Good lord its BLOATED!

[SomeYguy]

(Didn't see an appropriate forum for this so I'll post it here.)

Wow. I just downloaded & installed Visual Studio 2022 Community. My computer is modest - 3.1gb duo-core, 8gb of RAM, 64-bit Win 10. Fast, broadband internet.

Took about 25 minutes to install. Used 7+ gb of hard drive space. Even though I picked & chose only the wanted development tools it still installed a bunch of unnecessary and unwanted garbage.

Whenever I run the IDE it is SO SLOW to come up. Runs pretty fast afterward though.

So I wrote a very simple winforms desktop program in c#. Just a picturebox and a button to load an image. Thats it, nothing else. Targeted as far back as I was allowed to go (8.0 framework). Built & executed said program in release mode, worked fine on development machine. Copied the exe file to a USB stick, took it to a couple of other Win 10 machines and guess what? No go! Won't run at all! Says that I need to install latest .NET framework! (no surprise). Tiny little simple program must have latest big, bloated, needs-an-internet-connection-to-get-and-install framework just to show a form & display a picture!

Have we digressed in making everything modern so complicated? I believe so.

In contrast - same program written in VB6 and also in PowerBasic. Runs flawlessly on everything from Win11/64 back to WinXP. Tiny, fast, portable.

Yes there are things which can only be done with newer technologies but I still can't help but wonder - Have we become victims of the ultimate case of "creeping featurism" ?. I think so .

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Yup!

[wes4dbt]

All programming languages and IDE's are just tools. If Visual Studio doesn't fit your needs, then don't use it.

[Joe Caverly]

You say that you are using 8.0 framework?

Might it be .NET Core 8.0 that you are using?

If so, using the "retired" .NET Framework 4.8.1 will make your program smaller and faster.

Ref: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/d...ramework/net48

Regardless, you will still need .NET Framework to run on another machine.

When you create a new project in Visual Studio,
ensure that you are selecting the .NET Framework project type.

To see what versions of .NET Framework are installed,
you can run

reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP" /s

If your project needs .NET Core,
bloated is an understatement.

Joe

[SomeYguy]

All programming languages and IDE's are just tools. If Visual Studio doesn't fit your needs, then don't use it.

Well, yeah, I kinda already knew that and figured it out for myself about 50 years ago but that wasn't my point.....

[Joe Caverly]

Note well that you do not need Visual Studio to create .NET applications.

I recently created a Simple COM DLL as proof of how to do this.

Ref: https://github.com/JoeC4281/SimpleCOMDll/tree/main

All you need is the .NET SDK installed.

Ref: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/d...ramework/net48

Joe

[Joe Caverly]

On my Windows 10 system, I have several versions of .NET Framework installed;

C:\...\.NETFramework>dir

 Volume in drive C is unlabeled    Serial number is acb2:6a48
 Directory of  C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\*

2025-03-30  14:02         <DIR>    .
2025-03-30  14:02         <DIR>    ..
2025-03-30  13:28         <DIR>    v3.5
2025-03-30  13:54         <DIR>    v4.0
2025-03-30  13:54         <DIR>    v4.5
2025-03-30  13:54         <DIR>    v4.5.1
2025-03-30  13:54         <DIR>    v4.5.2
2025-03-30  13:54         <DIR>    v4.6
2025-03-30  13:54         <DIR>    v4.6.1
2025-03-30  14:02         <DIR>    v4.6.2
2025-03-30  14:02         <DIR>    v4.7
2025-03-30  14:02         <DIR>    v4.7.1
2025-03-30  13:27         <DIR>    v4.7.2
2022-10-27   9:22         <DIR>    v4.8
2023-10-28  15:38         <DIR>    v4.8.1
2025-03-30  13:54         <DIR>    v4.X
                   0 bytes in 0 files and 16 dirs
     224,112,922,624 bytes free

Joe

[SomeYguy]

Note well that you do not need Visual Studio to create .NET applications.

I recently created a Simple COM DLL as proof of how to do this.

Ref: https://github.com/JoeC4281/SimpleCOMDll/tree/main

All you need is the .NET SDK installed.

Ref: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/d...ramework/net48

Joe

Thank you Joe. If I have the need to work again with any of the .NET tools then I will look into these things. My main purpose in installing VS this time was to test compatibility with a custom user control which I had written in VB6.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Well, yeah, I kinda already knew that and figured it out for myself about 50 years ago but that wasn't my point.....

What WAS your point?

I agree that VS has been adding things at a pace that isn't ideal. It long since passed the point where it is unlikely that any user has used ALL the features of just the IDE (not counting all the different languages, as that would be pointless), but I do think it is pretty likely that there are different groups using different sets of the features such that they are all used by somebody.

Where I think VS has fallen down is in two areas. The first is that too many things are on by default, and can't be turned off. That slows load time. Having them on by default means that it would be slow the first time. Not being able to turn them off means that it will be slow all the time. The second issue is that the number of features means that small bugs are both numerous and insignificant enough to avoid being dealt with before the next version comes out...which will change the playing field.

The speed issue is partly due to computers just getting faster. If you have a high speed SSD on a good computer, VS loads pretty quickly. If you don't have a high speed SSD on a good computer...you probably will. That's always been an issue with computers: You can build for the cutting edge, safe in the certainty that cutting edge will be common, then outdated, within a couple years. For that reason, I don't worry too much about speed. After all, I'll end up getting a faster computer for a game...and then VS will be fine. Still, having more features that could be turned off would be nice...except that it would also increase the size a bit.

As for the second issue, it wouldn't bother me if they focused on stability over features. Stability issues are pretty trivial, to be sure, since I have never failed to get something done due to VS not functioning correctly, but there are weird little glitches that happen from time to time, and getting those sorted would be nice.

[SomeYguy]

What WAS your point?

I agree that VS has been adding things at a pace that isn't ideal. It long since passed the point where it is unlikely that any user has used ALL the features of just the IDE (not counting all the different languages, as that would be pointless), but I do think it is pretty likely that there are different groups using different sets of the features such that they are all used by somebody.

Where I think VS has fallen down is in two areas. The first is that too many things are on by default, and can't be turned off. That slows load time. Having them on by default means that it would be slow the first time. Not being able to turn them off means that it will be slow all the time. The second issue is that the number of features means that small bugs are both numerous and insignificant enough to avoid being dealt with before the next version comes out...which will change the playing field.

The speed issue is partly due to computers just getting faster. If you have a high speed SSD on a good computer, VS loads pretty quickly. If you don't have a high speed SSD on a good computer...you probably will. That's always been an issue with computers: You can build for the cutting edge, safe in the certainty that cutting edge will be common, then outdated, within a couple years. For that reason, I don't worry too much about speed. After all, I'll end up getting a faster computer for a game...and then VS will be fine. Still, having more features that could be turned off would be nice...except that it would also increase the size a bit.

As for the second issue, it wouldn't bother me if they focused on stability over features. Stability issues are pretty trivial, to be sure, since I have never failed to get something done due to VS not functioning correctly, but there are weird little glitches that happen from time to time, and getting those sorted would be nice.

Well, my intent was a simple discussion of whether or not .NET in general has become too big/complicated and my personal opinion (point) was twofold: First - and I'm certainly not the only nor first to point this out - it seems that .NET in general has gotten WAY too big and WAY too confusing with (like many modern things) a staggering array of options, steps, and choices in order to do the simplest things. Case in point - If I want to create a desktop app in eithe VB6 or PowerBasic, I load the IDE (very fast), choose "New Project", default form pops up, and off I go!. When asked to save project etc. a standard file dialog comes up where I can either choose or create folder(s) to save everything. It all comes out as a neat package which I can easily copy to anything.

Same simple project in .NET - I load IDE (Go refill coffee cup while waiting), choose type of project from a tile menu, wait again and watch revolving circle while project is prepared, answer endless questions (or accept defaults) regarding framework version(s), project folders, etc. etc. and then after writing my program only to find that it MIGHT run out-of-the-box on target machines or maybe not due to some missing dependency or break after a framework update. OTOH with VB6/PB I can either code everything inline against documented API functions and be pretty much totally portable except for - in the case of VB6 - the VB runtime. Or if I use any external files then it is usually a trivial matter to create a proper installer. In PB no runtime needed because it is built into the exe.

So the first part of my point - As wonderful and capable as modern programming languages have become (and they really can do amazing things) - have we lost something in the process?. Could we? - Should we? ask for a stripped down MS Visual Studio more like VB6?. Maybe .

2nd part of point - aimed at the "Hey dude why are you wasting time writing code in those ANCIENT languages when the current stuff is just SO much better??". IMO they don't know what they're missing .

Okay I'm going back underground now.....

[Shaggy Hiker]

Well, I agree that we have lost something in the process. All those options serve purposes. If you don't have them, you don't get that choice. VS can do all kinds of things. If it could do only one thing, the way that VB6 does, then you can get right to it. We've certainly lost that.

We've lost that in more ways than one, at that. VB6 made Windows desktop applications in Visual Basic for the hardware and environment that existed in the late 90s. It struggles if you want to get out of that. Clever people have found ways to do threading using VB6, but it's far from easy. That didn't matter for the single core, single processor systems of the late 90s. It's not so great these days. I don't know how well VB6 handles different dpi displays, either. WinForms .NET doesn't handle it all that well, so I wouldn't expect VB6 to do it all that well, either. Both can make it work. VB6 was only one language, while VS can be several (even .NET is more than one). All those options remove the simplicity.

Still, it's a different world, whether we like it or not. Windows isn't the only game in town anymore (there were others in the late 90s...but not really). Desktop REALLY isn't the only game in town anymore. Single core is essentially not a game in town anymore...or even in the next town over. Mutli-monitor, mixed-dpi, setups are increasingly common, as well. The world just isn't so simple.

What annoys me about that is that, for any program, you now have to consider all the different aspects of how it may be used. There are people on here (lookin' at you Niya) who assert that the world is going web. For the most part, I agree with that view, except that there are some programs that simply can't, nor will they ever, go web...and I maintain one of those and have written a second one. Even for those, though, there are choices to be made about working with mobile platforms running Android or iOS. The landscape used to be simple. For some programs, it's still simple, but for the bulk of programs...it just isn't simple anymore.

Besides, I never liked the VB6 IDE. It was fine for it's time, and it certainly does load fast, but it's annoyingly limited these days. No tabs, no collapsing blocks, poor navigation, bad or absent intellisense, and so forth. Things that I make great use of every day, just aren't there. I realize that some people love it. I don't.

[PlausiblyDamp]

If you don't want a full IDE like Visual Studio then VS Code is a pretty lightweight alternative, the installer is only about a 100MB - if you want to develop in VB / C# then VS code plus the Net SDK (about 300MB installer) is enough to get you going. VS Code is pretty fast as well.

If you don't want to navigate the various project creation wizards then something like

dotnet new winforms -lang=vb

would create you the project.

[ChrisE]

(Didn't see an appropriate forum for this so I'll post it here.)

Wow. I just downloaded & installed Visual Studio 2022 Community. My computer is modest - 3.1gb duo-core, 8gb of RAM, 64-bit Win 10. Fast, broadband internet.

Took about 25 minutes to install. Used 7+ gb of hard drive space. Even though I picked & chose only the wanted development tools it still installed a bunch of unnecessary and unwanted garbage.

Whenever I run the IDE it is SO SLOW to come up. Runs pretty fast afterward though.

So I wrote a very simple winforms desktop program in c#. Just a picturebox and a button to load an image. Thats it, nothing else. Targeted as far back as I was allowed to go (8.0 framework). Built & executed said program in release mode, worked fine on development machine. Copied the exe file to a USB stick, took it to a couple of other Win 10 machines and guess what? No go! Won't run at all! Says that I need to install latest .NET framework! (no surprise). Tiny little simple program must have latest big, bloated, needs-an-internet-connection-to-get-and-install framework just to show a form & display a picture!

Have we digressed in making everything modern so complicated? I believe so.

In contrast - same program written in VB6 and also in PowerBasic. Runs flawlessly on everything from Win11/64 back to WinXP. Tiny, fast, portable.

Yes there are things which can only be done with newer technologies but I still can't help but wonder - Have we become victims of the ultimate case of "creeping featurism" ?. I think so .

Powershell might be an option

[void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Drawing") 
[void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms") 

$Form = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Form 
$Form.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(370,470)
$Form.Text = "Color Form"
$Icon = [system.drawing.icon]::ExtractAssociatedIcon("C:\Windows\System32\mspaint.exe")
$Form.Icon = $Icon

#region Colors
$Colors = @()
$Colors += "AliceBlue"
$Colors += "AntiqueWhite"
$Colors += "Aqua"
$Colors += "Aquamarine"
$Colors += "Azure"
$Colors += "Beige"
$Colors += "Bisque"
$Colors += "Black"
$Colors += "BlanchedAlmond"
$Colors += "Blue"
$Colors += "BlueViolet"
$Colors += "Brown"
$Colors += "BurlyWood"
$Colors += "CadetBlue"
$Colors += "Chartreuse"
$Colors += "Chocolate"
$Colors += "Coral"
$Colors += "CornflowerBlue"
$Colors += "Cornsilk"
$Colors += "Crimson"
$Colors += "Cyan"
$Colors += "DarkBlue"
$Colors += "DarkCyan"
$Colors += "DarkGoldenrod"
$Colors += "DarkGray"
$Colors += "DarkGreen"
$Colors += "DarkKhaki"
$Colors += "DarkMagenta"
$Colors += "DarkOliveGreen"
$Colors += "DarkOrange"
$Colors += "DarkOrchid"
$Colors += "DarkRed"
$Colors += "DarkSalmon"
$Colors += "DarkSeaGreen"
$Colors += "DarkSlateBlue"
$Colors += "DarkSlateGray"
$Colors += "DarkTurquoise"
$Colors += "DarkViolet"
$Colors += "DeepPink"
$Colors += "DeepSkyBlue"
$Colors += "DimGray"
$Colors += "DodgerBlue"
$Colors += "Firebrick"
$Colors += "FloralWhite"
$Colors += "ForestGreen"
$Colors += "Fuchsia"
$Colors += "Gainsboro"
$Colors += "GhostWhite"
$Colors += "Gold"
$Colors += "Goldenrod"
$Colors += "Gray"
$Colors += "Green"
$Colors += "GreenYellow"
$Colors += "Honeydew"
$Colors += "HotPink"
$Colors += "IndianRed"
$Colors += "Indigo"
$Colors += "Ivory"
$Colors += "Khaki"
$Colors += "Lavender"
$Colors += "LavenderBlush"
$Colors += "LawnGreen"
$Colors += "LemonChiffon"
$Colors += "LightBlue"
$Colors += "LightCoral"
$Colors += "LightCyan"
$Colors += "LightGoldenrodYellow"
$Colors += "LightGray"
$Colors += "LightGreen"
$Colors += "LightPink"
$Colors += "LightSalmon"
$Colors += "LightSeaGreen"
$Colors += "LightSkyBlue"
$Colors += "LightSlateGray"
$Colors += "LightSteelBlue"
$Colors += "LightYellow"
$Colors += "Lime"
$Colors += "LimeGreen"
$Colors += "Linen"
$Colors += "Magenta"
$Colors += "Maroon"
$Colors += "MediumAquamarine"
$Colors += "MediumBlue"
$Colors += "MediumOrchid"
$Colors += "MediumPurple"
$Colors += "MediumSeaGreen"
$Colors += "MediumSlateBlue"
$Colors += "MediumSpringGreen"
$Colors += "MediumTurquoise"
$Colors += "MediumVioletRed"
$Colors += "MidnightBlue"
$Colors += "MintCream"
$Colors += "MistyRose"
$Colors += "Moccasin"
$Colors += "NavajoWhite"
$Colors += "Navy"
$Colors += "OldLace"
$Colors += "Olive"
$Colors += "OliveDrab"
$Colors += "Orange"
$Colors += "OrangeRed"
$Colors += "Orchid"
$Colors += "PaleGoldenrod"
$Colors += "PaleGreen"
$Colors += "PaleTurquoise"
$Colors += "PaleVioletRed"
$Colors += "PapayaWhip"
$Colors += "PeachPuff"
$Colors += "Peru"
$Colors += "Pink"
$Colors += "Plum"
$Colors += "PowderBlue"
$Colors += "Purple"
$Colors += "Red"
$Colors += "RosyBrown"
$Colors += "RoyalBlue"
$Colors += "SaddleBrown"
$Colors += "Salmon"
$Colors += "SandyBrown"
$Colors += "SeaGreen"
$Colors += "SeaShell"
$Colors += "Sienna"
$Colors += "Silver"
$Colors += "SkyBlue"
$Colors += "SlateBlue"
$Colors += "SlateGray"
$Colors += "Snow"
$Colors += "SpringGreen"
$Colors += "SteelBlue"
$Colors += "Tan"
$Colors += "Teal"
$Colors += "Thistle"
$Colors += "Tomato"
$Colors += "Turquoise"
$Colors += "Violet"
$Colors += "Wheat"
$Colors += "White"
$Colors += "WhiteSmoke"
$Colors += "Yellow"
$Colors += "YellowGreen"
#endregion Colors

#region Funcitons
Function Change-ButtonColor{
$n = $Form.BackColor
$Form.BackColor = $Colors[$n]
$Form.BackColor = $Colors[$n]

}

Function Set-Color{
 If ($ColorDropDownBox.SelectedItem -lt 0){
 $ColorSelected = "No color was selected"
 Write-host $ColorSelected -ForegroundColor Red
 }
 Else {
 $ColorSelected = $ColorDropDownBox.SelectedItem.ToString()
 $ColorOutputBox.BackColor = $ColorSelected
 $Form.BackColor= $ColorSelected
 Write-host "Color Selected: $ColorSelected" -ForegroundColor Green
 }
}
#endregion Funcitons

#region Color Selection
#region Color Selection Dropdown Box Label
$ColorDropdownBoxLabel = New-Object system.windows.Forms.Label
$ColorDropdownBoxLabel.Text = "Color Choices"
$ColorDropdownBoxLabel.AutoSize = $true
$ColorDropdownBoxLabel.Width = 25
$ColorDropdownBoxLabel.Height = 10
$ColorDropdownBoxLabel.location = new-object system.drawing.point(20,10)
$ColorDropdownBoxLabel.Font = "Microsoft Sans Serif,10"
$Form.controls.Add($ColorDropdownBoxLabel)
#endregion Color Selection Dropdown Box Label
#region Color Selection Dropdown Box
$ColorDropDownBox = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox
$ColorDropDownBox.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(20,30) 
$ColorDropDownBox.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(180,20) 
$ColorDropDownBox.DropDownHeight = 200 

foreach($Color in $Colors)
{
 $ColorDropDownBox.Items.add($Color)
}
$ColorDropDownBox.Add_SelectedValueChanged({Set-Color})
$Form.Controls.Add($ColorDropDownBox)
#endregion Color Selection Dropdown Box
#endregion Color Selection Selection

#region Color Output Box
#region Color Output Box Label
$ColorOutputBoxLabel = New-Object system.windows.Forms.Label
$ColorOutputBoxLabel.Text = "Color Output"
$ColorOutputBoxLabel.AutoSize = $true
$ColorOutputBoxLabel.Width = 25
$ColorOutputBoxLabel.Height = 10
$ColorOutputBoxLabel.location = new-object system.drawing.point(20,70)
$ColorOutputBoxLabel.Font = "Microsoft Sans Serif,10"
$Form.controls.Add($ColorOutputBoxLabel)
#endregion Color Output Box Label
$ColorOutputBox = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.TextBox 
$ColorOutputBox.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(20,90) 
$ColorOutputBox.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(320,320) 
$ColorOutputBox.MultiLine = $true 
$ColorOutputBox.ScrollBars = "Vertical" 
$Form.Controls.Add($ColorOutputBox) 
#endregion Color Output Box 
$form.BackColor =$ColorOutputBox.BackColor

$Form.Add_Shown({$Form.Activate()})
Clear-Host
[void] $Form.ShowDialog()

created form..

[Niya]

and then after writing my program only to find that it MIGHT run out-of-the-box on target machines or maybe not due to some missing dependency or break after a framework update. OTOH with VB6/PB I can either code everything inline against documented API functions and be pretty much totally portable except for - in the case of VB6 - the VB runtime. Or if I use any external files then it is usually a trivial matter to create a proper installer. In PB no runtime needed because it is built into the exe.

I have to push back on this. I've had far more problems deploying VB6 applications than I've ever had with .Net. In fact it's one of the things that made me leave VB6. I was tired of dealing with DLLs and OCXs breaking all the time when you deploy to another machine. Deploying .Net applications in my experience has been a breeze. The only problem I may encounter is that a particular system may not have the right Framework version and that is very easily resolved.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Also very rare, these days, since the frameworks are generally installed with the OS, unless you are targeting very old frameworks.

[Niya]

Also very rare, these days, since the frameworks are generally installed with the OS, unless you are targeting very old frameworks.

Exactly.