CF a little buggy?

[Ol' Joe]

Ok, I admit, I've only been at this for a short time - developing cf
applications...

But, am I mistaken, or is .net (or CF anyway) just a tad bit buggy for being
the second release of .net???

The tab control is terrible, to be quite honest -
- tab page order flopping around willynillie...
-exception errors only on occasion when implementing the supposed fix of the
flopping tab page controls: tabMain.controls.setchildindex(me.tabpageX, 1)

The Solution explorer's designer view on 'some' forms disappearing until you
exclude it from the project and then re-include it.... msdn has no mention
of it?? I've seen some posts say that MS can't duplicate it...

-Emulator is dawg slow - and there's no way to use a console?

I do like the promise here of .net, but dang! I loved VB6, and was looking
forward to coming over to .net. Is the .net (non-CF) environment just as
bad?

I hate to be negative - but this sure seems wrong to have such a product
released when its a complete second level version. MS making me pay full
price for the "upgrade" since I didn't know about the upgrade in time,
killed me! Now it just burns deeply seeing all these internal bugs.

I sure hope to never release a product of my own in such a stage of
incomplete.

Open for comments and curious if I'm the only one feeling this way. Having
found ways to work around 'some' of the issues, its making it more
bearable - but . . . am I the only one shaking my head here? I'm
interested in your honest and direct response.

 

[Michael Kremser]

Ol' Joe wrote:

Hi Ol' Joe!

But, am I mistaken, or is .net (or CF anyway) just a tad bit buggy for being
the second release of .net???

Yes, like every "first release" of a M$ product - it's horribly buggy.

The tab control is terrible, to be quite honest -
- tab page order flopping around willynillie...
-exception errors only on occasion when implementing the supposed fix of the
flopping tab page controls: tabMain.controls.setchildindex(me.tabpageX, 1)

Hm, I can't say anything regarding the tab control, I haven't yet used it.

-Emulator is dawg slow - and there's no way to use a console?

On my computer the emulator works quite well. Windows CE doesn't have a
console, so the emulator doesn't have one too.

I do like the promise here of .net, but dang! I loved VB6, and was looking
forward to coming over to .net. Is the .net (non-CF) environment just as
bad?

Hm, no, I don't think so, but in the 1.0/1.1 release, there are masses
of missing functions. They just "forgot" a lot and released it anyway.

I hate to be negative - but this sure seems wrong to have such a product
released when its a complete second level version. MS making me pay full
price for the "upgrade" since I didn't know about the upgrade in time,
killed me! Now it just burns deeply seeing all these internal bugs.

That's the Microsoft way of success. Why should they behave differently?
They are a company and their goal is to make money - if people are
stupid enough and think, the latest is the greatest, that won't change
in future. I wouldn't make an allegation to Microsoft, they just react
on the needs of the market.

I sure hope to never release a product of my own in such a stage of
incomplete.

My ideology tells me the same, but rather I release an unfinished
product und earn money for it than anyone else releases an unfinished
product and I have nothing.

Just wait until February, 2005, .net FX 2.0 seems to be the first really
usable release (both for the "real" FX as well as the CF). Join the beta
phase and if you find any bugs, report them to Microsoft. That's even
better than sitting around and railing against Microsoft. ;-)

Best regards,

Michael

 

[Chris Tacke, eMVP]

But, am I mistaken, or is .net (or CF anyway) just a tad bit buggy for
being

the second release of .net???

This is a first release, and I don't think it has near as many bugs as some
of their previous first releases.

The tab control is terrible, to be quite honest -
- tab page order flopping around willynillie...

This isn't a CF bug, it's a Studio bug.

-exception errors only on occasion when implementing the supposed fix of the
flopping tab page controls: tabMain.controls.setchildindex(me.tabpageX, 1)

Never seen this personally, though I've not used it too extensively (1
project for a conference)

The Solution explorer's designer view on 'some' forms disappearing until you
exclude it from the project and then re-include it.... msdn has no mention
of it?? I've seen some posts say that MS can't duplicate it...

Again, never seen it, but it's reported often enough. Again another Studio
bug, not the CF.

-Emulator is dawg slow - and there's no way to use a console?

Emulators have hoistorically sucked. The one in Studio is way beter than
earlier versions, but until then real simulators comes with 2005, I wouldn't
use one. There's really no substitute for real hardware. And the lack of a
Console is a Pocket PC limitation. It's not a bug, it's simply not in the
platform.

I do like the promise here of .net, but dang! I loved VB6, and was looking
forward to coming over to .net. Is the .net (non-CF) environment just as
bad?

The designer for the desktop behaves much better.

I hate to be negative - but this sure seems wrong to have such a product
released when its a complete second level version. MS making me pay full
price for the "upgrade" since I didn't know about the upgrade in time,
killed me! Now it just burns deeply seeing all these internal bugs.

The price is at least coming down if you only want device programmability
features without all the enterprise stuff in 05.

I sure hope to never release a product of my own in such a stage of
incomplete.

With the complexity of the product I'm not overly surprised that bugs are
there. Sure, it probably should have been in testing a bit longer, or a
longer beta, but engineers with eternally wrestle with the realities of the
market. A perfect product two years from now isn't always as acceptable as
a good product today.

Open for comments and curious if I'm the only one feeling this way. Having
found ways to work around 'some' of the issues, its making it more
bearable - but . . . am I the only one shaking my head here? I'm
interested in your honest and direct response.

VB6 had many, many iterations to get solid. Did you ever use VB4? It
wasn't so hot. And look at things like InterDev, which was the buggiest IDE
ever. I used Notepad instead of it. So yes, Studio has some bugs, but
overall I think it provides better productivity than ever before. I'm
willing to deal with some of the quirks for the gains. You want to
frustrate yourself, try an older version of Platform Builder.

 

[Saul]

Joe,

Yes, I agree. I wrote a post a bit over a week ago with the same sentiment.

I think a service pack is well overdue. I have a suspicion that they won't
do this though, and will instead call it "Visual Studio 2005", which is
lame.

If it didn't have some really good things in here as well (like the SQL
server CE) I suspect many people would not use it. You find work arounds for
the problems you have mentioned, but honestly, you should not need to....
not by now.

Regards,
Saul