Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Professional 2002

Well-Integrated IDE: -
This is by far the best suite of Microsoft languages and tools. It contains the new Visual Basic .NET, which is totally object oriented and also Visual C# .NET that I found easy to use. The ASP .NET really captured my vote at how easy it was to create asps. The Visual Studio .NET provides thousands of .NET framework classes making a developers life easy and simple.

The similarity to the J2EE framework indicates that that the .NET framework has the capabilities of delivering object oriented enterprise applications. A downside is that, Windows .Net servers and windows operating systems are automatically included into the application environment. This environment may not be desired in all circumstances.

Web services: -
XML Web services are built on XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI specifications and can be built or consumed by your application without having to write the plumbing code yourself. The tools does it for you. All I had to do was to define my function that I want exposed as a web service and it was automatically deployed for me. I like that in an IDE.

Great Documentation and User interfaces: -
Trust Microsoft to woo you with good looks. The user interface is very intuitive and limiting my reference manual lookups. Even when I needed help, all I had to do was open up my help window and I had access to context sensitive help all the time. Microsoft has done a very nice job there.

Unfulfilled wishes :-
Built-in UML modeling. No architecture is complete without models. MS Visio 2002 integration is made available but I don't have a copy of that installed to see whether there is code synchronization with the models. I think that not providing this feature severely limits the use of vs.net as an IDE of choice for enterprise apps.
Another feature conspicuous by its absence is a built-in automated unit-testing framework, something similar to JUnit testing framework.

Finally, I think that this is a very powerful IDE and it is very developer friendly. For those that are open to any technology, Windows .NET servers and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET is definitely a viable option.


True Object Oriented IDE from Microsoft   May 7, 2002
As a java developer, who got a little curious, I wanted to see what Visual Studio.net (professional edition) offers to a developer. During installation, the first thing that I noticed is the 2 gig disk space that the professional edition requires. After the installation, I test drove the IDE and I have to admit that I was not disappointed with Visual Studio .NET. Here is why.

Well-Integrated IDE: -
This is by far the best suite of Microsoft languages and tools. It contains the new Visual Basic .NET, which is totally object oriented and also Visual C# .NET that I found easy to use. The ASP .NET really captured my vote at how easy it was to create asps. The Visual Studio .NET provides thousands of .NET framework classes making a developers life easy and simple.

The similarity to the J2EE framework indicates that that the .NET framework has the capabilities of delivering object oriented enterprise applications. A downside is that, Windows .Net servers and windows operating systems are automatically included into the application environment. This environment may not be desired in all circumstances.

Web services: -
XML Web services are built on XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI specifications and can be built or consumed by your application without having to write the plumbing code yourself. The tools does it for you. All I had to do was to define my function that I want exposed as a web service and it was automatically deployed for me. I like that in an IDE.

Great Documentation and User interfaces: -
Trust Microsoft to woo you with good looks. The user interface is very intuitive and limiting my reference manual lookups. Even when I needed help, all I had to do was open up my help window and I had access to context sensitive help all the time. Microsoft has done a very nice job there.

Unfulfilled wishes :-
Built-in UML modeling. No architecture is complete without models. MS Visio 2002 integration is made available but I don't have a copy of that installed to see whether there is code synchronization with the models. I think that not providing this feature severely limits the use of vs.net as an IDE of choice for enterprise apps.
Another feature conspicuous by its absence is a built-in automated unit-testing framework, something similar to JUnit testing framework.

Finally, I think that this is a very powerful IDE and it is very developer friendly. For those that are open to any technology, Windows .NET servers and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET is definitely a viable option.


Very nice features, but value is ratio of quality and price   May 2, 2002
 6 out of 27 found this review helpful

If you want a features list, go to the site - everything it says it can do it does, but the cost is an odd complement for the features. Is it worth the ease and intigration for the extra 900 dollars over Visual C++ 6.0? I'm not that sure, but I think you might rather take the extra hour or so to create a window with API or MFC than earn the extra money - then again, it might be because I haven't graduated highschool yet. Hopefully that will not bring up any prejudices, as I did make sure I attempted at all the options, and I must say I am happy with the product, but would I recommend paying the toll? No - although the server tools and language integration (I can now work with a friend who uses Java), the cost is very steep.


Excellent design work   April 2, 2002
 15 out of 16 found this review helpful

The concept of the virtual machine is nothing new. The design of .NET would solve many problems associated with DLL and COM. Programs compiled with .NET is slower because Just-In-Time compiler must compile the code before the execution. Loading time for new application appears to be around 2 - 4 seconds in my system(K7 700MHZ). The initial execution memory requirement for a very small program appears to be around 6 - 12 MB. The memory requirement drops down to 1MB soon as you minimize the app (some type of memory clean up kicks in) The class library is object oriented, and all examples are in either C# or VB. If you are a C++ user, it will require some additional learning time.
The developing and debugging environment is easy to use. The debugger even let you trace the compiled x86 assembler code. Learning the system takes few days (very easy, but there are many objects) and experienced programmer can be productive in a week.