Memoirs of a Bystander: Visual Studio.NET development on OS X w/ Parallels

A reader writes "There is an interesting blog piece entitled Memoirs of a Bystander: Visual Studio.NET development on OS X w/ Parallels. The piece does a good job talking about development for different environments then the one that you are programming in. " And with the continued rise of more and more heterogeneous environments, this will become more and more common.

Another Crappy Blog Slashvertisement

[BeeBeard]

Please stop linking to crappy blogs written by people who think they're important enough to even have "memoirs" and who think they're being oh-so-clever-and-ironic when they juxtapose the terms "memoirs" and "bystander" in their post titles.

Re:

[Mr. Underbridge]

Not to mention which, that title makes exactly 0 sense. So he nails the "pompous" and "incomprehensible" exacta.

Re:Another Crappy Blog Slashvertisement

[Otter]

Man, this guy is really taking a hammering here! In his defense:

• "Memoirs of a Bystander" is the (admittedly pretentious) blog name. The submitter misread the title bar.
• My understanding is that he's doing primarily Mac (or platform neutral) development, with a little .NET, not full-time .NET. If that's incorrect, I agree that what he's doing is silly and counterproductive.
• "Slashvertisement" seems unfair, and anyway it's a useful, well-written little piece that's completely distorted in the Slashdot blurb.

So I'd say this is just the usual case of submitter-illiterate-and-editor-barely-R'dTFA, unless the author is the submitter, in which case you sort of have a point.

Re:

[bunions]

I have to agree. I found the article interesting. Not sure why why the slashdot hive-mind has taken such an instant dislike to it.

Did I mention it will be on Amazon.com ?

[BeeBeard]

... he had a lot more to say than you.

Then perhaps you haven't heard of my soon-to-be-released autobiography, entitled Memoirs of a Slashdot Bystander: The Search for +5 Funny. Basically, it's 237 pages of filler that detail my computer hardware and software configurations, followed by another 82 pages that give interested readers insights into what I was doing between the ages of one and four. I am conservatively estimating that I will sell between 35 and 65 million copies, with a Michael Bay film based on my life (working title is "Transformers: The Movie") to follow in '07.

Huh

[SuperKendall]

I am conservatively estimating that I will sell between 35 and 65 million copies, with a Michael Bay film based on my life (working title is "Transformers: The Movie") to follow in '07.

I wouldn't have thought much of you just from looking at your user ID, but I guess you're more than meets the eye.

ehum?

[Keruo]

Why virtualize .net development?
Just run monodevelop [monodevelop.com] and do it natively on OS X

Re:ehum?

[TheGreek]

Why virtualize .net development?
Just run monodevelop and do it natively on OS X

Probably because:

1) Monodevelop is a pile of shit right now.
2) Running said pile of shit inside X11 isn't a "solution."

Do you actually develop .NET and own a Macintosh?

Re:

[m0rph3us0]

Hahah I wasted an entire week trying to get monodevelop working on OS X on Intel. (It never worked). Then I realized It would be cheaper to just buy Parallels, WinXP, and VS.NET. I estimate in less than a month the stack had paid for itself. I target mono on Linux and have found that developing in VS.NET and replicating your project files in .build (for Nant/Linux) files is the best way to go. Eventually I ran monodevelop on Linux and realized that it is a total piece of crap. Wtf is the point of an IDE tha

Re:

[Macka]

How do you know he didn't submit a bunch ?

Re:

[dantheman82]

This is something I've really wanted to look into. However, I'd be curious if someone could get a sort of benchmark comparison of VS .NET 2003 development environment in a)Boot Camp b)Crossover Mac [codeweavers.com] or c) Parallels [parallels.com]

What is the trade-off on speed/functionality with virtualization/WINE-based?

Re:

[TheGreek]

What is the trade-off on speed/functionality with virtualization/WINE-based?

If you need raw performance and don't need to run Mac OS X applications at the same time, Boot Camp is your solution.

If you need acceptable performance and need to run Mac OS X applications at the same time, use Parallels.

If you're too fucking tight to buy a copy of Windows after having purchased VS2003 already, then Crossover might work for you, but I really wouldn't do any software development under it.

Re:

[Money for Nothin']

Not to mention:

3) Monodevelop isn't the defacto industry standard, Visual Studio is. So no business worth its weight in dog crap is going to consider using it, particularly when it costs a paltry (for business) $800/seat to buy a VS .NET Professional license, versus spending that much on developer time just getting the non-standard Monodevelop app running correctly, much less compiling compatible code they can ship as a professionally-produced product.

My guess is that the GP is still in college and has nev

eclipse would be better

[sentientbrendan]

As the above poster mentioned, monodevelop is actually nowhere near being usable for .NET development. This goes doubly so on a mac.

Personally, I don't really understand why the community is spending so much effort on putting together another IDE for linux, when several already exist and could be easily extended to work for mono development.

The most obvious environment would be eclipse, which is highly extensible. A well written plugin for eclipse would do wonders for the mono community. I suspect that the

Re:

[TheGreek]

Other than this idiot with his blog. Who would really want to?

I prefer Mac OS X for most things, but I pay the bills with .NET. Only now with Parallels and/or Boot Camp do I not have to have multiple computers to accomplish both tasks.

Re:

[bunions]

> And this is different from visual .net 2005 how?

Are you serious? Visual Studio is right at the top, as far as IDEs go. It's got it's warts just like everything else (Why is the goddamn configuration dialog not resizeable?!? arrgh) but overall it's very well-polished.

Re:

[AaronBrethorst]

Which configuration dialog? Do you mean Tools.Options? If so, I hate its lack of resizability too (and I own it, incidentally). I'm looking into making it a little bigger, but resizability probably won't happen any time soon :(

Re:

[bunions]

> Just goes to show the culture of mediocrity that symbolize the Microsoft era of computer science.

You forgot to use a '$' instead of the 's' in microsoft. You might also want to look into replacing the 'c' with three 'k's.

If you're just one of those guys who hates IDEs, ok, fine, whatever. Otherwise, I'm interested in hearing what IDEs you feel are better than VS, which must surely be a very long list due to just how badly VS sucks, right?

Re:

[bunions]

> Which IDEs have you used on a day to day basis except visual?

Idea mostly, Eclipse for the oddball languages that no one writes an IDE for. I used KDevelop for a while, and Kylix a while back.

As for your assessment of VS, I think you're loopy, especially the comment about going downhill since 5 - that's just crazy. 5 was a complete crapfest. Even the hardcore linux nerds I know admit that VS7 is very good at what it does.

Re:

[MORB]

I didn't say "it been going downhill since 5", I said "it's going downhill".

7 was good for a lot of things, but you could already feel the performance starting going down the drain. Nothing critical yet, but there's clearly an architectural change that wasn't that good happening from 6 to 7.

Then comes 2005. As far as C++ is concerned, it brought basically two things: improving the data breakpoint stuff so that you don't have to bypass their context thingy that never seemes to work and just write "*(long*)0x

Re:

[bunions]

> 7 was good for a lot of things, but you could already feel the performance starting going down the drain. Nothing critical yet, but there's clearly an architectural change that wasn't that good happening from 6 to 7.

Well, yeah, 7 needs more CPU than 6. But they're separated by ... what? 5 years? And it does far more than 6 ever did. This is to be expected.

> Then comes 2005. As far as C++ is concerned, it brought basically two things: improving the data breakpoint stuff so that you don't have to b

Re:

[MORB]

Well, yeah, 7 needs more CPU than 6. But they're separated by ... what? 5 years? And it does far more than 6 ever did. This is to be expected.

What does the number of years separating two versions have with the cpu consumption?
And what did 7 do that 6 didn't do that could justify using more CPU?

By the time you have projects large enough to start choking VS, most of your other IDEs will have choked as well, unless they don't support the inspection necessary to support things like intellisense or refactorings.

Re:

[bunions]

> Where are the C++ refactorings? I must have missed them.

Are there any IDEs that offer nontrivial c++ refactorings?

> And intellisense doesn't work most of the time.[...] Visual decide to do it at any random time and becomes unavailable for a few minutes when it does it

You're so far off from my experience and the experience of everyone I know that I don't know what to say. It's like you're talking about a completely different application.

Re:

[MORB]

> Are there any IDEs that offer nontrivial c++ refactorings?

Does visual even offer trivial refactorings?

And what's with using the excuse of what the concurrence does or doesn't do to justify that this expensive product doesn't do it anyway? That's what I was on about regarding mediocrity. And I should remind you that most other IDEs are free. Visual is not by any stretch, so why would they get off the hook because some free competitor doesn't do something either?

This "no one else does XXX, so why bother"

Re:

[MORB]

The version I'm talking about, the one I (and most of my co-workers) dislike is the professional edition, not the free one. You know, the one that the company I work for had to spend some big bucks on (given that we are around 20 C++ coders only on the project I'm part of, with two other projects in development in house).

This is getting hilarious. First, "B... b... b... but free ides don't do better", then "B... b... b... but there is a free version of visual studio for hobbyists, so it's free and therefore

Re:

[JCMay]

It's been my experience (VS.NET 2003) that if Intellisense doesn't work, it's because you've got a syntax error in your code and the parser can't make sense of it.

Re:

[bcat24]

I couldn't disagree more. The Visual Studio 2005 IDE is the best one on the market, IMO. I've never had a problem with it freezing up, or anything like that. It can be a bit of a memory hog sometimes, but it's not too bad for an app of its size. Don't bash Microsoft for the sake of bashing Microsoft. Sometimes, very rarely, they put together a really nice piece of software. The VS IDE is one of the greatest.

Re:

[killjoe]

I think VS2005 sucks donkey balls. Sure they finally added some refactoring support (why the fuck did it take them two years??) and a half decent build system but it still doesn't hold a candle to eclipse. Idea is even better. Netbeans beta is also vastly superior.

VS is being leapfrogged again. It will stay the worst of the big four for the next two years when MS will make an half hearted effort to integrate some of the features of eclipse.

Re:

[bunions]

> Idea is even better

I agree, but then Idea has the luxury of being Java-only. And it scales worse than VS does - truly large projects make it unusable. But I love me some Idea. Saves me probably an hour a day, every day.

Re:

[killjoe]

I would love it if they made IDEA work with ruby or python. They really need to support more languages. In the mean time there is always jpython and jruby.

Re:

[bunions]

They already make a refactoring plugin for VS C#, so I'm pullin' for a C# Idea.

Idea -is- actually a very good javascript editor tho, just fyi. Kind of overkill, but I'm used to the keybindings.

Re:

[killjoe]

Why bother with C# if you already have java? I mean that most sincerely. There is not that much difference between them. Why pick one over the other.

At least ruby and python give you other ways of working (monkey patching, multiple inheritance, mix-ins, continuations, etc.)

Re:

[bunions]

Delegates. Decent GUI performance. The ability to deploy apps without having my users jump through "do you have a supported JVM" hoops. And currently, the ability to read & write excel files without bringing in Third Party Tools Of Dubious Quality.

Re:

[killjoe]

"Delegates."

YOu need them in C# and .NET not so much in java.

"Decent GUI performance. "

Both SWT and Swing have excellent performance on windows. Along with SWT you can also use wxwindows, fltk, fox, and even QT or GTK if you want. All native widgets, all with the same if not better performance then .NET.

"The ability to deploy apps without having my users jump through "do you have a supported JVM" hoops."

You will still need to deploy .NET 2.0 and soon 3.0 because most machines don't have 2.0 installed. Same

Re:

[bunions]

> YOu need them in C# and .NET not so much in java.

No, I need delegates in Java. I am so goddamn tired of writing these goddamn verbose interface declarations then writing an implementation of the interface. Delegates/function pointers are so much easier.

> Both SWT and Swing have excellent performance on windows.

That's hilarious. SWT is ok, Swing is awful. The license for Qt is insanely expensive, GTK looks like ass. Dunno about the rest.

> You will still need to deploy .NET 2.0

not if you only ta

Re:

[killjoe]

"That's hilarious. SWT is ok, Swing is awful. The license for Qt is insanely expensive, GTK looks like ass. Dunno about the rest."

What do you mean swing is aweful? Clearly you haven't used it in the past year. Look at the eclipse on swing project, it's a rewrite of eclipse using swing and it's just as fast as SWT. Swing has come a long way.

"not if you only target 1.1"

If you target java 1.4 or below you are pretty much guaranteed that all JVMs that came out in the last decade are compatible. Besides I just

Re:

[bunions]

> What do you mean swing is aweful? Clearly you haven't used it in the past year.

If you're reaching down into Java2D to do complex rendering, which is what I'm doing, Swing performance was very poor. Now, maybe there's 1.5-specific techniques that will speed things up, but the code I wrote for 1.4.2 doesn't run significantly faster in 1.5.

> If you target java 1.4 or below you are pretty much guaranteed that all JVMs that came out in the last decade are compatible

Yeah, right. Every commercial java ap

Re:

[bunions]

> Seriously, one day I'll have to capture a video of one of my working session with that thing. But then again, people like you will explain me that whatever happens is somehow my fault.

Probably. Because I think I've seen VS7 crash maybe twice. And because all of my coworkers and pretty much everyone I talk to online, from total linux nerd to VB hackers, all agree that whatever MS's other failings, VS7 is pretty sweet. Given that, yeah, I would say that whatever problems VS7 is causing you are probab

Re:

[kv9]

pretty much everyone I talk to online, from total linux nerd to VB hackers, all agree that whatever MS's other failings, VS7 is pretty sweet.

that's probably the most wretched piece of blasphemy i've ever seen coming out of a slashdotter's (slashbot's? don't want to offend) greasy little fingers.

/goes to wash eyeballs

Re:

[AaronBrethorst]

Please do. I'd love to get the usability feedback you have on VS. Send any gripes you have to abreth [at] microsoft [dot] com.

Re:

[dunkelfalke]

there are actually more c# ides. borland delphi 2006 for example, or sharpdevelop

Even simpler

[NineNine]

Why not get a PC for $25 at your local thrift store and use a $100 copy of Windows? I mean really, it's like going around your ass to get to your elbow. This is just dumb. If you're developing for Windows, you have to be a real masochist to try to do it on another platform, especially when you can use any ol' PC that you find laying around. It's not like a Windows PC is exotic or hard to find or expensive.

Re:

[Cereal Box]

I don't know about using a $25 PC to do development work, but you're mostly right.

I mean, it sounds to me like this guy has to deal with Windows for at least eight hours of his day if that's what he uses to do development work. So why not get a development PC and use Remote Desktop (yes, a client exists for Mac)? The GUI is actually very responsive, and seeing as how he's complaining about Parallels refreshing the entire desktop every time a character is typed, I think using a PC via Remote Desktop will w

Re:

[NickFitz]

...seeing as how he's complaining about Parallels refreshing the entire desktop every time a character is typed, I think using a PC via Remote Desktop will win performance-wise quite easily.

Actually, I think that's something to do with Visual Studio. I've noticed exactly the same thing when using Visual Studio over Remote Desktop Connection via a VPN on an old slow machine (at my end): VS appears to redraw the entire contents of the editor window for every keystroke.

Also note that he only perceived

Re:

[wootest]

Also note that he only perceived that phenomenon when Quartz Debug was running: that's a Mac Developer Tools utility that intercepts every API call related to display rendering and logs it to a GUI. Naturally it slows things down considerably, but it's nothing to do with Parallels exhibiting a problem in performance.

Quartz Debug does slow things down, but he didn't use it to see how fast it was but *which parts of the screen are being redrawn*.

I'll have to agree with the solution. I thrive in Mac OS X

Re:

[Money for Nothin']

Actually, I think that's something to do with Visual Studio. I've noticed exactly the same thing when using Visual Studio over Remote Desktop Connection via a VPN on an old slow machine (at my end): VS appears to redraw the entire contents of the editor window for every keystroke.

I've noticed this too. In fact, with VS2k3, I had a problem where after several hours, text would start getting mangled in the graphical blitting in the text area. It was as though VS2k3 was using DirectDraw to render the textbox

Re:

[Bluesman]

Because nobody at Starbucks is going to be impressed by a thrift-store PC. This guy has memoirs to write. You can't write memoirs on a cheap PC. Sheesh.

Re:

[mollymoo]

This is just dumb. If you're developing for Windows, you have to be a real masochist to try to do it on another platform, especially when you can use any ol' PC that you find laying around.

He's not developing for Windows on another platform, for any useful definition of 'platform' (or for any useful definition of 'environment', as it was described in the summary). He's developing for Windows on ... Windows XP. Running on an x86 box. I'm really not sure what's supposed to be so newsworthy about someone r

Re:

[0racle]

Because Mono doesn't support all of the .Net stuff? Because he likes Visual Studio? Because all the cool kids are? Because he wants to?

Re:

[Tronster]

Thank you for the link. I hadn't heard of "Monodevelop". It looks promising. If they get to the point of making a native Mac installer, I will take it for a spin.

Regarding .NET development, if he's like me... it's not about targeting the .NET platform, but creating software to run on Windows that leverage .NET. I'm a developer on the MS platform, and a month ago just bought my first laptop, a 17" MacBook Pro. Right now I'm doing the same type of stuff as "Bystander" but hope in a few months I'll have f

Um... huh?

[truthsearch]

The piece does a good job talking about development for different environments then the one that you are programming in.

No, he's developing .NET apps using Windows. His database is SQL Server. He doesn't want to use Mono. So he's almost definitely developing for Windows. Mac apps have far better native options for development.

The only tip someone might find useful in this blog post is his informal test of memory settings in Parallels.

Geee....

[Savage-Rabbit]

No, he's developing .NET apps using Windows. His database is SQL Server. He doesn't want to use Mono. So he's almost definitely developing for Windows. Mac apps have far better native options for development.

The only tip someone might find useful in this blog post is his informal test of memory settings in Parallels.

That's a bit harsh. I do the exact same thing as this guy does. I Prefer working with OS.X or failing that Linux as a Desktop OS to working with Windows and I sometimes develop for OS.X and Linux in my spare time using native tools. However at work I also have to use Windows for development purposes as well as for testing and for Windows only apps so I have solved the problem with Parallels and it suits me just fine for all sorts of reasons. For one thing I don't have to deal with the headache of having to juggle a Windows laptop for work as well as a the Mac because Parallels enables me to cram the whole lot, Windows, OS.X and all the devel tools onto my MacBook and a pint sized external drive for the Parallels image files I am not using at the moment. At home I have a more powerful development system built on the same concept but running VMWare for doing stuff my MBP and Parallels can't handle but unfortunately my employer is not that progressive and does everything via test systems managed by the IT department through an inflexible bureaucracy. Fortunately I am usually able to quickly set up a pre built Linux/Windows/Unix testing/development environment on my Mac and get a whole pile of work done in the time it takes the overworked guys in the IT department to find a machine and get a test environment up and running. Basically, thanks to Parallels, I can whip up a prebuilt instance of any operating system that runs on an Intel processor with in a matter of minutes without having to endure Windows as my primary Desktop OS and all this without ever rebooting anything other than a VM, which from my point of view is paradise. I'm not saying this is something every developer should do but this approach has it's advantages.

Re:Geee....

[truthsearch]

Oh, I use Parallels too. But I still see no value in the blog post. Plus the statement in the summary that this blog post gives insight to cross-platform development is just silly. He's developing inside a Windows environment to create Windows applications.

Re:

[Money for Nothin']

Visual Studio on Windows in Parallels on OSX? You're living my dream! Where's your Kool-Aid, and do you mind if I take a swig? :-)

(Seriously, if I had the money, I'd get myself a MacBook and do the same thing. Alas, I will probably wait until my Toshiba finally dies...)

I got lost in time

[OneSmartFellow]

I now work from home and I didn't have a company provided laptop anymore, so instead of upgrading an old desktop, I decided to splurge. The one hitch in my plan was the fact that I still did a fair amount of .NET development. Sure, there is Mono for OSX, but that's a far cry from Visual Studio.NET on Windows XP. Clearly, I would need a solution that allows me to run Windows XP on my MacBook Pro.

Too many tense changes in one paragraph. Somebody please teach this guy how to compose.

Lame and pointless

[misleb]

A good job of talking about developing for different environments?? The guy ran Paralells. The article had almost nothing to do with developing anything. He just happened to be running VS.NET in virtualization. Big f'n deal. Lame and pointless.

-matthew

Re:

[LWATCDR]

The point is that Virtualization is a current buzzword. If you want to hip and with it then you need to start thinking Web 2.0! Develop your app using AJAX under a virtualized environment!
Yea it is lame. If he was using QT, Java, or Mono to develop his application and set up Windows and Linux testing environments under parallels then it would be interesting.

MacBook & Parallels is a good combination...

[__aaclcg7560]

Right now, as I post this comment from my sexy black MacBook, I'm working from home using a Parallels VM with Windows 2000 (no activation issues) and all my job related applications. It's really nice as I wait for incoming help desk tickets to arrive while playing around with my typical Mac applications without having to reboot the system. As added job security, I'm considered to be a "Mac Guru (TM)" since I'm the only person who in my office who owns a Mac. Seriously, you can't go wrong with a Mac! :P

Re:MacBook & Parallels is a good combination..

[__aaclcg7560]

Because the company develops software for the Mac but the entire infrastructure is PC-centric and all the Mac support is outsourced. So instead of telling the user to talk to the outside vendor (which frustrates Mac users to no end), I'll talk to them first to determine the best approach to the problem. Mac-centric customer service is a useful job skill.

A summary

[jesuscyborg]

Here's a breakdown by paragraph FTFA:

• I too, decided to get trendy and buy a mac notebook. The catch is I really like the VS.NET IDE and don't want to use Mono. Therefore, I must run XP on my Mac on top of OS X
• No Virtual PC for Intel macs
• Now we have Parallels desktop instead. I am using it.
• I could have used Bootcamp, but I don't like to reboot...
• I have a smaller macbook, with lesser graphics power. I upgraded the ram to 2gb
• I like Paralells and use it everday. I essentially run all my programs in

Zzzzzzzz....The seamonkey has my money...zzzz...

[BeeBeard]

If even the breakdown is that drawn out and boring, then what chance do we have of even making it through the article?

Re:A summary

[Paradise Pete]

IANAW

Walrus?

Re:

[ConceptJunkie]

Weenie?

Re:

[g1zmo]

I am the walrus.

Re:

[XoXus]

No, I'm Spar... err, Walrus!

Re:

[IntergalacticWalrus]

I am the walrus.

No, I am.

Re:

[ConceptJunkie]

Here's another clue for you all: The Walrus was Paul.

"No you're not", said Little Nikita.

You know, it's sad when I'm quoting from music that came out before most of us were born.

Re:

[Dun Malg]

Why can't the virtual XP use OS X swapping instead of virtual virtual memory?

Did he actually ask this? Does he not understand how virtualization works?

I found the article very useful

[MoonFacedAssassin]

I'm going out on a limb here and stating that I like the article and found it very useful and informative. There are plenty of .NET developers in this world and I am one of them. I also love Mac OSX and it is great to see a semi-detailed and informative account of someone who set up the very environment I have been researching as a possible development platform. A large part of the applications the author uses on OSX and Windows is exactly what I would be using in the same setup.

It will be very beneficial to me when I finally get this platform set up to test the memory allocation in the manner the author describes, and assuming I don't take the plunge and get a Mac Pro, 2GB RAM will be the amount of RAM I choose for the Macbook Pro. After reading the article I can now purchase a new Mac and know that I can do everything I'm wanting.

Re:

[Dun Malg]

I'm going out on a limb here and stating that I like the article and found it very useful and informative. There are plenty of .NET developers in this world and I am one of them. I also love Mac OSX and it is great to see a semi-detailed and informative account of someone who set up the very environment I have been researching as a possible development platform. A large part of the applications the author uses on OSX and Windows is exactly what I would be using in the same setup. It will be very beneficial

Re:

[MoonFacedAssassin]

Not everyone is as perfect as you I suppose. I suppose Herman Melville should've just said "There's a captain after a whale, everyone dies except the narrator." for Moby Dick instead of writing the thousands of long, boring paragraphs. Now I'm no Herman Melville, of course, but it must be very rewarding to you to contradict and call anyone out who puts details into their posts. Seems you have something to say on many people's posts with your 4300+ comments and/or trolling. You deserve a medal.

"Rise"??!?

[Mr. No Skills]

And with the continued rise of more and more heterogeneous environments, this will become more and more common.

Wouldn't "resurrection" be more appropriate than "rise"? We used to keep way more OSes running at once than we do now.

I have been doing this for about a month.

[C. Alan]

My day job is as a Civil Engineer. However, I do a bit of programming on the side, mainly as a hobby.

About a month ago I went ahead and purchased a 20" Imac for use in my home. My wife uses it during the day for email and web browsing, and in the evening, I run Parallels with windows XP to use Autocad and Visual Basic .net Express during the evenings.

Typically, when I am runing Parallels, I don't have a lot of apps open in OSX, so my XP runs quite well with just 512mb of my 2gbs of memory allicated to it.

virtual pc

[minus_273]

ove been using virtual pc and win 2k like this on my g4 a while now. It works reasonably well.

Missing some exposition

[SuperKendall]

Just when it got a little interesting, describing how he would up first trying 768MB of memory for the VM but ending up at 800MB, it lacked explanation as to why.

I currently have Parallels set to 768MB, I would have liked to see his reasoning for the tweak to 800MB.

Welcome to 7 years ago!

[Cthefuture]

I was doing this back in 1998/99 on the VMware beta. I ran Linux as my primary OS (for utility and security) but my job required me to develop mostly Windows software which I did using the regular Microsoft tools (Visual Studio) in VMware/Windows.

And I still do that to this day. 99% of the applications I develop are cross platform Linux/Mac/Windows and VMware lets me do most of that on the same machine. I do still have to use my PPC Mac some but eventually I'll either be running OSX in VMware or similar

Then is not the same as than

[Builder]

AAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!

It does to me.

[Penguinisto]

As a guy who once worked in a VS.NET/X-Tools shop (the app had both a Win32 and a Mac version), it's kind of cool to see someone using both IDE's on one box w/o having to reboot to switch between 'em.

The fact that it works on Parallels fairly nicely means that you no longer need to buy two machines for the Mac guys (just make sure there's enough RAM in there), and that you can do porting in either direction w/o all the wasted time in transferring files...

/P

Re:It does to me.

[misleb]

As a guy who once worked in a VS.NET/X-Tools shop (the app had both a Win32 and a Mac version), it's kind of cool to see someone using both IDE's on one box w/o having to reboot to switch between 'em.

Running 2 IDEs isn't the challenge. Parallels has been out for a while and now there is VMWare Beta. I'd be surprised if you COULDN'T run VS.NET in virtualization.

I'd actually be interested in hearing how you managed to get a project to build in both XCode and VS.NET. I mean, just the lanaguage barrier alone would be a problem. I mean, you have Objective-C/Java for XCode and C++/C#/VB in VS.NET. Were they different code bases, or what? That is the kind of thing I wish this article talked about. Just running Parallels on a MacBook is uninteresting.

-matthew

Re:

[Penguinisto]

Lots and lots of manual translation for the ugly parts - IIRC, the main File I/O portions were almost totally unrecognizeable between the two. I mostly worked on docs, SDK tuning and plugins, so most of what I did was drop-easy in translation. It also helped that we used Qt to handle nearly all the gruntwork in the UI, so almost everything in that portion was pretty translateable, with little to no need to porting effort.

BTW - you can use straight-up C/C++ w/ only a little setup in both IDE's (yes, Xcode

Re:

[misleb]

BTW - you can use straight-up C/C++ w/ only a little setup in both IDE's (yes, Xcode too) - makes things a whole lot easier. :)

Ah, QT. So the app wasn't native Cocoa. Shame, really. Mind if I ask what app this was/is? Would I know it?

-matthew

Re:

[Penguinisto]

Sure - it's called DAZ|Studio [daz3d.com]; a 3d hobbyist's compositing and basic rendering tool. The base is free (as in beer), and the plugins are pretty cheap (quite a few of those are free as well).

HTH,

/P

Re:

[mrchaotica]

I mean, just the lanaguage barrier alone would be a problem. I mean, you have Objective-C/Java for XCode and C++/C#/VB in VS.NET. Were they different code bases, or what?

C++ works everywhere (but I'd be very interested to hear what GUI toolkit he was using).

Also, by the way, aren't encapsulation and modularity two of the first things a CS student learns? It seems reasonable to me that he could have written the core of the program in cross-platform C++ and then have written two interfaces, one in Cocoa and

Re:

[misleb]

Also, by the way, aren't encapsulation and modularity two of the first things a CS student learns? It seems reasonable to me that he could have written the core of the program in cross-platform C++ and then have written two interfaces, one in Cocoa and one in .NET.

Sounds like they used QT. So it was all C++. As an OSX user though, i'd probably rather a program come with a native Objective-C/Interface Builder GUI and just use a common C++ core like you say. Although I don't know how well Objective-C interf

Re:

[laffer1]

Apple added Objective C++ support to OS X years ago. There are some issues, but there are ways to integrate the code. Consult ADC for more information.

Re:

[aztracker1]

Yes, you can run Visual Studio .Net (2003 and 2005) in paralels and in vmware (with XP). As for cross-platform apps, using this tool, probably easiest to use MVC (Model, View, Controller) with .Net and winforms on windows, mono + gtk# in linux, and mono + cocoa# in mac. That's if you want to use VS.Net as a base for the windows side. It's not a bad development model, and mono is breaking a lot of ground in the various distros now.

Running Ubuntu 6.06 as my main desktop with vmware player setup for XP.

Re:

[evil_Tak]

Or you could use mono + gtk# on windows, mono + gtk# on gnu/linux, and mono + gtk# on mac.

Re:

[aztracker1]

Yeah if I wanted something that looked non-native on windows, and osx (both of which have far more market share than linux).

Re:

[misleb]

Yes, you can run Visual Studio .Net (2003 and 2005) in paralels and in vmware (with XP). As for cross-platform apps, using this tool, probably easiest to use MVC (Model, View, Controller) with .Net and winforms on windows, mono + gtk# in linux, and mono + cocoa# in mac. That's if you want to use VS.Net as a base for the windows side. It's not a bad development model, and mono is breaking a lot of ground in the various distros now.

I wish more developers would take a very modulular MVC approach when doing

Re:

[aztracker1]

Yeah, "Cross Platform .Net Development" [amazon.com] is actually a good primer on this... the book isn't very in depth, but gives some good ideas to think about in general with cross platform dev... I'm partial to .Net myself...

Re:

[Brandybuck]

Both IDE's support C++. I'm doing crossplatform development with Qt/C++ on Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and Unix. No problemo. I've had a few clients I had to rescue because they believed that Microsoft tripe that .NET was crossplatform.

Re:

[torqer]

Not to me, as well.

Let's take it apart

Interesting blog peice... Oxymoron?

Entitled: Memoirs of a Bystander: Visual Studio.NET development on OS X w/ Parallels. Well, perhaps this is meaningful to someone who is a programmer. Pretty much incoherent to everyone else.

The piece does a good job talking about development for different environments then the one that you are programming in.

I think this would start to make sense if the THEN replaced a THAN.

And with the continued rise of more and more h

Re:

[misleb]

Entitled: Memoirs of a Bystander: Visual Studio.NET development on OS X w/ Parallels. Well, perhaps this is meaningful to someone who is a programmer. Pretty much incoherent to everyone else.

Nope, no meaning to programmers either. Especially since the article had nothing to do with programming. The fact that he was running VS.NET was actually inconsequential. It could have been any demaning Windows applications that he just had to run on his Mac...

-matthew

Re:

[bunions]

> Java is first class citizen for Apple

Sure it is. Unless you want to run 1.5 on 10.3, in which case you're SOL.

'first class citizen' my butt.

Re:

[bunions]

> Last time i check "Apple" was readying the Java 6

Great. How does that help me with older java apps that require 1.4?

> i don't remember seeing a .Net page in apple.com or a mention of a moron who run windows in apple to develop software.

That is a complete nonsequiter. I was talking about Java, not .net.

Re:

[Octorian]

First of all, you can run Java 1.4 apps under Java 1.5 or 1.6.

Secondly, Apple does install Java in a way that can host multiple versions:

$ ls -l /usr/bin/java
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 77 Apr 24 2006 /usr/bin/java@ -> /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versio ns/CurrentJDK/Commands/java
$ cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versio ns
$ ls
1.3@ 1.4@ 1.5@ A/ CurrentJDK@
1.3.1/ 1.4.2/ 1.5.0/ Current@

Happy?

Re:

[bunions]

> Happy?

No, because my problem was that I need to run 1.5 apps on OS 10.3, not that I needed to run 1.4 apps under a 1.5 JVM.

Re:

[radarsat1]

> Happy?

No, because my problem was that I need to run 1.5 apps on OS 10.3, not that I needed to run 1.4 apps under a 1.5 JVM.

Write once! Run anywhere! Woohoo!!!

Re:

[bunions]

Oh, I see. I said:

> Great. How does that help me with older java apps that require 1.4?

when I should have said

> Great. How does that help me run java 1.5 apps on OS 10.3?

Sorry, I seem to have gotten a little confused there.

Re:

[Octorian]

Ahh, that is one annoying problem with Apple that you just have to get used to. As soon as they release MacOS 10.[x], they soon forget that 10.[x-1] even existed, and cease to care about supporting it. On the bright side, however, 10.4 finally stabilized a lot of the system interfaces. As such, 10.5 may not hurt 10.4 as much as 10.4 hurt 10.3.