VS.NET is 10 times slower than VB6

[Kevin Spencer]

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

Technology that is 10 years advanced has 100's of times the functionality of
Technology that is 10 years behind it. Functionality requires more computer
resources. Therefore, the technology, run on the same hardware as the older
technology, certainly will run slower. However, as Moore's law points out,
machine hardware doubles in capacity every 5 years, so, comparing apples to
apples, it runs at an acceptable pace with the correct (current) hardware.
Of course, the older technology will run faster on the more current
hardware, but will do 100's of times less than the new technology. That is,
as they say, the way things work.

that is progress right?

You are a programmer, right? You should know these things.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
Paranoia is just a state of mind.

ok you are right

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

that is progress right?

that's right

well done

 

[tom pester]

"The observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that
the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled
every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that
this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. In subsequent years,
the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every
18 months, and this is the current definition of Moore's Law, which Moore
himself has blessed. Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore's
Law to hold for at least another two decades."

Just to say that its not 5 years but 1.5 years.

Cheers,
Tom Pester

 

[Guest]

Can I have 8 cents.

ok you are right

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

that is progress right?

that's right

well done

 

[Guest]

I agree debugging time sucks. However like has been stated, the environment
is doing alot more that ol' VB6. I'd say if you have a system you're happy
with and you haven't changed it in 3 years, keep what you have. However, for
more advanced web applications .NET is slow at compilation, but once it's
compiled it executes 10 times faster. I can agree with you on the slowness
and it is somewhat annoying but the benefits of .NET outweigh the 6 - 10 sec
compile time.

I don't use .NET to write simple personal static websites. Much quicker and
faster in say dreamweaver, since the .NET debug starts and stops the
webserver. So yeah for that its over kill. But for complex apps I prefer
..NET. The slowness of compile/debug is completely outweighed by the blazing
fastness (is that a word) of production execution.

 

[Guest]

It doesn't look like you're getting anybody backing you up on your
contention. And you won't get one from me, either.

The advancement of the .NET framework, along with many advancements in the
IDE far FAR outweighs anything VB6 brings to the table. I'm sorry if you're
having problems with a 6 second delay (perhaps it's your code). We're not
racing cars here, we're developing complex (well in my case, anyway) software
applications. So stop trying to state that advancement in technology should
result in faster debugging times. I can guarantee you that the DOS apps I
wrote 20 years ago would simply fly on today's machines. That hardly means
that they're more advanced. Au contrare.

 

[Guest]

You'll increase you productivity when you quit this lame whining and go back
to work. .NET is a little slower in the debug... so what!..your increase in
productivity comes from the fact that .NET brings you 100's of easier ways to
do things than in VB6... once you learn how to use it you'll see what we
mean.

I cant get over the fact that I can write a .NET app in about 80% less code...
thats where productivity comes from dude!

 

[Guest]

I may be the only one, but I agree with you. Our shop currently mainly
develops asp/vbscript applications and we realize the need to move to a .net
solution to provide more functionality and features.

At the same time debugging code, and especially working with source control
applications like microsoft visual source safe take an inordinately large
amount of time w/ vs.net which we have had to take into account with all our
new projects.

We are developing applications much slower now (due to the IDE environment)
and the fact we don't have as much resuable code in asp.net than in the past,
but we are aiming to harness the features of object oriented programming
which will allow us to develop much faster.

 

[Alvin Bruney - ASP.NET MVP]

We are developing applications much slower now (due to the IDE
environment)

and the fact we don't have as much resuable code in asp.net than in the

past,
Seems to me like a training issue?

but we are aiming to harness the features of object oriented programming
which will allow us to develop much faster.

If you fail to account for the new environment and new paradigm, then yes,
developing applications will be a lot slower until you catch up
--
Regards,
Alvin Bruney [MVP ASP.NET]

[Shameless Author plug]
The Microsoft Office Web Components Black Book with .NET
Now Available @ www.lulu.com/owc
Forth-coming VSTO.NET

 

[Kevin Spencer]

We are developing applications much slower now (due to the IDE

environment)
and the fact we don't have as much resuable code in asp.net than in the
past,
but we are aiming to harness the features of object oriented programming
which will allow us to develop much faster.

One of the features of OOP is reusability, and a consequence of this feature
is that sometimes it takes awhile to design and implement good reusable
classes. The advantage to it is that once these classes have been (well)
designed, future development in the form of new projects, extension of
existing projects, and maintaining existing projects is much faster.

As for the speed of the IDE, it is a necessary assumption that a developer
should upgrade his/her hardware every few years to accomodate newer
software, which automates much more than older software, and therefore
consumes more hardware resources, especially processor and memory. Of
course, the newer software increases productivity greatly when run on the
proper hardware platform.

Newer technology always has a learning curve associated with it, and the
transition from procedral to OOP is one of the most difficult and
time-consuming to make. This is simply a part of the technological
environment. The farther back from the "cutting edge" you position yourself,
the less this effect will be felt. But competition implies that one should
optimally try to keep abreast of the latest technologies. Still, there are
any number of jobs available for "legacy" developers out there.

All things being equal, and over a period of time, the newer hardware and
technology CAN tremendously increase productivity. It has certainly
increased my own, by leaps and bounds. Less at first, and much more in the
long run.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
Paranoia is just a state of mind.

 

[Guest]

In ASP.NET V2.0 you'll get edit&continue ! The main delay for me is clicking
through the steps of business logic to get onto place what I want to debug.
And no, when I find the bug and correct it, I have to (for code) recompile -
prete slow cycle ! 6 seconds nothing.. btw on my 2 years old laptop it takes
9s in total: 4s buld, 2s openning IE (will be the same for ALL because this
is the same just clicking icon), 3s (something - probably restarting IIS,
attaching to process,...)

 

[Guest]

I completely agree. I am not quite sure why most everyone is in defense of
VS.NET when it is very obvious that it is very slow when debugging web
applications.

I am not coming from VB6 rather, I am coming from other open source
languages and IDEs.

In fact the only reason why I am using ASP.NET/VS.NET (Web Developer
Express) is because I was told that we (my company) would be *more*
productive and save *a lot more time*. I have yet to see any savingings.

So to answer your question John, I gree with you and I too am disapointed in
the performance of Visual Studio.

 

[Guest]

I totally agree. I am shocked at how many "really smart people" think that
slow is ok. Come on guys! We are the customer. If we accept horrible
performance and even defend what can be considered a broken development
environment, what is that really saying about us? Its saying that we are
commited religously to bad performance... that is sad.

 

[Guest]

The obvious answer to why ASP.Net and VB.Net are slower to start than ASP3
and VB6 is that more is being done before the application starts. So what is
being done, you ask? You web application is being compiled so that it may run
in the .NET framework at blazing speeds instead of interpreted in a VM. The
speed you sacrifice during development with the added overhead of compilation
is regained on the client's end with pages that process much, much faster.

Better security, better performace, more features, a standardized, cross
language, cross platform library, all of these are afforded to Visual Basic
by making it a first class .NET language. So there is a price to pay, yes,
you must compile your programs. Oh well... get over it.

 

[Pat]

Thats a very good anwser.
Hope they understood?
Very good Sean.
Patrick

 

[Guest]

I'm not a VB guy, but I agree about the performance. You can't be as
productive when the debugger is 20-30 times slower. It is just unacceptable.
Imagine if your new car was 50 times slower than your 10 year old car. You
would not be happy with performance 100 slower than what you were used to
having. It's unreasonable to expect developers to be happy with 500 times
slower tools than the old tools. I'm not sure how we develop applications
when our new tools are 1000 times slower. It sure seems like a drag on
productivity when the new stuff takes 10000 times as long to load.

 

[Guest]

I agree with John. VS is very slow and i guess the only reason so many of the
programmers are supporting it is that it still keeps their pay check coming
in. Disagreeing would mean going back to the VB6 pay level ...

 

[Rob Nicholson]

I totally agree. I am shocked at how many "really smart people" think that

slow is ok. Come on guys! We are the customer. If we accept horrible
performance and even defend what can be considered a broken development
environment, what is that really saying about us? Its saying that we are
commited religously to bad performance... that is sad.

Playing devil's advocate, this quick "enter some code and test it by
running" isn't necessarily the best approach. When complilation used to take
a lot longer (hours with punch cards & batch jobs), programmers got used to
writing code right the first time, thinking more about it before submitting
it.

Don't know if there are any stats available as to whether they produced more
bug free code first time but I suspect it could be true.

It also reminds me of when I was a games programmer and assembling could
take 15 minutes on a fast 286 PC... And don't forget, this was in DOS so no
multitasking - you had to sit there and watch it. Anyway, I modified the
make file for the project and let it log the total assembly time for the
entire team and project. The total project time was something like four
months. The results showed that even if we reduced the assembly time down to
nothing, it would only save the project 3 days (~4%) What this said to me is
that if you looking to make yourself more efficient, you don't bother
worrying about how fast it takes to compile & run as that'll only save you a
few percent overall. Instead, look at the remaining 96% and see how you can
improve efficiency there. Learning to touch-type will give you 5%

Cheers, Rob.

 

[Damien]

I agree with John. VS is very slow and i guess the only reason so many of the
programmers are supporting it is that it still keeps their pay check coming
in. Disagreeing would mean going back to the VB6 pay level ...

No, I believe a great many people are sticking with it because it
allows us to be more productive. I feel *pain* when I have to go back
and work in the VB6 IDE. Thankfully, that's becoming more a thing of
the past (as in, I've trained other developers in the team on the older
VB6 Apps, and then whenever any problems come up, I point the helpdesk
towards the other developers :-D)

Damien

 

[jasonkester]

In fact the only reason why I am using ASP.NET/VS.NET (Web Developer
Express) is because I was told that we (my company) would be *more*
productive and save *a lot more time*. I have yet to see any savingings.

Ah, but there's the thing. Web Developer Express is not Visual
Studio.NET.

Language, Platform and Operating System aside, Visual Studio.NET is
simply the most productive IDE available. Plug in ReSharper and
install CodeSmith beside it, and you'll be surprised how much you can
crank out in a day.

Take away the IDE, and C# is just another language. It's
understandable that you were underwhelmed since you never looked at the
one thing that makes .NET such a pleasant platform to develop for.

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

 

[Guest]

John,
just save the 6 seconds using your brain when typing . Good programmers
don't need good debugers !
Just quit this discussion ! It has no sense !
My web apps written in assembly code are the fastest !! ;-)

Cheers