Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

This is available via academic license to me for "around $100". Amazon sells it for $470 (discounted from $700), so that is quite a deal if you really want to play this game.

My big complaint about IDE based software development has always been that "I want to use my own editor, doggone it!". Aparently there are VIM keybindings now, which might solve a good part of my frustration. (They call it a VIM emulation layer for Visual Studio, and provide the full source code on GitHub

Another thing to look into is the Komodo IDE from ActiveState. This is a commerical product that sells for about $250, but comes highly recommended. The same folks provide a free open source editor: Komodo Edit that is worth taking a look at.

Microsoft Visual Studio - pre 2010

I have seen two versions, the circa 2002 Visual Studio .NET set, and the newer, circa Visual Studio 2005. My experience is based on the latter, here are the steps to install:

Installing it

  1. Insert CD number 1.
  2. If needed, launch setup by hand.
  3. Use this link in case of trouble.
  4. Check the Readme.htm file on the CD if you have trouble.
  5. Click the Install Visual Studio 2004 link.
  6. (I had no trouble).
  7. Click the Install Product Documentation link.
  8. There is a remote debugger on the last Visual Studio Disk, if you want it.
  9. Check codezone community.
The set I had provided visual studio on the first 2 CD's; the documentation on the next 3 CD's, and the SQL server on a single DVD, for 5 CD's and one DVD in all.

I did the install under vmware using disk iso images. It wanted to reboot once in the middle of disk 1, and using the vmware settings menu to swap virtual CDroms worked without a hitch. A full visual studio install took 3.2G. I am using an 8G partition under vmware. Windows XP took 1.5G, and after installing visual studio I will have 3.3G left. It takes a while. The windows install took less than 20 minutes from a single virtual CD iso, this is taking like an hour.

Visual studio is installing SQL "mobile edition" as well as "express edition". In addition I have this 2.9G SQL server "developer edition" that I don't dare install until I have more virtual disk space.

The MSDN documentation takes 1.9G, so I will soon be down to 1.4G. (If I had this to do over again, I would set up the vmware virtual machine to have 16G of disk space.)

Visual Fortran

Now I install the Intel (previously Digital) visual fortran, with these components:

It complains that I am missing "Microsoft Platform SDK*", but lets me set up to use the folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\, perhaps in case I can fill this folder later??

I have to cancel the fortran setup because my serial number is already registered to another email. It is entirely usable without registration, this would just sign me up for updates and support, but would require me to have the the original email address.

Now I start visual studio and select the C++ environment. This seems OK.

Using it.

Nobody has written decent documentation on this, and you just have to fumble around, or better yet get someone who has used it to show you the ropes. I was confused for a long time clicking on filenames trying to get the editor to open them up, but it turns out you want to click on the tiny icon next to the filename to make this happen.

My install puts the "projects" in: 

C:\documents and settings\tom\My documents\visual studio 2005\projects
And I create a desktop shortcut to this "folder".
Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Adventures in Computing / tom@mmto.org