Visual Studio replacement

[Pwnbroker]

I'm thinking of buying Visual Studio 2005 standard; Newegg has it for $250. I've tried to find something comparable for cheaper, found gcc++ but it's not exactly a suite. Also, I never have been able to figure out what I need to download from the gnu website for gcc++, they just throw this page out there and tell you to figure it out.

I used VS 2003 in school, and I'm fairly well used to it. Netbeans has an IDE with a plugin option for C++, and that's all I've been able to find. I've used Netbeans, but I'm not terribly familiar with it. Borlands products don't seem to really have any suites, just C#, C++ and J# I think, plus they are pretty expensive. Any suggestions?

 

[mundane]

You could try out Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, which is free.

 

[Pwnbroker]

Yeah, I have and since it's limited, I can't do half of the stuff we did in school.

 

[WildHorse]

Would this help since it's free? Orcas

 

[AllGoodNamesAreTaken]

Originally posted by: Pwnbroker
Yeah, I have and since it's limited, I can't do half of the stuff we did in school.

Just curious as to what you can't do. I'm still using Visual C++ 6.0 ( circa '98 ); C++ hasn't changed much as far as I can tell.

 

[sourceninja]

This should work for C# http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/

Although monodevelop is better, but I belive its linux only.

 

[Schadenfroh]

BloodShed Dev C++

 

[BigPete]

Originally posted by: AllGoodNamesAreTaken

Originally posted by: Pwnbroker
Yeah, I have and since it's limited, I can't do half of the stuff we did in school.

Just curious as to what you can't do. I'm still using Visual C++ 6.0 ( circa '98 ); C++ hasn't changed much as far as I can tell.

He is talking about the IDE, not the language itself.

 

[Pwnbroker]

Thanks for the input guys, I'll check some of this stuff out. And yeah, the express versions limit the functionality of what you can do, like it seems I read you can't save .exe files but only run inside the ide and other things like that. Plus, I was trying to do Bruce Eckel's thinking in C++ tutorials, and all I got was a bunch of errors trying to run the sample code in there. And I'm talking some of the first things in his tutorials, not the advanced stuff. I never even bothered trying to compile projects we did in school.

 

[stash]

like it seems I read you can't save .exe files but only run inside the ide and other things like that.

That's not true.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: Pwnbroker
Thanks for the input guys, I'll check some of this stuff out. And yeah, the express versions limit the functionality of what you can do, like it seems I read you can't save .exe files but only run inside the ide and other things like that. Plus, I was trying to do Bruce Eckel's thinking in C++ tutorials, and all I got was a bunch of errors trying to run the sample code in there. And I'm talking some of the first things in his tutorials, not the advanced stuff. I never even bothered trying to compile projects we did in school.

Eh? The Express editions allow you to create fully distributable .exe's. The only major limitation is that the Express editions are designed mostly around .NET. You have to hack the template files in order to be able to create generic Win32 apps, but it's easy enough to do especially since Microsoft tells you how.

 

[Jaxidian]

So what are the real limitations of the Express editions, then? Obviously they don't have Team Suite and such. Are all integrations to SQL Server Express gone too? I've always used full versions of VS2k3 and 2k5 but they're pricey and I'm soon going to have to buy my own licenses so I'd like to know.

I'm expecting that I'll have to pony up some cash for these but am just curious.

 

[stash]

No, SQL Express works with the Express editions of VS. It has it's own limitations, but that goes for using it the full version of VS also.

Here's a FAQ that might answer some questions (the formatting seems be to screwed a little, so sorry about that): http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/faq/

I'm not sure what the limitations with the Express editions are specifically, since I'm pretty much a programming newbie. But I bet there are people here that know.

 

[Snapster]

EE should be pretty much the same apart from the enterprise stuff:

Source control
Add-ins / Macros
Class Designer
ClickOnce deployment
Remote debugging
Mobile development
Unit testing

Writing, debugging and deployment should be non issues.

 

[Nothinman]

I've been pretty impressed with MonoDevelop recently, it's still got some rough edges and they just added the integrated GUI designer like 2 releases ago. But I also have no idea how well it works on Windows yet either.

 

[Jaxidian]

Originally posted by: Snapster
EE should be pretty much the same apart from the enterprise stuff:

Source control
Add-ins / Macros
Class Designer
ClickOnce deployment
Remote debugging
Mobile development
Unit testing

Writing, debugging and deployment should be non issues.

Ahh, the lack of source control and add-ins pretty much kills it for me. Guess I need to dish out the big bucks. And I'm sure one of these days I'll take the time to learn how to use the unit testing in VS2k5 so that's another killer. Oh, and remote debugging, I use that a lot too. As for the class designer, I don't need that one!

 

[sourceninja]

There's always subversion for source control.

 

[Pwnbroker]

Originally posted by: sourceninja
There's always subversion for source control.

This went way over my head...

 

[sourceninja]

http://subversion.tigris.org/