Why does it take so long?

[AlBruAn]

I apparently posted this in a wrong group ... one intended for pre-.Net
development using VB. Anyway...

I have a solution containing a project of Web pages, a project that contains
all my business objects, five Web Service projects and three Windows Services
projects. I'm only working with a relatively small portion of the code ...
primarily the business objects, Web pages and one of the Web Services ... but
I need to make sure that any additions/changes don't negatively affect the
balance of the solution. My problem is it takes upwards of seven minutes
(yep, seven minutes) to load the solution when I start my day; it also seems
like it takes forever for the program to actually render the first Web page
with or without debugging and the same holds true from when I want to stop
debugging.

Why is it taking so freakin', bloody long to load or run/stop running? What
can I do to resolve this issue?

Thanks!

 

[Cowboy \(Gregory A. Beamer\)]

I am not sure. Here are some general guidelines:

1. Get a faster hard drive. The 5400 RPM drives are a bottleneck for
development and loading. This is often overlooked.
2. More memory - of course, if you are already maxed out, this is not
something you can do. Be smart about it by examining your memory.
3. Faster memory - The architecture has to support it, of course, but many
manufacturers start you with cheaper, slower speed, memory. Go as fast as
the FSB can handle.
4. TSRs - some virus protection programs examine everything you load. If you
can make an exception of your code files, this may speed up initial load.
5. Visual Studio plug ins - Some plug-ins, like Resharper, examine the
project every time you load, causing a slow down
6. Deletion of temp files, including temp internet files - this is a good
thing to do every once in awhile, as Windows itself can bog down if you do
not, and this bogging can show in a variety of ways
7. Defrag the drive - This is esp. helpful in large solutions

As for projects, I will generally use nUnit or mbUnit for my unit testing. I
add on a mock framework and test everything in isolation.

For solution wide testing, I find it better to set up a solution at each
project level, as well as one "big bang" solution. I general will use the
isolated solutions, so I am working with compiled code at the lower levels.
This is not always possible, but working with compiled code will speed up
the load of my UI tremendously.

In addition, I have found that some bad coding practices (esp. too much code
in the ASP.NET app) will bog down VS 2005 tremendously. I have since
refactored some troubled projects and they load much faster.



--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP, MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA

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