Technical & Software Blog – ssims.co.uk

The benefit of writing a blog is that every once in a while you don’t have to be entirely objective in your writing, so as a caveat to this post – that is exactly what I’m going to do.

For a long time I’ve harboured the opinion that Microsoft’s development platforms are not as accessible to a developer looking to learn the technology as other platforms are.

My basis for this belief is Microsoft’s apparent ‘we’ll do things our way’ approach to development. You have a steep learning curve to deal with as everything in Visual Studio is presented as their interpretation of a programming language, so to speak.

I firmly believe that at the very least for a developer learning a language or wanting to simply write some straightforward code for a standalone application – the Express versions of Visual Studio are the way to go. You needn’t worry so much about the IDE trying to make use of a lot of stuff you don’t really want in your project.

Part of the problem with full Visual Studio is that it is intended for use with Microsoft’s own whole seperate world of development technologies, as an independant package. The whole philosophy of which is that you can’t pick and choose which stuff you like and make use of just that. Generally once you go down the route of developing a Microsoft solution, it must be Microsoft all the way with all the niceties, not-so-niceties, and quirks in between. Of course this is a good business strategy and it also means that Microsoft get total commitment from developers that choose to use their platform commercially. However for many developers who do not have this full unwavering faith (and perhaps financial investment in terms of using / being a stakeholder of Microsoft products) it can be very annoying. Don’t get me wrong, I want to learn about the Microsoft family of development technologies, just not exclusively.

The essence of my argument for Visual Studio Express over the full version is that it is simpler. Personally I like simplicity in development platforms, it helps you understand new concepts better and really get to the root of what is going on behind everything you put into your code. Because you have to pay to gain access to more features of the .NET framework and associated development tools, the free Express editions do less for you and don’t have the annoying habit of trying to integrate features you don’t want in your Visual Studio projects.

Of course my own views on the usability of Visual Studio in general may be shaped by my familiarity with Java integrated development environments (IDEs). Nevertheless I feel my animosity towards Visual Studio is not unfounded having had several ‘bad expriences’ with it.

As an alternative to Visual Studio if you’re really looking to learn a language such as C++ from the ground up, and don’t mind applying an extra bit of your own mental steam, the old school approach of a text editor and compiler/linker is probably one of the best methods.

I think we try to be too clever and do too much in all walks of life, particularly in the computing industry, to the detriment of what we may actually be trying to achieve. It is worth considering that perhaps IDEs need to be much more text-editor like by default and allow you to choose which additional features you want for a project in a very clear and concise manner. I would choose choice of simplicity versus complexity over complexity alone, and I would choose simplicity over complexity if choice is not an option. The latter is why my preference is for Microsoft’s Visual Studio Express Editions over the full version of Visual Studio.