Bitter Disappointment

The first thing I noticed was the wonky install process.. but ya know what? That's fine. So what if Disc 1 isn't where the install starts... at least it told me what I needed to do to get the install going. Peachy!

So I get everything installed, and I get to the step where it's going to search online for update. w00t! This thing says 2003 in the name, so surely there are updates for it. Oops, it can't seem to connect to microsoft for whatever reason (yes, my internet connection is fully functional). There's no error message, just a note asking me if I'd like to try again. Well..... since it didn't even bother to give me a hint as to what's wrong, why would trying a second time yield any different results? Whatever. So, slightly annoyed, I decide to go check Microsoft's site manually. Didn't really find any updates, just a few more security patches. Okily dokily.

Start->Programs->Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003->Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003.

:: waits ::

:: waits ::

What the hell, did it crash? Oop! Wait! No... I think there's a window frame there. Wait.. is it? Um.. oh yeah!

It launches. It's the slowest launch time I've ever seen. My laptop isn't a super computer, but with the specs it has (2.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM) it should not be this dog slow. But I figure, it's the first run. Perhaps it's setting up a ton of preferences in the background and this issue will go away. No.. it never goes away. Every launch is a coffee break. Keep in mind, I installed C++ and C# (not VB or J#, etc), so maybe that's just too many options for it to handle. But the box clearly says P3 600 MHz with at least 160 MB of RAM on it. I'm well past that and think this thing is an absolute rotting pig to load.

The first thing I am prompted with is a horrible UI. That's my initial gut reaction. Nothing is standard Windows UI, it does not follow in any way, shape or form the Windows User Experience Guidelines, and I have a helluva time navigating around the five different windows that are displayed. I'm feeling a bit lost at this point, but I manage to stumble my way over to make a new C# Windows "solution". Funny, just a few hours earlier, I was using Visual Studio 6 and making "applications"... After another coffee break due to a horrendous load time (took almost a full minute for this beast to churn out a simple Windows "solution"), I'm ready to go!

So I am prompted with a form editor. And that's it. It takes me a while to find the non-standard auto-popup controls palette, but once I do, I figure "eh, I can live with that". I create a button on a window, and I double click the button, expecting to go to the code editor. Instead, I am prompted with a Just-In-Time Debugging window that says "An exception 'System.NullReferenceException' has occurred in WindowsApplication1 and shows me a list of possible debuggers. Huh? So I hit "No", and now I am in the code editor. Neato. I manage to get exceptions by navigating the IDE.

I am immediately struct by how pretty the code editor looks. Unfortunately, there's no way for me to access global methods (such as ::MessageBox, so I can make a hello world application) that I can find. Used to be that I could type :: and a list would pop up that I can select from. I see the list hasn't gone away because if I type "base." (which I see from some of the auto-generated code) I get a list of the methods and properties of the form. So I figure, eh, let's just see if I can run the application with no code. So I hit Ctrl+F5 (the Visual Studio 6 shortcut for running) and poof it compiles! Yay, no errors.

Again I am greeted with the same JIT Debugger window telling me of an exception. And that's after a very lengthy application startup time. So fine, I'll debug my application -- perhaps I double clicked on something wrong and really am just too dumb to use a "RAD" tool which seems to enforce coffee breaks.

:: waits ::

:: waits ::

After a full minute of waiting, and watching my HD light blink rapidly, and hearing pigs squeal while men gnash their teeth and the sounds from the pits of hell occur... VisualStudio finally tells me that there's no symbolics available and would I like to study the assembly instead? Naw, nevermind... not worth the time.

So I go up and hit the X button to close, and yet again I am surprised. I wasn't prompted to save anything. Oh well, it must have auto-saved when I went to compile. That's neat -- hopefully it did autosave. Then again, it's not like I could get even the auto-generated code to run as a "solution", so who knows.

So for those of you who use Visual Studio .NET 2003, I have some questions.

1. How the hell do you put up with the load times? Is it just because of my install options? Or is everyone else experiencing this porker like I do?


2. What could I have done wrong to cause exceptions to occur when double clicking a button on a form to bring me to the code editor?


3. Why didn't a window with no code I wrote actually compile and run?


4. Aside from "because you're a stubborn SOB, Aaron", why would I want to try this application a second time? ie) sell me on VS.NET


5. Did anyone else experience this sort of thing when they first installed it? Or did I just get a bum install? Mind you -- it said there were no errors during the install

So yeah, I must admit, I am bitterly disappointed. VS 6 is such a known quantity to me that I figured 2003 would be similar enough that I don't feel totally alienated. Not only do I feel alienated, I find it to be insanely slow (too slow to be productive so far) and buggy as hell. Can anyone offer me some sagely words of advice or help a .NET n00b out? I don't mean to sound this negative -- usually I can come up with a list of pros and cons about any product. But right now, I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone can code in this. And I'm under the impression that I'm just doing something wrong, so please, do point out what I'm missing.