settings for the IDE are project-based and JSON files.

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Search

The search interface is really nice. It is responsive and supports Regex.

Cons

Language Support

For the supported languages — JSON, CSS, HTML, {less}, and Node.js — intellisense and autocomplete work. And it’s fast. But for other languages, like PHP, all you get is syntax highlighting.

Mono

Well it’s pretty cool they support Mono, but my testing intellisense and autocomplete are not supported. It is .NET for Mac, for God’s sake. Why would you not put more effort into the code support here?

Build my Code!

You can only run Mono and Node.js projects. Which is pretty confusing, as the language support is not great for Mono, but you can debug for it. This was a freebie for them. All they do is call your locally installed mono compiler, which does the work. It is not likely, even with the really cute debug icon, you will be doing any debugging.

It was a bit of a let down, but it is still neat. The actual use cases must be pretty limited. I’m picturing a small team, or working on a very small component quickly. But I do not see Visual Studio Code replacing the developer’s dedicated IDE. Nor do I see it being used in any sustained capacity.

Xna

So why does it exist? I think it’s mostly a marketing play. It certainly was developed well. But likely it was the the path of least resistance, to see how their all-important “Developer Tools” focus was going to fit into Linux and Mac. It also builds confidence in Microsoft’s reconciliation with other applications. If I am Microsoft, I’m watching the download numbers and reviewing all feedback to simply gauge the reality of people using it. If you can get developers across any platform addicted to an IDE, then you have an “in” for the entire VSO suite.

But I also get this weird feeling, which I also got at Build 2015, that Microsoft and Xamarin are up to something. Although on so many levels they are competitors, they go out of their way to work together. And the more Microsoft places products on the same machine as Xamarin tools, the better. Conspiracy, much?

So I do not get to dump my Dell just yet, and at this pace I might fully move to a Cloud IDE before I do Visual Studio Code. I think it’s worth a try. But after a few hours you will get the gist. And honestly, if you have the Git client installed and need to make a quick change to your code before bed, it’s great.

Feature image via Flickr Creative Commons.