Microsoft: Try to break our first preview of 64-bit Visual Studio – go on, we dare you

Microsoft has unveiled a slew of developer tools, including a preview of the 64-bit Visual Studio 2022, ahead of that developer event set for 24 June. Preview 1 of Visual Studio 2022 comes direct from the department of never-say-never following version after version of the toolset remaining staunchly 32-bit, even as the …

[Michael B.]

GIT interface

First impressions are good, but one change I've noticed that they are forcing through is the new dog poop GIT interface and have removed the old Team Explorer interface.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: GIT interface

So give them a few years and we'll see the 128-bit Visual Studio release? I'm working with a developer who's planning to store a binary rotation array e.g. [0,0,1] as three 64-bit numbers ... he tells me that it's essential to make the code easy. He's a very well paid git.

[AndrueC]

Far be it from us to wonder how much cruft might be lurking within a product that has its roots in the previous century.

The cruft in VS does not lurk. It leaps up, blows a raspberry in your face, bites your arse then leaves you to pick up the pieces. Maybe it will be more stable in 64-bits but I'm expecting it to be twice as bad. Something has been rotten in their project source for many years now and compiling for 64 bit is not going to make that suddenly go away.

<rant>

As for paying attention to every bug - don't make me laugh. I've had a few fixed but most just result in requests for more information (seriously - 'The Error List keeps stealing focus during a build so I can't do anything else with the IDE'. Apparently they need more information.)

For some issues I've given them a recording and all the log files the bug reporting tool generates and still they ask for more information.

And it doesn't help that their support forum is a pile of poo. It's actually painful to report a bug these days and since most reports just end in a request for more information I've almost stopped bothering.

</rant>

[Werner Heisenberg]

I'd be more impressed if...

...they just gave the Start page back.

https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/start-page-please-give-it-back/434456

[Anonymous Coward]

...since most reports just end in a request for more information I've almost stopped bothering.

That's kind of the point. The more frustrating it is, the fewer reports they have to deal with.

It doesn't help that their support team are based in China these days and as such have trouble with basic English let alone reproducing a bug.

[bombastic bob]

I liked VS98 better than the current incarnations - better keystroke navigation, no need to remove hand from keyboard and 'mouse' something if you knew the hot keys [especially important in the dialog editor]. Something like THAT in 64-bit would make me a LOT happier.

I think I'll get the preview anyway, and the full version when it's out. Maybe I can try installing under Wine...

Still, any level of GIT integration might make it useful, if for no other reason than installing for clients to view things with. And maybe I can check out how the extensions work, now. Haven't tried anything with that for over a decade.

eh, can't hurt to look, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Visual Studio 6? There never was a VS98.

[SPARKESFRANKIE66]

I mean, it didn't take me long to break it… importing my VS 2019 settings resulted in 9 warnings from it failing to import "Window Layouts" (annoyingly), "Live Share", "Import and Export Settings", and others, all because the "author of the category did not provide support for migration", before it returned error code 5450. Good start Microsoft

[karlkarl]

I think one of the most broken things about it is that it forces you online as much as it can.

Rather than an iso I need to create an offline layout. An entire one of these (for y'know, offline archiving) is 40gigs! Older Visual Studio releases weren't (they were 4 gigs max). Perhaps Microsoft docs should specify what makes a "core visual studio archive". About 4 different versions of shitty toys like Unity3D don't need to be there.

Next it tries to get me to log in to some developer account. Hah. No.

Then it disables itself after a while with the "Community Edition" DRM. Nope, not doing that. I will not engage with DRM. Not only do people deserve better than that but the old stuff didn't require this nonsense. Neither does the extremely competitive open-source offerings.

Honestly Microsoft, just give me a 20mb zip file with the cl.exe and nmake.exe. Keep the rest of your terrible, terrible crap to yourselves. No wonder developers have no passion for the Windows platform anymore.

[bombastic bob]

No wonder developers have no passion for the Windows platform anymore.

I thought that '.Not' followed by C# (C-pound) and then "UWP" (and its predecessors) and all of the moving target "new shiny" things (that totally lost long term support) is wot dun that...

at least, for me.

(I just wanted to stick with C++, MFC, Win32, and the DevStudio 98 environment where things were becoming easy and familiar and I could pound out applications and libraries in no time at all...)

[AndrueC]

I like C# but I don't like the way they've implemented the various language framework versions. Nor do I like the way they keep inventing new UI frameworks. Both of these seem to be evidence of how MS developers are poor at designing frameworks. You shouldn't have to keep superseding frameworks if you design your framework properly in the first place.

It's putting additional load on developers and we have more than enough in the first place.

The more the 'ecosystem' evolves the happier I am that I'm now within a few years of retirement. I love programming but I'm beginning to detest VS and the mess that .NET seems to have become. If there's one thing that can push me to finally pack it in it'll be VS. And I don't think that's what the VS product development team are aiming for. It's not like they've even met me :)