Before I rant a little bit, yes I know beta software is not optimized for performance. I work with beta products quite a bit and have come to expect this. Usually it's just a minor nuisance. However, this particular issue is worth blogging about.
Recently, for a project I'm working on (sshh, can't talk about it... NDA stuff), I switched from using VS2005 Beta 1 to VS2005 November CTP. Beta 1 was surprisingly good and performed well, even with 384MB of RAM allocated through Virtual PC. The Nov CTP is quite a bit slower even with 512MB of memory allocated for it. So the additional slowness I can handle. As I said, it's to be expected; you learn to deal with it.
However, using the debugger in the Nov CTP is terribly sssslllloooowwww. I mean, excrutiatingly slow where every time I start the debugger I could take a short nap, wake up, and it still be doing whatever the heck it's trying to do. It actually affects my productivity quite a bit because I tend to live in the debugger when writing code (you know me, I like things to actually work), so this just drains how fast I can work. So with that, I offer you my “Top 10 Things I'd Rather Do Than Run The Debugger In Visual Studio 2005 November 2004 Community Technical Preview“*:
10. Get a root canal without the anesthesia
9. Ride a bicycle with no seat
8. Watch paint dry
7. Strip chrome of its... well... chrome
6. Whittle the Eiffle Tower
5. Listen to a lecture by Jar-Jar Binks (youssa mussa be jokin)
4. Split an 8GB VPC image over however many floppy disks it would take
3. Write a thesis on the demasculinization of society (that's for Jeff)
2. Listen to country music (OK, maybe not)
1. Endure Chinese water torture
* = world's longest title for a Top 10 List.
Print | posted on Sunday, February 13, 2005 10:01 PM