Visual Studio - popular, but a painful

[robn]

Because "latest everything" seems hard for MSVC users to arrange for some reason, and since I'm not one of those users I don't think my vote counts.

I really really don't like dictating choice of tools if I can help it. So let's see what the 2012 users say.

[FluffyFreak]

There's a few reasons people stick with older versions of visual studio.
vs2008 is crap, but it compiles and links faster than newer versions, partly because of it, also intellisense is almost workable at times.
vs2010 is less crap and it still compile & links reasonably quickly.
VS2012 & vs2013, not much to choose between them aside from the C++11 support to be honest.

The biggest reason is compatibility with projects. A LOT of open source projects still don't support vs2012, a good number don't support vs2010 yet!
This means that on my main PC I have 2008, 2010, 2012 & 2013 installed side-by-side :(
Then of course you have the "upgrade fun", 2010 will upgrade 2008, but 2012 won't, so if you've got a 2008 project you want to work on you need to first import it into 2010, then update that 2010 to 2012/13 :)

It's hilarious, why I find myself chortling just thinking about it, hahaha...

... at least it's not emacs ;)

[lwho]

Okay, I see. I wasn't aware that some projects compile with older, but not with newer versions of VS so that you had to install many of them in parallel. I assumed, you could just install the newest one and everyone was fine.

Actually, it's not that way on Linux either. For Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, gcc 4.6 is the default version, which means, that all packets from the official repositories (including the kernel) are compiled with that. You can install 4.7 and 4.8 in parallel, but you should better not compile kernel modules with a different compiler than your kernel (the Nvidia proprietary drivers for example need to compile glue code for their kernel blob). But you should get away with default of the distribution plus newest.

I really really don't like dictating choice of tools if I can help it.

Well, I couldn't care less. what editors etc. people are using. But unfortunately, with compilers it's a trade-off between "dictating" people choice of tools and "dictating" people choice of (standard) features they can use. So, that's why we discussing this to find a good compromise for all sides (which is, as we know, when everyone is unsatisfied, but for different reasons ;)). So, maybe VS 2012 is this compromise, too new for some, not enough C++11 features for others.

On the other hand, I don't know, if it's really that hard to ask to install the newest (free) compiler version on Windows (no honestly, I don't know, how much effort this is). Pioneer doesn't compile on a common Linux distribution like Ubuntu LTS out of the box either.

I would like to hear, how many people have VS 2012, but not VS 2013 (and would not agree to install it). For example, FluffyFreak seems to have the full horde anyway ;) Currently, we are discussing about either an anonymous mass, or a non-existing mass, as nobody of the group "have VS2012, but not VS2013" spoke up. BTW, it seems there was a similar opinion poll less than a year ago, but I was not able to find the results (though VS2013 did not exist back then anyway).

... at least it's not emacs ;)

Sounds as painful :P

[FluffyFreak]

I'm in the vs2013 camp with Pioneer, I keep the others around for compatibility reasons.
Anytime I touch vs2010 / 2012 it's just to fix the project and keep it compiling, which obviously I haven't been doing with 2010 :)

Code::Blocks is a nice alternative with a modern compiler, I'm not so keen on it as an IDE personally but i'm quite a fan of VS.

VS2010 can go away as far as I'm concerned I just new that it needed raising as an issue for discussion once it was brought to my attention.