Visual Studio 2015 sucks

[Gez]

Visual Studio 2015 wants you to login to a Microsoft account because of course you need to be live-connected online to Microsoft App Service Live Login System to use an app. After all, step #2 through #128 of compilation involves going on social networks, liking things, subscribing, and sharing them.

Anyway after a 30 day delay, the IDE self-destructs, unless you made an account on the Microsoft thing. That's blackmail, but whatever, let's make it. Enter email address and password, click next.

We just sent a code to <your address>

Alright, let's look at the mails... Nothing. Refresh. Nothing. Wait a minute, refresh again. Still nothing. Shit, what's happening? Let's go back to the Microsoft FacebookLite For Programmers tab.

There's a temporary problem with the service. Please try again. If you continue to get this message, try again later.

Farg. Maybe they don't like gmail, what with Google being more successful at being a Big Brother than they are. Let's try a different mail address.

There's a temporary problem with the service. Please try again. If you continue to get this message, try again later.

Yeah, that is not optimal. I really don't want to give the horrible monsters at Microsoft my phone number, but we can try this way too.

There's a temporary problem with the service. Please try again. If you continue to get this message, try again later.

Look, MS, if you don't want me to make an account on your stupid useless thing, I'm totally glad too -- just don't brick Visual Studio for that, okay?

[Rachael]

>_<

Have you tried any msbuild.exe scripts?

Failing that, you might as well just go with MinGW-64.

[Graf Zahl]

It must be you. I have created 4 different accounts for VS 2015 so far and never ran into problems. If you do not want to register you can always buy a commercial edition.

[Nash]

While we're on the subject of bashing VS2015, here's a fucking annoying thing that really makes me angery that VS2015 likes to do all the time:

It will complain about some client update thing which blocks the Output window and interrupts compilation

[Rachael]

I'm not a huge fan of MSVC 2015 but it works, it's what we use for development, and with a tweak or two it's nice and fast, too.

I think what I like most about it, though, is the debugging interface. Sorry, gdb blows cashews quicker than a wood chipper - I hate it. The IDE in MSVC++ is really helpful in fixing crashes and the like, though. You can literally open someone's minidump file, attach a pdb, and there's your crash code, all within seconds.

[GooberMan]

I've not used a better IDE than Visual Studio. Curious to see what CLion is like, but I asked the Jet Brains guys last year at GDCE if they were planning on supporting D and got a negative answer. So that rules that out of the question for now.

My main gripes, however, are not with the IDE. The MSVC toolchain lags behind C++ standards by years at any given point in time. And I've not used an MSVC compiler yet that doesn't eventually fuck up with some floating point code or other (which, unlike LLVM or even GCC, usually means waiting years for a fix).

[Gez]

I got fed up, entered 1234 as the code because why the flub not, and got a "down for maintenance" error page.

[Graf Zahl]

My main gripes, however, are not with the IDE. The MSVC toolchain lags behind C++ standards by years at any given point in time. And I've not used an MSVC compiler yet that doesn't eventually fuck up with some floating point code or other (which, unlike LLVM or even GCC, usually means waiting years for a fix).

They have gotten better. Think about it: VS2012 was totally unusable with C++11, VS2013 got a lot better and VS2015 got most of C++11 and C++14 in and VS2017 looks like they finally catch up. I think you can blame most of this on Steve Ballmer's mismanagement, which cannot be undone in a day.

Also, I have never seen is screw up with floating point code, can you give an example where it didn't work right?

[Graf Zahl]

I got fed up, entered 1234 as the code because why the flub not, and got a "down for maintenance" error page.

So, you got caught by some server outage. Well, bad luck. Such things happen. It was clear from your previous messages already.

[GooberMan]

They have gotten better.

It's true. But they're still not good enough. Maybe constexpr will finally work properly in 2017, but given their history I'm not expecting to get the C++17 constexpr if feature until at least 2020.

Mind you, I'm committing more to D with each day. Even with constexpr if, C++'s compile time features will still be belaboured and limited compared to D, and I spend a significant amount of time with meta programming/introspective programming these days.

Also, I have never seen is screw up with floating point code, can you give an example where it didn't work right?

Not off hand, it's all been with work code bases.

The major ones I recall are x87 code missing pop commands; and SSE code missing a convert from double to single precision. They are rare occurrences, but very annoying when it happens.

[Graf Zahl]

I'm not expecting to get the C++17 constexpr if feature until at least 2020.

I read in their blog they got constexpr mostly working. Let's see what they deliver when it finally reaches release status.

[Enjay]

A couple of months back (maybe more) I installed VS2015 and have been able to use it just fine ever since. I already had an MS account though so I just used that. I don't particularly like that I need to use an MS account to use VS because I didn't need it for earlier versions but it's been absolutely seamless and without issue for me. All I use it for is compiling GZDoom so I double click the solution file created by CMake, VS2015 opens up, I compile the project and quit.

[DaMan]

Inb4 bitching that VS2017 doesn't have an ISO download.

[ibm5155]

I have a solution: Goto bedroom, sleep for 1 day and try again

[Graf Zahl]

Inb4 bitching that VS2017 doesn't have an ISO download.

True, but they have documentation how to create an offline installer. ISOs have one big disadvantagre: In order to update them you have to download all the shit again in its entirety.