Splitting development environments

[TheBigB]

Hi,

I tend to experiment with a lot of different programming languages and IDE's.
It works, but I notice that the environments tend to collide and slow down a little.

For example I have VB6 installed on an XP system and I installed VS2008 after that.
After installing VS2008 I noticed a significant slowdown in the VB6 IDE and VS2008 might be affected by the existence of VB6 (but it might also be slow by nature...).
Also Eclipse is terrible...

The thought virtual machine has crossed me, but that strains the system a little too much and doesn't have the right "feel" for everyday work.

I am thinking about creating a couple of Windows installations alongside each other, but any suggestion not involving rebooting my pc each time would be greatly appreciated.

Also, where does your preference go to in terms of OS for Visual Studio?

Thanks

[baja_yu]

What's the hardware you're using?

I have AMD 6000+ and 4GB of ram. VMs work fine in all combinations for me.

Regarding OS, if you are setting up multiple OS', I'd stick with XP for VB6, and W7 for all newer (.Net) versions of VS.

[techgnome]

not sure what's causing conflicts... running XPsp3.... I have VB6, VS2005, VS2008 and VS2010... and narry a problem (other than I feel derty since I had to install VB6)...

-tg

[akhileshbc]

I have VB6 and VB2008 installed on same PC, having WinXP Pro SP2 OS.

But VB.Net seems to be slow

[gep13]

I have to agree with baja_yu, depending on what I am doing, I will typically create a few VM's, that have the various IDE's on them, that way when I am done with it, I can just throw it away, without having to worry about uninstalling something.

Gary

[FireXtol]

I'm going to have to disagree with Baja. I think VB6 IDE runs much better on Vista or 7(set-up correctly).

I keep a VM of 7 around just for the occasional VB6 'hardcore' coding session.

[dilettante]

The problem with developing in VB6 on XP is you can't use the newer features introduced in Vista and Win7. Such programs can use OS level detection to gracefully downgrade, but an XP-built program can't "gracefully upgrade."

Some programs will compile on Vista and run on XP but not the other way 'round because some Windows libraries don't have complete typelib info in their XP incarnations. UPnP.dll is a good example.

There are a few Windows libraries that broke binary compatibility between versions too. Whether you develop on XP or a later Windows you'll want to late-bind these objects. Some good examples include Shell32.dll's COM interface and ADOX. ADOX includes a compatibility interface for ADOX 2.6 in Vista SP2 and in Win7, but Vista Gold and SP1 did not!


Support for VB6 is even better in Vista and later than it was in XP. The OS includes not only very good (post-SP6) VB6 runtime components but also a number of the most commonly used VB6 ActiveX controls.

XP is basically dead, useful only for running poorly constructed legacy applications. That's what Win7 "XP mode" is for.

[techgnome]

"XP is basically dead, useful only for running poorly constructed legacy applications." --- ehhhh.... not so, unless things are different where you are. But at least around here, a great deal number of companies are still running XP (mainly due to Vista's inability to be effective in the call outenterprise market.) And when you've got thousands of client machines scattered all over the continent... rolling out something like W7 is no small undertaking. And I'd hardly call our apps "poorly constructed" and not even legacy.

-tg

[dilettante]

What sorts of things cause your applications problems under Win 6.x? I'd suspect most of them are LUA/SU issues, and tools for finding and fixing those problems have been around for a long, long time... some dating back to Win2K's release.

[TheBigB]

I've had problems with Aero and the VB6 IDE; I haven't tried the Classic skin though.
So I might try that.
VB6 is actually the least of my worries as I only use it for simple and light applications.

Java programming is actually a bigger concern as I'll be using it a lot for school next year.
Is Eclipse any good? What's the best OS to develop Java in?

As for Visual Studio I will probably go for Windows 7 as advised.
Speaking of which, how much disk space would I need for Windows 7 + Visual Studio?

Anyhow, thanks for all the input so far

[baja_yu]

You can use Eclipse or NetBeans, personally I prefer Eclipse. Both are available for most OS' so the choice is up to you. They'll work fine under Win so you don't have to switch just for that if that's what you meant.

Diskspace, 7 takes about 15 gigs I think, and VS a couple. Not 100% sure though.

[FireXtol]

@TheBigB: Disable desktop composition(or whatever it's called) in the compatibility properties. Big help!

7 requires a 16 GB volume.... Crazy! (I'd suggest doubling that for a decent minimum)

[dilettante]

Is the amount of disk required really an issue? I can only assume people are loading it up with multiple partitions holding various junk OSs that serve no real purpose (Linux, I'm looking at you).

My system is over 3 years old and it came with a 250GB drive. Disk is nearly free today: go buy a 1TB USB drive for $100 to put all those ripped DVDs on or something, sheesh.

[baja_yu]

I agree. Hard disk space is probably the cheapest resource today. Since I put together this desktop machine (originally with one 200GB hdd), I've since added one 250, one 320 and two 500GB hard drives to it.

[dilettante]

Well maybe they're using laptops. Laptop disk is still more plentiful than in the past but it is a more finite resource there.

[TheBigB]

Yeah I would've used a TB disk but the limitation is that I'm working on a notebook with a single 500GB disk.
I've got a clean setup now of Windows 7 and it's about 11GB (mind I have the pagefile on another partition and hibernation disabled).
Visual Studio seems to be about 2-3GB on my XP system.

I'm going to try to multiboot Windows 7 three times to see if I can keep the installations clean.

Thanks for all the input

[FireXtol]

16 GB is approximately 4000 tracks of MP3 audio, 4 DVD movies, 24 MP4 movies, 48 to 72 TV shows in MP4, or countless books. All of which I'm sure would be more entertaining than Aero. It's over 8 times my current Windows hive consumption.

There are millions of liters of gasoline. Drive a Hummer? Lots of coal. Better get that 1000w PSU and SLI/CrossFire setup? Lots of ocean. Spill more crude into it?

Or the entire sagas of DB, DBZ, and DBGT in rmvb!

[TheBigB]

That's what external TB drives and storage servers are for

[gep13]

My earlier comment was pointing you at something like VMWare to create the VM's, but since you are using Windows 7, you might want to think about using Windows Virtual PC.

[baja_yu]

Or VirtualBox which is free (compared to VMWare) and much more flexible (compared to MS Virtual PC).

[Nightwalker83]

I have VB6 and VB2008 installed on same PC, having WinXP Pro SP2 OS.

But VB.Net seems to be slow

Yeah, I have VB6.0 and C# 2008 installed on my Vista machine but it isn't as slow as at school when trying to load VS 2008.

[gep13]

Or VirtualBox which is free (compared to VMWare) and much more flexible (compared to MS Virtual PC).

I agree about the relative "simplistic" approach that is taken by Virtual PC, but to get you started, there is more than enough. Once you start wanting to look at taking snapshots, and better memory management, then it is time to look elsewhere.

Gary