Bug in VS 2003

[John Sparrow]

Has anyone noticed that, sometimes, when you delete controls like
DataAdapters from a web form, then save (without first switching to
code view), when you reload the project they reappear?!?!?!?!?

WHY OH WHY DON'T MICROSOFT DEBUG THIS STUFF BEFORE THEY RELEASE IT!!!

We spend most of our working days inside a product that is sooo shaky
I feel it necessary to backup my project every 30 mins or so..

BTW this isn't a 'knock Microsoft' message. Windows 2000/XP is great,
the Framework itself seems reliable, SQL Server is solid. The Visual
Studio on the other hand, seems to have been 'rushed' out without
being properly tested - AGAIN!

Personally I would gladly give up features if only the basics worked
reliably, all the time. 99% of the time is not good enough. That 1%
can mean hours of lost work if you forget to be ultra-paranoid and
don't backup.

If I wrote such shakey software Id be put on photocopying duties.

John

 

[CT]

John,

I agree with you as far as improved stability vs. features. However, the bug
you have, I've never come across and I'm pretty sure it's unknown to many if
not most other developers, which prompts me to say that this is one of those
bugs (if it is...) that are very hard to catch, even with proper testing.

 

[Cowboy \(Gregory A. Beamer\)]

Has anyone noticed that, sometimes, when you delete controls like
DataAdapters from a web form, then save (without first switching to
code view), when you reload the project they reappear?!?!?!?!?

I have never seen this problem personally. My suggestion would be to
separate design and coding as separate procedures, as it probably will not
happen when the code view window is not open at all. This is not to
vindicate MS for a bug, but to say that sometimes we have to alter our ways,
at least until things are fixed.

WHY OH WHY DON'T MICROSOFT DEBUG THIS STUFF BEFORE THEY RELEASE IT!!!

We spend most of our working days inside a product that is sooo shaky
I feel it necessary to backup my project every 30 mins or so..

BTW this isn't a 'knock Microsoft' message. Windows 2000/XP is great,
the Framework itself seems reliable, SQL Server is solid. The Visual
Studio on the other hand, seems to have been 'rushed' out without
being properly tested - AGAIN!

Personally I would gladly give up features if only the basics worked
reliably, all the time. 99% of the time is not good enough. That 1%
can mean hours of lost work if you forget to be ultra-paranoid and
don't backup.

If I wrote such shakey software Id be put on photocopying duties.

Ever release an app with a bug in it? We all have. Now, imagine millions of
lines of code. No matter how free you try to build something, there is
always a box.

I think there are a great many annoying bugs in many tools, including SQL
Server tools (the engine is rather solid, however). I hate having to switch
away from taskpad view and then back to get rid of UI errors. I hate the
fact that almost everything I touch in EM destroys the original, forcing me
to recompile my stored procedures. But, I realize the limitations and alter
my way of doing things. Yukon will likely be better, but I will still likely
find a couple of annoying new characteristics/bugs. The more lines of code
they put in, the more likely a small bug will be introduced.

On the other hand, you should continue to air your grievances. Believe it or
not, the development crews at Microsoft do listen. I would just be a bit
more constructive rather than suggest the dev team should be moved to Xerox
duty. ;->

 

[William F. Robertson, Jr.]

Not that I have any complaints about Studio (most of the time something
wigged out, it was something _I_ was doing). But what Visual IDE have you
been using that was 100% reliable? I might be wanting to change my
development team's environment if such a product does exist.

But for now I am completely satisfied with MS Studio, not because it is 100%
reliable, but because there is nothing I have come across that even
compares.

bill
ps There was one bug that did frustrate me, in a c++ project (non-managed)
sometimes when I would collapse a block of code (keyboard shortcut assigned
crtl + < ) studio would crash. So I thought about it, hell notepad doesn't
have a collapse feature, so how about I just save my work before I collapse.
Haven't lost anything since.

 

[John Sparrow]

Thanks for the reply.

I was just removing some no-longer-needed SqlDataAdapters from my
project. They would disappear as expected, but magically be back next
time I restarted VS! (and yes, I did save!!)

I suppose I shouldn't complain, at least I wasn't loosing code, only
gaining it!

Ever release an app with a bug in it? We all have. Now, imagine millions of
lines of code. No matter how free you try to build something, there is
always a box.

I understand that no code can be totally reliable, but I do question
the quality control of this product - especially for asp.net
development (maybe for Windows Forms it's different, i don't know).

If they're using solid software engineering principles, and they have
the right level of resources / time, there's no reason for it to be
shakey. Complexity shouldn't be an excuse.

Microsoft themselves prove this point with lots of other products (SQL
Server, Windows, .net Framework etc). They're not totally bug free,
but they're much better than VS.

John

 

[John Sparrow]

Not that I have any complaints about Studio (most of the time something
wigged out, it was something _I_ was doing). But what Visual IDE have you
been using that was 100% reliable? I might be wanting to change my
development team's environment if such a product does exist.

None have been 100% reliable. Several, however, have never corrupted
my code. VS 2003 corrupts my code probably once every 30 hours of use.
Several different workstations, using VS2002 and then 2003 when it was
released. Windows 2000 and XP, all the latest updates. These problems
may be limited to Web Forms work, I can't speak for Windows Forms.

I've been using Delphi since '95 - and there are one or two bugs in
some versions, but I've never lost code.

Dreamweaver is another example.

But for now I am completely satisfied with MS Studio, not because it is 100%
reliable, but because there is nothing I have come across that even
compares.

Personally I wouldn't be satisfied with that. I would (and do) *use*
it, but am not satisfied - I think that's perfectly reasonable. I'm
not bothered by the way (for example) that it doesn't render
DataGrid's properly. That's only a superficial problem. But corrupting
code is serious.

I'm also not convinced that the VS user can be blamed for making it
malfunction. Shouldn't well written code just say "You shouldn't do
that"??

Obviously that's simplistic, but my general point remains valid: are
MS using solid software engineering principles and sufficient quality
control on this product? They obviously do on other offerings (server
software especially).

VS should have server-level reliability.

John