VS.NET is 10 times slower than VB6

J

John Rivers

Hello everybody,

I just wondered if anybody else has noticed this?

It takes around 6 seconds to start debugging a very simple ASPX page
with VS.NET whereas VB6 takes under 0.5 seconds, even with
very large and complex projects.

This is a real shame :(

John Rivers
 
J

Juan T. Llibre

John :

I can count to 3 real fast.
To count to 100 takes a little longer.

Bottom line : debugging speed isn't everything.

btw, how did you debug an ASPX file with VB6 ?

;-)
 
E

Eliyahu Goldin

John,

Are you saying that you are developing web applications with VB6?

Eliyahu
 
J

jasonkester

Before ASP.NET, it was standard practice to put your business logic,
data layer, and what we currently call CodeBehind into a VB .dll and
call it via COM. It would give you an order of magnitude performance
improvement as well as letting you develop in a real IDE. You could
fire up your project in debug mode by hitting F5, just like you can
today.

So yeah, he's saying he has developed web applications with VB6. If
you were in the industry more than 3 years ago, you probaby would have
too.

Jason Kester
Expat Software Consulting Services
http://www.expatsoftware.com/
 
J

John Rivers

you guys sure can confuse a poor little troll

i have timed it as 6 seconds between pressing F5 and the page actually
running

at $50 per hour 6 seconds is about 8 cents

that is real money!

it is just not acceptable performance - somebody agree with me!
 
J

jasonkester

How complicated are the applications you are comparing? I think you'll
find that 6 seconds remains pretty much constant as you scale up your
project. It's just the overhead involved in restarting IIS.

The last large VB/ASP project I worked on would take about 10 seconds
to fire up the debugger. I have an ASP.NET project of similar
magnitude for another client that takes about the same amount of time.


For tiny "Hello World" projects, I'd agree that VB/ASP is probably
faster. But in real world situations I've never noticed a difference.
As to whether it's acceptable to wait 6 seconds to debug? I'll have to
defer comment on that, since I can still recall a time where I'd queue
up a batch job when I left at night and hope it was finished by the
time I got to the office in the morning!

Jason Kester
Expat Software Consulting Services
http://www.expatsoftware.com/
 
J

John Rivers

I have two VB6 groups which are 9mb and 12mb of source code
I press F5 and I get a running app in under 1 second.
Close debugging takes 1 second.
I can compile a whole group in about 35 seconds.

With VS.NET i'm looking at 6 seconds plus to start the app
and about 4 seconds to close it again (that is hello world)

I bought a new computer with 1Gb ram just to run it and its still super
slow.

Its as bad as the java compilers.
 
J

Juan T. Llibre

re:
it is just not acceptable performance - somebody agree with me!

You're not talking about performance. You're talking about debugging.
"Debugging" and "performance throughput" are two different animals.

A 6 second debug response seems quite fast to me, considering that you're
dealing with much more complex code than VB6 ever had to deal with.

Get over it. VB6 for web apps is dead
because it's not as efficient as VB.NET.

For desktop apps you might have a point, but for web apps
VB.NET gets at least 200% more throughput than VB6 ever got.

Who cares if VB.NET debugging takes 6 seconds to start up!
All I care about is that my web *clients* get more throughput.

re:
at $50 per hour 6 seconds is about 8 cents

If you're asking these questions
and you're getting $50 an hour...you're overpaid.
 
J

John Rivers

interesting logic
i should be paid less if i question
the bad performance of vs.net ide?

so if you pick up your new car
and it does 0-60mph in 45 seconds
whilst red lining at 7000rpm
you wouldn't question that?

in my experience if a computer is
at 100% cpu for 6 seconds just to
output "hello world" to a browser
something is very wrong indeed

i wouldn't be confident to use
such a system if my living depended on it
would you?

especially when you have a vb6 based system
that has run quickly and bug free for 3 years
why would you switch to such a system?

as most experienced developers will agree
there is more value in easy to maintain
code (and that includes a good ide) than
raw performance

especially when the bottleneck in most
applications isn't the runtime - it is
usually something else
 
J

Juan T. Llibre

re:
in my experience if a computer is at 100% cpu for 6 seconds just to
output "hello world" to a browser something is very wrong indeed

So, now you weren't "debugging" ? You were outputting "hello world" ?

Your original post stated that :
It takes around 6 seconds to start debugging a very simple ASPX page
with VS.NET whereas VB6 takes under 0.5 seconds, even with
very large and complex projects.

Which one was it ?
Were you "debugging" or were you outputting "hello world" ?

Liars need to have a good memory, if their lies are going to be believed.

Here's a page that demonstrates that you are lying through your teeth :

http://asp.net.do/test/helloworld.aspx

That page has a button, a label, a textbox and one click event procedure.

I added two Trace.Write statements at "Begin PreInit" and "End Render".

Click on the link above, and see how long it took
for ASP.NET to process and render helloworld.aspx.

Hint : it's about 1.5 milliseconds, not 6 seconds as you claim.

You are a lying troll!
 
E

Eliyahu Goldin

Jason,

You are talking about debugging the business logic module. If I understood
you correctly, you debugged it in a Windows applicaction. To compare
debugging in Windows and web environment is like comparing apples to
oranges, isn't it? BTW in asp.net you also can debug yopur business logic in
a similar way.

Eliyahu
 
D

Damien

John said:
Hello everybody,

I just wondered if anybody else has noticed this?

It takes around 6 seconds to start debugging a very simple ASPX page
with VS.NET whereas VB6 takes under 0.5 seconds, even with
very large and complex projects.

This is a real shame :(

John Rivers

Of course it's slower. It's all being *compiled*, rather than
interpreted. Before it can start, all of the code behind has to be
compiled into a DLL, and then the start page (or possibly a batch of
pages, depends on some settings) have to be compiled. With the result
that once you're up and running and the pages you're using are
compiled, access to them is a lot quicker.

As opposed to ASP attitude of "we'll interpret it afresh every time" -
which only needs a text file on the file system, but is going to be
orders of magnitude slower for typical normal usage, and the VB6
attitude of "I'll start running your program fine, but there may be a
massive chunk of it that can't actually compile - we'll find out when
you get there". Hence the seperate Ctrl-F5 method of starting debugging
which takes a lot longer (and which was the worst bit, for me, of
adapting to VB.NET - Starting a program with Ctrl-F5, and watching it
zoom past all of my breakpoints)

Damien
 
J

John Rivers

ok you are right

technology that is 10 years advanced SHOULD run slower, not faster

that is progress right?

that's right

well done
 
J

Juan T. Llibre

You still haven't answered.
Were you outputting a page, or were you debugging ?

First you said you were debugging.
Then you said it took 6 seconds to *output* a page.

I proved to you that it doesn't take 6 seconds to output
a "Hello World" page. It only takes about one millisecond.

So, answer my question, instead of using evasive tactics.

Were you lying...or were you confused ?

I really hate to say this, but you *really* look like a troll.





ok you are right

technology that is 10 years advanced SHOULD run slower, not faster

that is progress right?

that's right

well done
 
J

John Rivers

I am discussing debugging performance.

Debugging in VS.NET is much much slower than VB6.

That is a fact.

My point is that it is not acceptable to have new technology that
takes 20 to 30 times longer to start debugging than the 10 year old
technology it is replacing.

VS.NET is supposed to be a tool for increasing developers productivity.

It should debug much faster.

Anybody who can disagree with that is a fool.
 
J

Juan T. Llibre

Yadda, yadda.


Thank you for clarifying that you were not referring
to outputting a page. You were referring to debugging it.

You made two confusing, contradictory, statements.

Now, I ask you :

What's the use of debugging in 1/2 second instead of 6 seconds,
if the end result is a VB6 web application which is 1/3 as fast
as a comparable ASP.NET application ?

Using VB6 for a web app, instead of VB.NET/ASP.NET,
means you have to take a huge performance hit.

I'd rather have my developers spend a few more seconds
when debugging a page, if the end result is an ASP.NET app
which performs 3 times as fast as a VB6 web app.

What do you think about that ?
 
J

Juan T. Llibre

And, btw, your subject line was quite misleading.

VS.NET is *not* "10 times slower than VB6".

It might debug a bit slower than VB6 but, on the performance end,
it produces web apps which outpace -by far- anything VB6 can offer.

I'd rather have that.
 
J

jasonkester

Eliyahu said:
You are talking about debugging the business logic module. If I understood
you correctly, you debugged it in a Windows applicaction.

Sorry if I was unclear. In this setup, you would build a COM .DLL in
Visual Basic, and debug it by attaching to the ASPNET process. So it
wasn't quite the same as simply firing up a windows form in the
debugger.

That's not to say it was particularly elegant or fun. VB had a habit
of leaving stale .dlls in the GAC, so you would occasionally find
yourself furiously stepping over the line "x=4" and watching in rage
and disbelief as the value in the watch window stayed at 0.

In short, I started porting all my clients to ASP.NET on day one, and
have not looked back.

Jason Kester
Expat Software Consulting Services
http://www.expatsoftware.com/
 

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