[zanyterp]

i am sorry for posting this as i know this is a mac dev page, but my college just "upgraded" to VisualStudio .NET for all our programming courses (except on the eMacs, but i still have to be in class which makes it hard to use one of those) from VC++ and i would like to be able to move my work back and forth. i was able to easily move my files between my eMac at home and the pcs at school, but it looks like there is more junk added when starting a file that it needs to compile. anybody know if it is possible to make the same files work in both xcode and VS.NET? or am i SOL on this one? thanks!!

nick

[ideasculptor]

Virtual PC

It'll be like compiling on a 133Mhz Pentium Circa 1995, I suspect, but will probably be eaiser than trying to keep two projects working with the same source files. Unless you are writing only to the standard C library and not using any api's native to the OS. Still, VPC might just be a whole lot easier to deal with.

[Kristoff]

I can't believe Universities are going that route.

Whatever happened to ansi C classes?

Collections Library? We had to make our own trees and linked lists.

[hayesk]

Originally posted by Kristoff:
I can't believe Universities are going that route.

Whatever happened to ansi C classes?

Collections Library? We had to make our own trees and linked lists.

He never said it was a university. If it was a university and they are using VC++ (or any prepackaged high-level visual environment) as a default development environment in a computer science program, I'd switch schools immediately.

[zanyterp]

Originally posted by hayesk:
He never said it was a university. If it was a university and they are using VC++ (or any prepackaged high-level visual environment) as a default development environment in a computer science program, I'd switch schools immediately.

you're right, it isn't a university--does that make a difference in what i would learn? is there a particular reason for that (and also why would you switch schools immediately)? what would be the benefit of doing that? doesn't one learn the same things?

nick

[Ω]

Our Uni is pushing out VS drones.......



The MS Academic Alliance is Bill's way of dumbing us down so we "need" his product.

[zanyterp]

Originally posted by _?_:
Our Uni is pushing out VS drones.......



The MS Academic Alliance is Bill's way of dumbing us down so we "need" his product.

but it is possible to code in other environments even if taught with V$, right? as far as "dumbing us down" . . . i thought that was the essence of M$

[hayesk]

Originally posted by zanyterp:
you're right, it isn't a university--does that make a difference in what i would learn? is there a particular reason for that (and also why would you switch schools immediately)? what would be the benefit of doing that? doesn't one learn the same things?

No, one definitely does not learn the same things. At a university, you learn more theory and at a lower level (with regard to computing). Some of these things:
- how the hardware actually works. If I asked you how RAM actually stores bits, could you tell me?
- how compilers work
- language structure and how it works (more than just the syntax and frameworks)
- the math behind algorithms, their optimization, why some are faster than others, why some need more RAM than others, etc. (a CS degree is mostly math)
- how to write low level algorithms (sorting, storage, networking)
- the ins and outs, pros and cons of various data structures
- others I can't remember.

If your school just has you put together programs in Visual Studio, you are mostly just piecing together code that has already been written for you. That's fine for those that just want a corporate job assembling database clients. But if you want to write good, fast, clean software, including compilers, drivers, development environments, and database management systems (the systems themselves, not the databases that run on top of them), then a Computer Science degree from a good university is the way to go. That's why I would switch.

But hey, that's just my opinion. Computing is a very wide field - it's more than just IT. If a college gives you what you need, then by all means, get your education there. But just realize it doesn't teach you everything.

[Kristoff]

lol......"flip-flop? Ya mean them things that goes on yer feets? Whaddya mean by 'edge-triggered'?" lol

[zanyterp]

Originally posted by hayesk:
No, one definitely does not learn the same things. At a university, you learn more theory and at a lower level (with regard to computing). Some of these things:
- how the hardware actually works. If I asked you how RAM actually stores bits, could you tell me?
- how compilers work
- language structure and how it works (more than just the syntax and frameworks)
- the math behind algorithms, their optimization, why some are faster than others, why some need more RAM than others, etc. (a CS degree is mostly math)
- how to write low level algorithms (sorting, storage, networking)
- the ins and outs, pros and cons of various data structures
- others I can't remember.

If your school just has you put together programs in Visual Studio, you are mostly just piecing together code that has already been written for you. That's fine for those that just want a corporate job assembling database clients. But if you want to write good, fast, clean software, including compilers, drivers, development environments, and database management systems (the systems themselves, not the databases that run on top of them), then a Computer Science degree from a good university is the way to go. That's why I would switch.

But hey, that's just my opinion. Computing is a very wide field - it's more than just IT. If a college gives you what you need, then by all means, get your education there. But just realize it doesn't teach you everything.

would the same be said for xcode--in that all i do is piece together other people's code? or is it more for the GUI portion you are referring to? (sorry, just curious) or is there something specific about VS that creates that problem?

right, but a university wouldn't teach me everything either. but i do see your point that i would learn more (potentially) at a university.

nick

[hayesk]

Originally posted by zanyterp:
would the same be said for xcode--in that all i do is piece together other people's code? or is it more for the GUI portion you are referring to? (sorry, just curious) or is there something specific about VS that creates that problem?

No, XCode is a development environment. But, the same could be said for Cocoa. I wouldn't be impressed with a University that only had you learn the Cocoa frameworks either.

right, but a university wouldn't teach me everything either.

Agreed. It all depends on what you want to learn.

[goMac]

Our University teaches C++ on remote X11 connections from Windows boxes to a bunch of Suns running Unix, a bunch of IBM PowerPC machines running Linux, and IBM's Power5 Cluster. They nicely ignore the copy of VS on the Windows machines and have us use GCC.

[zanyterp]

Originally posted by hayesk:
No, XCode is a development environment. But, the same could be said for Cocoa. I wouldn't be impressed with a University that only had you learn the Cocoa frameworks either.


Agreed. It all depends on what you want to learn.

so the problem is more the idea of learning the .NET framework than necessarily the VS development environment? right now, we are only using the IDE to code, but there is probability that we will learn more of the framework at some later point in time when we get C# classes.

thanks!

[hayesk]

Originally posted by zanyterp:
so the problem is more the idea of learning the .NET framework than necessarily the VS development environment? right now, we are only using the IDE to code, but there is probability that we will learn more of the framework at some later point in time when we get C# classes.

As long as you are using VS as nothing more than a text editor and compiler, then it's fine. But if you are using the "Visual" part of it, you have to ask yourself "what am I really learning here?"

[zanyterp]

Originally posted by hayesk:
As long as you are using VS as nothing more than a text editor and compiler, then it's fine. But if you are using the "Visual" part of it, you have to ask yourself "what am I really learning here?"

ahh. thanks, just wanted to make sure. i am still not sure why it is called "visual studio"--so i guess that means something, at any rate. .. . . .thanks. just an aside, does the "visual" part have anything to do with GUI dev and having ready-made objects to use, rather than coding them out by hand?

[hayesk]

Originally posted by zanyterp:
ahh. thanks, just wanted to make sure. i am still not sure why it is called "visual studio"--so i guess that means something, at any rate. .. . . .thanks. just an aside, does the "visual" part have anything to do with GUI dev and having ready-made objects to use, rather than coding them out by hand?

Yep. I'm not a Windows programmer, but from what I understand, you drag and drop GUI widgets and objects and it generates code to make them work. You add your own code to do your stuff, but all the GUI code, and the built in classes and frameworks do a lot for you.

Now, from a developer standpoint who wants to make basic apps, that's fine. But from a student standpoint, you don't really learn a lot about how it works. And down the road if you want to make high-performance software like a game, or a scientific analysis application, you won't have much knowledge to start from.

[zanyterp]

Originally posted by hayesk:
Yep. I'm not a Windows programmer, but from what I understand, you drag and drop GUI widgets and objects and it generates code to make them work. You add your own code to do your stuff, but all the GUI code, and the built in classes and frameworks do a lot for you.

Now, from a developer standpoint who wants to make basic apps, that's fine. But from a student standpoint, you don't really learn a lot about how it works. And down the road if you want to make high-performance software like a game, or a scientific analysis application, you won't have much knowledge to start from.

thanks!