Why so .net is slow...

[Aykut Canturk]

We perfectly develop our applicaitons with VS 6.0. We want to move to .net
but all of our development computers almost die with a small test
application. we have min P4 2ghz and 512MB desktop PCs with huge RAM
support, we use windowsXP as op.system but they don't work wery well. speed
id too different. I don't mention about our notebooks. also they have min P4
1.6 with 512 RAM but they also die.

Our customers also need Pc upgrade if we move to .net even for to run .net
runtime. .Net makes a noticeable slowness. does anyone have comments please
? how do you convince your customers to upgrade their systems ?

 

[Bob Hollness]

I run VS.Net on a PIII 1Ghz with 512 of ram running Windows XP. It is not
..NET but your application I would expect.

 

[Peter van der Goes]

We perfectly develop our applicaitons with VS 6.0. We want to move to .net
but all of our development computers almost die with a small test
application. we have min P4 2ghz and 512MB desktop PCs with huge RAM
support, we use windowsXP as op.system but they don't work wery well.
speed id too different. I don't mention about our notebooks. also they
have min P4 1.6 with 512 RAM but they also die.

Our customers also need Pc upgrade if we move to .net even for to run .net
runtime. .Net makes a noticeable slowness. does anyone have comments
please ? how do you convince your customers to upgrade their systems ?

I agree with Bob. Could you provide some specific information about your
"small test"?
In my experience with Visual Studio .NET, your hardware configurations are
adequate.
We use Visual Studio .NET 2003 on PC's with P III 700MHz CPU's and 256 Meg
of memory in our classrooms and labs, and while they're not exactly fast,
they certainly don't "die" when running even fairly substantial student
project applications.
So, to help you with your problem, we're going to need more information...

 

[Mehdi]

We perfectly develop our applicaitons with VS 6.0. We want to move to .net
but all of our development computers almost die with a small test
application. we have min P4 2ghz and 512MB desktop PCs with huge RAM
support, we use windowsXP as op.system but they don't work wery well. speed
id too different. I don't mention about our notebooks. also they have min P4
1.6 with 512 RAM but they also die.

Our customers also need Pc upgrade if we move to .net even for to run .net
runtime. .Net makes a noticeable slowness. does anyone have comments please
? how do you convince your customers to upgrade their systems ?

What do you mean by "small test application", "almost die" and "slowness".
I'm running small .NET applications on a PII 500MHz with 128MB of RAM and
..NET 1.1 without noticing any particular performance problems. Of course,
with bigger applications making heavy use of Web Services, .NET Remoting
and various ActiveX controls, this machine shows its limits but on any
decent not too old computer, all my .NET apps are running just fine.

 

[Ken Dopierala Jr.]

Hi,

What does your application do? Is is slow right from the start or does it
keep getting slower as you use it more? If it is the latter then you might
not be closing DB Connections or properly disposing of other objects. Bring
up the Windows Task Manager while you are running your app and check out how
much of the CPU it is using and it's memory usage. If the memory usage
keeps going up you are probably not disposing of objects properly. If the
CPU is pegged check your looping. If it runs slow out of your development
environment try to narrow down where the slowdown is occuring and then post
the relevant code. Good luck! Ken.

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

We perfectly develop our applicaitons with VS 6.0. We want to move to .net
but all of our development computers almost die with a small test
application. we have min P4 2ghz and 512MB desktop PCs with huge RAM
support, we use windowsXP as op.system but they don't work wery well.
speed id too different. I don't mention about our notebooks. also they
have min P4 1.6 with 512 RAM but they also die.

I assume you are talking about the application's user interface. You can
reduce startup time by using "NGEN.EXE" to create a native image of your
application:

<URL:http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/cptools/html/cpgrfnativeimagegeneratorngenexe.asp>

 

[Aaron Smith]

I run VS.Net on a PIII 1Ghz with 512 of ram running Windows XP. It is not
.NET but your application I would expect.

P3 800 Mhz with 256 MB ram. In comparison to other windows apps, it runs
fairly well. The compile time doesn't take forever. However, sometimes
switching between forms in VB.Net takes a little longer than I think it
should. But it's still usable.

 

[Aykut Canturk]

Hey friends, I'm not talking about test applications. We are developing
hotel & restaurant management system. Our VB6 version has more than 100
thousand non-remarked code lines. We use SQL server with almost 200 tables
and 80 views. we have more than 200 forms in our project. we full-compile
and run it from IDE in les than 5 seconds in VB6, on P4 1.6 centrino
notebook with 40GB HDD (15 is free) and 512MB RAM.

in same computer, when I try to make a "test" application, which has one
form, one button, one textbox, takes almost 10 seconds to full-compile. I'm
even not talking about "making exe". in programming bussiness, IDE must
catch the speed of the programmer. In IDE, openinf a form from project
exporer, for example to add a button or someting kills my programmers. I can
not walk in the project as I wish. I must click there, see the property, go
back immediatelly, write the code, open another form, copy some control,
reutrn back and paste blah blah blah. and this is supposed to be fast steps.

Am I wrong ?

 

[Cor Ligthert]

Aykut,

Probably there is something with your settings.

Did you know that the IDE is doing all the time compiling in background.

And when you debug, your program is compiled completly.

Making.exe is Build before you take the wrong approach.

Cor

 

[Ken Dopierala Jr.]

Hi,

Are you using Visual Studio 2002? If so you need to upgrade to VS.Net 2003,
once you do you will see a huge performance boost in the IDE for your large
project. I don't know why your "test" application is compiling so slow.
Have you checked your system for Spyware? Check out what you have running
on your task bar, if it is a bunch of different stuff try disabling them one
by one as it may be that one of those apps is causing problems with Visual
Studio. I just loaded an app with about 20 forms and a large class. The
compile time was about 3.5 seconds on a P4 1.7 with 512MB Ram. This way you
at least know that the problem resides with your system configuration and
not with VS.Net. Good luck! Ken.

 

[Mehdi]

on P4 1.6 centrino
notebook with 40GB HDD (15 is free) and 512MB RAM.

In addition to Cor and Ken' advices and since you seem to care about your
programmer's confort, give them a powerfull enough desktop computer to
develop. Developping any serious project on a laptop computer is in most
cases (unless you really have a beast of a laptop) a pain because of their
slow hard drives, their processor reducing their speed when battery powered
and their cramped keyboards.

I also sometimes use a laptop computer with the exact same config as yours
to do some programming with VS 2003. It's running very fast if i only have
VS launched but as soon as i launch firefox with 10 tabs open, a few
explorer windows, a remote desktop connection and some other apps, it's
painfully slow. Doing the same things on my PIV 3.2 desktop computer
doesn't slow VS at all.

I totally agree with Ken's suggestion: if you are using VS 2003, for VS to
be that slow you surely have viruses, spywares or useless programs running
in the background. Also check your processor settings to make sure that
it's running at full speed.

 

[Peter van der Goes]

Hey friends, I'm not talking about test applications. We are developing
hotel & restaurant management system. Our VB6 version has more than 100
thousand non-remarked code lines. We use SQL server with almost 200 tables
and 80 views. we have more than 200 forms in our project. we full-compile
and run it from IDE in les than 5 seconds in VB6, on P4 1.6 centrino
notebook with 40GB HDD (15 is free) and 512MB RAM.

in same computer, when I try to make a "test" application, which has one
form, one button, one textbox, takes almost 10 seconds to full-compile.
I'm even not talking about "making exe". in programming bussiness, IDE
must catch the speed of the programmer. In IDE, openinf a form from
project exporer, for example to add a button or someting kills my
programmers. I can not walk in the project as I wish. I must click there,
see the property, go back immediatelly, write the code, open another form,
copy some control, reutrn back and paste blah blah blah. and this is
supposed to be fast steps.

Am I wrong ?

You're speaking in generalities. Please provide specifics.
I can follow the steps in your description: "...when I try to make a "test"
application, which has one form, one button, one textbox...", then compile
and run virtually instantaneously on an old P III 700 w/ 256 Meg.
Are you connecting to a database with this test application, and if so, what
technologies are you using?

I also see you've made a reference to "my programmers".
Does that mean you are not conducting the experiments yourself?
Exactly which version and edition of Visual Studio .NET are your programmers
using?
And, are they attempting to convert old VB 6 applications using the
compatibility library, or are they creating new work using Visual Studio
..NET and .NET resources?
When you talk about "...walk in the project as I wish...", are you aware of
the tabs at the top of the editor window that allow you to switch back and
forth between various views of your work at will?
Both Cor and Ken have made useful observations based on what you've told us
so far. I'll go one step further. If you wish to have the actual test
application evaluated in an environment other than yours, I'll be glad to
provide you an email address to send the zipped up solution to. I will then
be able to look at any details not described here and, hopefully, tell you
why you're experiencing such performance difficulties.

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

programmer's confort, give them a powerfull enough desktop computer to
develop. Developping any serious project on a laptop computer is in most
cases (unless you really have a beast of a laptop) a pain because of their
slow hard drives, their processor reducing their speed when battery
powered
and their cramped keyboards.

Well, that's all true, but there are speed differences for compiling between
VB6 and VB.NET caused by the different debugging/compilation models.
Compiling on a P4 3.0 GHz machine with 1 GB of RAM (VS.NET 2003) is still
"slower" than in VB6.