Visual Studio 2010 has not made a good first impression.
It took about a day to install. I was using the Visual Studio Ultimate Web Installer and much of the time was spent downloading bits. I’m sure it would have been faster had I started with a DVD. Also, I wasn’t giving the install my full attention. I was doing my regular work on one machine while installing VS 2010 on a remote machine. I would connect to the remote machine now and then to check on the progress. I don’t know exactly how long it took, but it was the majority of a day.
When I first started Visual Studio 2010, it took about half an hour to write my first “hello world” example. When I fired up VS 2010, I spent several minutes staring at a dialog that said “Microsoft Visual Studio is loading user settings. This may take a few minutes.” Seven minutes after launching Visual Studio, the application went away and my machine rebooted. I started Visual Studio again, started a C# console application, inserted a WriteLine statement, and compiled. Total elapsed time: 27 minutes.
I closed Visual Studio and did some more work. Later I came back and opened Visual Studio to write “hello world” again. Time from starting Visual Studio to compiling: 2 minutes 50 seconds.
Now I realize that start-up time isn’t everything. Most users will start Visual Studio and keep it up for hours or days. And that’s who Visual Studio is intended to serve. It’s not meant to be something you fire up for quick jobs.
Visual Studio 2010 is huge. The installation DVD is 2.3 GB. The source code for VS 2010 contains about 1,500,000 files and takes Microsoft 61 hours to build according to Phil Haack. (He said he didn’t know how many machines the build process uses.) Phil Haack also said that the release of VS 2010 was delayed because the feedback from testers was that the product was too slow. If the released product is faster, the betas must have been intolerably slow.
Update: I installed the Express version of VS 2010 on another computer and have been using it regularly. It is much faster, and pleasant to use. Maybe there’s something about the Ultimate edition (TFS integration?) that slows it down.
Related posts:
Moore’s law and software bloat
Better tools, less productivity?
You do pay for what you don’t use
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 89 comments… read them below or add one }
Mark Richman 04.22.10 at 09:02
I’ve abandoned the Microsoft platform for all new projects. I am down to one ASP.NET 3.5 app on VS2008. Everything new is Rails.
Rene Silva 04.22.10 at 09:49
Wow, I read a lot of reviews about VS2010 slowness. I thought they could actually solve this problem once they released it :S.
John 04.22.10 at 10:03
Rene: Maybe it’s snappy once it warms up. All I know is that initial use is slow. I haven’t used it to do any real work yet.
Mark Richman 04.22.10 at 10:12
I’m guessing part of the performance issue is that they likely replaced many internal moving parts with managed code (perhaps a step towards supporting 64-bit or other platforms). It also seems that parts of the UI are now rendered via WPF. That would also slow it down considerably.
I’m quite content with the performance of TextMate on my 8-core Mac Pro
Jeffery Zhang 04.22.10 at 12:06
I think you’ll find it snappier once you warm it up. I just timed VS 2010 Ultimate starting up on my machine (Q6600 2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, 80GB Intel SSD) and it takes 4.2 seconds to startup.
Aaron Evans 04.22.10 at 14:25
You’re not using Visual Studio on a 32 bit processor are you? There’s an address space limitation around 4 billion, which is way too little memory.
Gene 04.22.10 at 17:24
Works well on my old Pentium D Gateway and my newer machines. There is a lot of disk i/o and the number of settings is outrageous, which might account for the long setup time. I’ve set mine up for C++ and it was equivalent when upgrading/compiling some VS 2008 projects. I’d give it a little while. It will probably smooth out.
Carsten 04.22.10 at 22:25
Well – I guess you all should spend some time inside VS2010.
Maybe the start-up is slower (I don’t think the first start after install is a fair choice ….) but once inside it’s on my machine as fast (if not faster) than VS2008.
It’s interesting to see this discussion every time a new version ships – I can remember the same “it’s plain bad” – rants when 2005 and 2008 came out – after some weeks nobody wanted to go back.
I use VS2010 since beta2 and I can say that it’s my favorite IDE on my machine right now (I got everthing from 2003 to 2010, and some other) – I just like the look and (ok I’m a geek) I really like the “there’s a app … err … I mean extension … for everything” thing
)
Wedge 04.22.10 at 22:36
The “64 hours to build” figure is a bit misleading, that’s really how long it takes to sign the final build. The amount of time it takes to compile all the source files is considerably less by an order of magnitude.
Josh 04.23.10 at 09:31
I cannot comment about the speed of VS 2010. I have just started using it and have not noticed any speed issues (running on a 32-bit dual core laptop). One thing I will say about the down load time, since you downloaded Ultimate you got some pretty huge stuff , like Team Foundation Server, along with the IDE. Earlier in the week I went to the local Microsoft launch around VS 2010 and drank the Kool Aid. And the Kool Aid was good. Especially the TFS and testing tools they have integrated. Overkill for one man projects but I think everyone there who works on big projects was excited about the new functionality.
John 04.23.10 at 09:42
I don’t want to come across too negative about VS 2010. My initial experience was terrible, but there could be numerous reasons why my experience was so bad. Maybe there was a problem with Windows, or the anti-virus software my employer requires, etc. I may appreciate the tool once I have more experience with it.
But I still say it’s a pig, in the sense of being large and slow. The post title comes from something I read recently saying Emacs is a pig because it’s so large and slow. And yet the Emacs download 37 MB and the application opens in a second or two.
Chris Smith 05.02.10 at 03:20
It is definitely a pig. My late-2009 dual-core 64-bit laptop has problems with it in daily use, as does my Quad core workstation in the office. Even navigating through source files. If you install resharper on top, I consider it to be unuseable. Considering I occasionally use Eclipse and Vim, Eclipse is an order of magnitude faster than VS2010 now. Vim is 2 orders of magnitude faster than VS2010!
Carsten 05.02.10 at 22:09
Strange – first think I did was install Resharper on top of it and on my rigs (not close to end 2009 – more like end 2007 workstation and not-nearly high-end dual-core laptop) both seem to work at least as good on VS2010 as on VS2008.
Maybe my solutions are to small or something …
Bruce 05.07.10 at 09:01
Well, I have decided that we will be using Visual Studio 2010 here but it does run a lot slower than even 2005. I have times when working with the ajaxcontroltoolkit where the machine just seems to freeze. I’m now running Free Mem just so when the machine bogs down I can empty the memory out a bit and continue. We really shouldn’t have to do all of that to get work done but I don’t want to wait for 30 seconds for intellisense to kick in.
Valamas 05.25.10 at 16:30
Hi John,
Check that your visual studio settings file is not huge.
I.e. CurrentSettings.vssettings.
It should be about 1 meg. Mine had grow to 40 megs and I had the same slow startup problem as you. This is caused by vs2010 migrating vs2008 settings and that there must also be a bug with that.
To fix. Dont import vs2008 settings after starting up vs2010 for the first time. Also, to fix, you can goto Tools/Import export settings and reset your settings to a default like “C# Development environment”.
Cheers,
Valamas
Valamas 05.26.10 at 21:19
Some tips…
If seeing “Visual Studio is loading user settings” for a long time. Find devenv in task manager and kill it. Visual Studio will hopefully just open on the second attempt.
Tip: Run with High Priority
(Path may differ from yours).
I edit my visual studio shortcut and change the TARGET to:
C:\WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe /c start “runhigh” /high “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe” /nosplash
cheers,
Valamas
Valamas 05.27.10 at 01:23
In addition, copy the high priority command to notepad, replace the double quotes with proper double quotes before applying to your shortcut target box.
Mau 07.01.10 at 04:42
You need a new PC, or to learn to do performance maintenance on yours. Seriously. It works fine on my desktop and *first* startup is 3-4 seconds.
John 07.01.10 at 08:20
Mau: I have gotten a new PC since I wrote this post. My new hardware is not much better, but Visual Studio does run faster. However, it’s still not as snappy as Visual Studio 2008.
Randall 08.11.10 at 08:02
Mine starts fast, but the compile times are over twice as long. A project that took 50 seconds to build now takes over 2 minutes. Another programmer at my company did a fresh install (he did not have an old version on his machine), and he has the same slow compile times.
BrianC 08.24.10 at 11:49
I use VS2010 Professional on a daily basis to maintain our company’s website. Not only is it slow, but under Windows 7, the slowness is magnified. I run Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, dual-core Intel @ 2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, 250GB hard drive. I just recently turned of all visual enhancements in Windows 7 and changed to the classic theme just to get acceptable performance out of it. I see the same slow compile times, and when opening the ASP.NET Configuration Tool, I usually lock my machine and go get a cup of coffee. Not to mention the fact that in the last week, I have had sporadic freezes in VS2010 to the point that I have to reboot my machine. I had previously worked with VS2008 and am sorry I convinced my company to upgrade my installation and as a result the code for our site.
Nick D 09.01.10 at 18:57
VS Express 2010 is definitely inferior to VS Express 2008
Compiling is slower
Customisation of menus no longer has drag & drop (WTF?!)
General responsiveness of the IDE is slower
You can now drag tabs off the tab bar totally – what use is this, I do it by accident *all the time*
A step backwards in one of the few things Microsoft did well – IDE’s – has MS become a company that no longer cares? Fix it please – Rails is calling….
Steven Hoff 09.03.10 at 16:44
I couldn’t agree more. Quad core- 4 gigs ram, windows7 64 and VS2010 makes me feel like I’m developing in slow motion.
HHick123 09.10.10 at 06:35
For everyone, who ever develloped in Delphi 6 or Delphi 2006 (probably not for those with Delphi 2005, which had similar startup-problems like VS2010) Visual Studio 2010 definitly is a big step backwards!!
Microsoft is approximately 5 to 10 years behind…
They are continously improving (from version to version), but it will take decades to get back to a “Rapid Quality Application Devellopment” paradigma for professional programmers (as we had with Delphi 6 VCL)….
Paul L 09.17.10 at 03:43
I’m running a high spec machine, 8GB RAM, with Win 2008 R2 server, and VS 2010 is very very slow.
As if that wasn’t bad enough.
- You can’t edit when debugging 64 bit apps
- Every time you break an app a new screen appears “no source available”
- Clipboard cut/copy and paste often fails
- Auto Intentation screws up your whole code with certain options set
And they won’t even give a date for sp1 – frankly the whole vs2010 thing is a train wreck
Paul L 09.17.10 at 03:45
I should add of course, Microsoft do this software bloating deliberately to make people buy new PCs, so they sell more copies of windows.
David Berg 09.29.10 at 15:08
I”m sorry to hear about all the performance issues you’ve been having with VS2010. The majority of customers actually find it faster than VS2008; however, we know there is still room for improvement.
Note that VS does use a lot of managed code and the first time you load it, it may not have NGEN’d all of it, which can contribute to slowness. VS is large, and thus benefits greatly from a lot of memory / large disk cache (and the use of Vista or Windows 7 and it’s SuperFetch technology). Of course we still run into some issues.
Here are a few things you might want to try:
1) General performance or reliability problems:
a. Try disabling Add-Ins and Extensions (Tools|Options|Environment -> Add-in/Macros Security, and Extension manager).
If this works, please check with the Add-In/Extension provider to see if they have an updated version. (For example, the latest Resharper (5.1.1), has “Performance and memory consumption improvements”).
b. If VS is actually crashing, please check the Event Log and get us the Watson bucket.
2) For UI performance problems (typing, scrolling, screen refreshes):
a. Try disabling graphics hardware acceleration: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ddperf/archive/2010/09/16/vs2010-performance-and-bad-video-drivers-hardware-redux.aspx.
b. Try forcing VS to use spaces instead of tabs (Tools|Options|Text Editor|All Languages|Tabs|Insert Spaces). You may also need to convert existing tabs to spaces.
3) If you’re running on XP, Vista, Windows Server 2003 or 2008.
a. Make sure you’re on the latest service pack (XP SP3 or Vista SP2).
b. Make sure you’ve installed Windows Automation API 3.0: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ddperf/archive/2010/08/16/visual-studio-2010-runs-faster-when-the-windows-automation-api-3-0-is-installed.aspx, if you don’t already have it.
4) If you’re running inside a Virtual Machine or on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V enabled:
a. Try disabling graphics hardware acceleration: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ddperf/archive/2010/09/16/vs2010-performance-and-bad-video-drivers-hardware-redux.aspx.
b. Make sure you have at least 1.5gb allocated to the VM.
c. Make sure you have hardware virtualization support on at the BIOS level (required for Hyper-V, may not be available on older hardware).
Hope this helps.
David Berg
Microsoft Developer Division Performance Engineering
DevPerf@Microsoft.com
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ddperf/
Valamas 09.29.10 at 16:30
Thanks for your tips David. “tabs to spaces” – NEVER ever!
Daniel Lemire 09.29.10 at 16:48
@Berg
Why would converting tabs to spaces make an UI any faster in 2010?
David Berg 09.30.10 at 00:47
@Daniel Lemire
RE “Why would converting tabs to spaces make an UI any faster in 2010?”
There are about 1,000,000 or so characters in UniCode; however, only a small handful typically appear in a text file or document. WPF has a Fast Path for handling those, and a Slow Path for other characters. Space is processed on the Fast Path, Tab is processed on the Slow Path… (Subject to change in future versions of WPF and doesn’t necessarilly apply to other XAML engines.)
Paul L 09.30.10 at 01:41
OK well I’ve tried these suggestions.
I am running vs2010 on win2008r2, which is obviously 64 bit. I turned off addins and macros completely. I already use tabs to spaces because of bugs in vs2010 which screw up your code when “keep tabs” is enabled.
I have a project solution which contains 20 sub projects, all vb apps and asp.net.
Windows 2003 Box with VS2005 takes 1 second to load VS and 4 seconds to load the project.
Windows 2008R2 Box with VS2010 takes 5 seconds to load VS and 65 seconds to load the project.
QED.
J Smith 10.05.10 at 11:28
I am running vs2010 ultimate at home and at work on dual core 2.2 machines running XPsp3. I have not expirienced the issues mentioned above. VS2010 is a bit slower than 2008, but overall it works great for me.
EJulien 10.21.10 at 11:55
Visual Studio is indeed a bit slower. But it is a bit slower where it hurts the most. Go to declaration takes several seconds where it takes under 1 second in 2008. And it hangs for a few seconds after saving a header file. I’m only seeing seconds of difference but I am seriously considering switching back to 2008 because of the accumulated time lost and frustration.
This is not acceptable for the hardware we run nowadays: 8GB memory on a 3.2Ghz quad core cannot run any smart text editor this slow, its just impossible. There must be major threading issues or plain raw sleep(100); inside that beast to make it that slow.
Daniel Lemire 10.21.10 at 12:58
@EJulien
Quoting Wikipedia :
“Gates’ last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008.”
Is it just me or things took a turn for the worse at Microsoft since Bill left? Maybe the software side of the business is not taken as seriously as it used to.
Heck! Is Microsoft a software company anymore?
Tom 10.22.10 at 14:01
Hi Victims-Colleagues…
I was programming and working for about ten Years with Microsoft Products.
Then on a weekend I discovered Mac. ( Yes, I know. But please continue reading)
xCode (the free available programming tool from apple) is Starting up in 7(SEVEN) SECONDS.
A medium sized Project (approx. 100+ class-Files) is loaded and ready to edit in 3(THREE) SECONDS.
Switching from one file to the other to view and edit takes no human-noticeable time.
Debugging with breakpoints is also useable with multiple threads and timers etc…
USEFUL Memory-Leak and Perofrmance-Measuring tools are included and easy understandable.
That’s how a IDE should perform. Nothing else. Time is Money. No?!
In XCode I can easily open 3,4,5 or more projects(Yes, fully loaded projects running in independent IDE instances)at the same time. It don’t get’s slower. It just works.
The xCode development environment provides the same or higher complexity like Visual-Studio. Just to make it clear.
If You are not happy with the crappy and lousy developed tools from Microsoft, (You even have to pay for it)…
Why do You use it?
If You would find such a slow and lame behavior in a car, would You buy it?
Most probably no. Specially when You can have a high performance sports-car, like xCode, for free.
So why buy Microsoft Visual Studio?
Is there a reason?
The frustration is not even worth to download it as a pirate-copy.
Have You guys ever thought about the fact that programming is basically nothing more than editing logical-linked-text-files?
How can a Software Company, as big as Microsoft create a Text-File-Editor that is as lame as Visual-Studio? In the Year 2010?
And on the same computer You can run a High-Performance software like 3dStudio Max or After-Effects, making the very most complex calculations in almost realtime. Starting up in seconds. Loading huge projects in seconds. Handling Bitmap- and Video files far beyond 100MB and GB’s in size without any issues…
And then… Microsoft Visual Studio “tries” to open and edit some “logical-linked-texfiles”… And it feels like You try to calculate a super-deep Mandelbrot Fractal on a Zuse Z1 Computer. (Yes, the on with the tubes and the electro-mechanical relays)…
For me, most Microsoft Software feels like a 90Year old fat cripple trying to climb the Mount Everest without equipment.
My passion for Windows died definitively when GDI”plus” came. First I thought/hoped: “wow. Finally they improved the lame windows graphics”.
Then I tried it.
I was surprised!
They did it!
I could not believed that this is possible!
But Yes!
It was slower!
Finally!
Finally, a already world-record slow graphic output was even more slow! GDI”+” was a about four times slower graphics output! Great job! Bravo Bravissimo. Alpha Channels are still a problem or more or less impossible to handle and lowering down the anyway nearly useless graphics “engine” “speed” again by the factor 3. (on the C64 platform alpha-channels where useable and standard of course(around 1985, processor way below 1MHZ, around 64kByte RAM))
And now the best: The graphics output on a simple mobile-processor, battery-powered iPhone is more performant than the Non-OpenGL and a Non-DirectX Windows-Graphics output. Even on a Dual-or-whatever-QuadCore whatever MHZ Processor. Funny. No? (Yes, it is true. I know both systems very well).
Mac was looking like a toy for me before. But then I discovered Computing as I always wished how it should be…
Everything just works. User interface elements are never flickering. The Code Editor always reacts fast. A serializer that serializes and de-serialzes just everything. Without adding some of Microsofts secret-freemason-knowledge-like commands or compiler steering words here and there…
Experimenting and browsing the useless “knowledge-base” for hours just because of trying to write and read, for example, a Color or Font-Class-Property into a Serialzed XML and so on…
The xCode IDE don’t get’s slower as the size of the project increases.
No hassling around with “lets keep the old shit but just glue another layer over it “engineering”" like Microsofts “file-paths longer than 255 characters” problems(in the Year 2010A.D. of course) (Sure, I know, it’s no problem. At least in theory.)
In xCode developing multilingual software is absolutely no issue. Compiled xCode programs just run on the client’s machine. (If the OS fits.) No missing DLL shit etc. (You all know: .NET was supposed to be the end of the “DLL-Hell”(Microsoft’s saying) )
The only bad thing in xCode is the Syntax. By my opinion C# has the best syntax of all programming languages I know. Compared to C# the xCode(objective C) syntax looks like stone age.
I’m not a paid Apple advertiser. But a deadly frustrated Windows-Developer. Tired of working with expensive crap tools. Tired of developing for a platform that gets slower and slower and more unusable from release to release.
Tired of programming software having issues running on other computers.
And then a weekend on the enemies platform opened my eyes.
Microsoft has missed the last train.
Windows is over.
Cheers.
EJulien 10.22.10 at 16:24
Well… I really have to say that if there is something worse than Visual Studio that’s definitively XCode. That’s just my point of view but I cannot begin to comprehend how anyone can use XCode with less than a 3x 30” Cinema Display setup. This thing constantly pops up new windows for every mouse click you make, this is an OSX specialty XCode has turned into an Art and its driving me crazy.
To stay on topic, debugging really is where Visual (C++ as far as I am concerned) always shone. Extremely fast and smart structure/class expansion, reliable data breakpoint, responsive thread inspection, complete callstack, overall excellent responsiveness and strangely enough, this is a constant. No new version seems to be breaking it. Otoh, GDB is pretty much the worst debugger I ever worked with. Extremely unstable, useless symbol resolution, etc… I expect Apple to have done their homework but GDB is so broken I really do not expect it to surpass Visual C++ in this area any time soon.
The Mac as whole is a very bad platform for power users, I own 3 Macs and 3 PCs. Two Macs are the traditional browser/mail boxes while the third one runs bootcamp so I can work while on the road. There are a lot of things really nicely done on the Mac platform but it also lacks most of the essential shortcuts required to work efficiently and Finder is a mess. Again, that’s merely my opinion. To work, I much prefer Linux (Gnome) than OSX when I am not running Windows.
Daniel Lemire 10.22.10 at 16:55
@EJulien
Disclaimer: I think it is silly to compare GDB with Visual Studio. That’s like comparing Donald Knuth and Bill Gates.
GDB is pretty much the worst debugger I ever worked with. Extremely unstable, useless symbol resolution, etc… (…) GDB is so broken (…)
You have to be kidding! GDB unstable and broken? I have been using GDB for at least 15 years on half a dozen operating systems, with several languages, and GDB has never once crashed on me. I could never find a single bug in it.
Can you point to your bug reports? How many did you find? Did anyone confirm your bugs?
People were using GDB a full decade before Visual Studio was even invented. Heck! People were using GDB back when Microsoft was still trying to sell Windows 1.0.
GDB is a solid and reliable classic.
EJulien 10.22.10 at 17:13
@Daniel Lemire
Ok, then the frontend must be faulty then. I mainly used GDB on Linux and exclusively with C++ (very light C++, no template trickery of anything of the sort). I have no idea if CodeWarrior (PS2, GC, Wii) which I used had GDB as a backend but I suspect they might have given the chaos debugging was back then.
Anyway, I am sure KDevelop, Ajunta, CodeBlocks, Insight, DDD, Nemiver, etc… use GDB. I guess they all are broken since none of these front-end can be used for any serious work (read a 30 second debugging session). Even the excellent (but still young) QtCreator is a complete mess when debugging in Linux (under GDB).
I am absolutely ready to believe GDB is stable but I have looked, and looked, and looked again and never found a stable frontend for GDB (see I am even not saying GDB is at fault
). But they all crash, hang, display corrupted callstack, cannot resolve all symbols (some but not all). I know, maybe I should use GDB from the command line… but not thanks, really.
So yes, extremely unstable. I have nobody, no proof to backup my observations but I usually get so upset when debugging something with GDB that I’m sure, next time I’ll think of taking several videos of such sessions and make a nice article of it on my website. If it can double as a bug report then all the better
. I mostly debug in Windows, the pain really starts when a platform specific bug crawls in.
Daniel Lemire 10.22.10 at 17:40
@EJulien
(1) You can choose to program with CodeWarrior or KDevelop. But if they fail you, then maybe you should have a talk with the people who recommended these tools to you. I’m fairly certain that they are used to torture prisoners in some countries. (I’m aware of why people choose CodeWarrior. But they are misguided. Please use the command line instead.)
(2) Did you compile your code with the -ggdb flag to ensure that the debugging information is available to gdb?
(3) You can use gdb for C++ debugging under Eclipse. Eclipse is free, fast and cross-platform. It won’t crash. No, Eclipse is not as nice as Visual Studio for C++. But it works. I’ve written industrial strength code with Eclipse, and so have others.
EJulien 10.22.10 at 17:53
@Daniel Lemire
Ah, I don’t want this to turn into a flame war
.
(1) I totally agree. I used to develop in GEdit with the terminal plugin until QtCreator came along. But I spent quite some time swimming through the ocean of IDEs for Linux when I first started using it.
(2) Yep, I spent quite some time trying to figure out what was happening and tried a lot of options without success.
(3) Ah… Eclipse. I am using it under Windows for Android development lately and it has come a long way. 4 years ago however it was an exercise in frustration to try to work with CDE, these 8GB of memory, how much it loves them
… But it is true that GDB for Android under Eclipse is indeed quite robust, the symbol explorer is just barely usable but at least there are no hangs.
All in all, I can say that I am sticking to VS because it still is the best IDE overall for my C++ needs. But QtCreator is just a few revisions away of being able to replace it (QtCreator Windows uses msdebug).
Mohammad Elsheimy 11.09.10 at 07:37
I agree with every work you said, VS 2010 is a big a–. I didn’t like it. It took very long time to download and install. Not just this, I don’t like applications with themes, why not just follow system appearance/performance settings and colors???! Why not Microsoft follow the guidelines it teaches us???!!!
Ady 12.02.10 at 04:28
We use VS2008. A few years back we upgraded from VS6.0.
VS6.0 was the best. Simple, easy to use and fast, as a text editor should be.
VS2008 on the other hand, is slow, slower, full of useless features which slows it down and complicated. It’s plain horrible. VS is basically a text editor. Why should it be so slow..? Intellisense? NoSense!
I’m hoping VS2010 is better, but in my experience, Microsoft has a way of complicating and slowing down their software from version to version.
I would downgrade to VS6.0 any time.
Nick Donnelly 12.04.10 at 16:01
These people are right – Ive had increasing problems with VS 2010 Express since I installed it (in addition to the issues I listed above).
If I try and go into design view on ANY .aspx page – VS starts creating style sheets in the root folder – StyleSheet1.css, StyleSheet2.css… etc until I force quit.
Ive also had crashes when editing specific bits of HTML in .aspx pages – for example correcting a style-”..” to style=”…”
VS 2005 & 2008 were great – what happened? MS you dont have to layer crap on top of an excellent product – it was great & fast – can we have our VS back please – its getting hard to work in it!! THX
Running Vista on Sony Vaio TZ
Nick Donnelly 12.18.10 at 08:24
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/559846/vs2010-bad-performance-scroll-is-extremely-slow
try disabling video hardware acceleration (tools/options/environment) – scrolls WAY faster now.
MS – you should publicise this issue.
Darren Balforte 01.24.11 at 10:36
Despite all the tricks suggested by other posters, it has not improved matters much. VS2010 does run like a 3 legged pig (we have nicknamed it “porky” in our office!!) and thats not the worst of it.
We were considering upgrading our developers from 2008 to 2010, but following a month of trials, the vote is unanimous: 19 to 0 against. In fact, for the first time in our company, the developers actually took the time to come to us en-masse and make a formal request to NOT upgrade a software package…. and we will be working with other ways to leverage a full .net 4.0 development experience.
The core reasons given to us were:
1) Performance
– We ran independant tests and EVEN IF we upgraded the hardware at the same time, the performance would still be significantly worse.
2) Help System
– lets not go there, other than to say, the smart money would have re-integrated the old (2008) style help system by now, but steadfastly pursuing a course of action DESPITE your paying customers asking you for a proper fix NOW seems to be the Microsoft way these days.
3) Excessive focus on being “pretty”. Looks over substance. Everything else has suffered. My guys wouldnt care if it was pink with purple spots if it worked well.
Shame. Just when you think Microsoft are on a roll, some wally HAS to go and screw it up.
Nick Donnelly 01.24.11 at 10:51
FIX
Make sure you have ‘use hardware acceleration’ DISABLED – that was making VS uber slow – much better now.
Darren Balforte 01.24.11 at 10:59
As stated in my post, we have USED all of the tricks suggested by other posters (and from all the microsoft advice).
FACT
Its STILL slower than 2008 even on NEWER hardware.
Randy 02.24.11 at 12:50
VS 2010 is slow, and the only improvement over VS 2005 is that it’s smart enough not to recompile clicking the green run button just after doing a Ctrl+Shift+B.
Things that suck about VS 2010:
-Is much slower. It takes 3 seconds to figure out to red underline something and then another 4 seconds to figure out not to underline it.
-Dragging the tabs to reorganize them, it’s easy to detach the tabs.
-Ability to ‘Text Visualizer’ on a StringBuilder object is gone, have to drill down into the private String member.
-They took away the ‘Non-dockable’ option for floating windows. Now when I rearrange the windows, the dock locations show up, which makes it easy to accidentally dock them.
-In some circumstances, intellisense shows two variations of the same variable, except one has a colon at the end… what a waste of space.
-Color scheme is fixed and ugly (although some will like it). At least give the option to allow users to specify their own color scheme. Seriously, if the VS developers are going to spend time revamping the color scheme and brag about it, then put in a bit of extra effort to allow it to be customizable.
-Block highlighting, generally annoying, probably part of the reason VS 2010 is slower. Can make it match background color, but doesn’t address slowness.
General problems in VS2005 and VS2010 that have never been fixed:
-Text Visualizer is modal (so annoying), and its performance with large amounts of text is crappy. It’s also slow at copying DataTables, (e.g. copy to Excel, at least provide an export to Excel button). It’s also modal, which is sad.
-The two sets of windows locations (e.g. one for edit mode, one for run mode) is annoying. The windows always jump around.
Nick Donnelly 02.25.11 at 04:33
Randy
You’re right on the money.
Specially accidentally detaching tabs when re-ordering them.
Microsoft did you usability test VS 2010? Be honest now…
Scott 02.25.11 at 23:37
Working on a large app, just switched from VS 2008 Standard to VS2010 Pro on an ‘09 mid-range dual-core 2.2GHz 64-bit laptop, 4GB RAM (Toshiba Satellite P505-D).
- Install went OK, on the order of an hour or two? I was working with VS2008, didn’t time it.
- Yesterday on VS2008 an entire-solution search-and-replace took on the order of 10 seconds for the whole app. Today on VS2010 I think it’s at 10 minutes and counting, about 1 second per 100 file lines. What is it doing?
- The page-zoom will come in handy at some point, for now I’ve bumped it accidentally twice and want to turn it off!
- Compile times seem OK. Much faster than search-and-replace!
Hope MS is listening and will fix.
Scott 02.25.11 at 23:40
P.S. Scrolling the Solution Explorer can have multi-second pauses. Needs fixing!
Scott 02.26.11 at 03:35
Some (not all) of the horribly slow behavior went away when I disabled the ‘PowerCommands For Visual Studio 2010′ and ‘Productivity Power Tools’ add-ins and restarted VS. These seems to have been a factor in VS running a compile for each step.
Another factor is being in the middle of a major restructuring of my app; once there are a lot of errors VS thrashes doing constant recompiles to update IntelliSense and the error list. Looking for a way to pause that behavior — kept scrolling down to an interesting error, about to click it and then VS would update the list and it would disappear.
Mark Richman 03.15.11 at 14:58
Has anyone tried Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 yet? Any performance and/or stability improvements?
Anon 03.19.11 at 15:48
I can’t even install sp1 to see if it fixes any of the (many) bugs I’ve encountered. Service Pack 1 requires an extortionate amount of disk space.
I have Visual Studio installed on my Virtual Machine running Server 2003 (10GB total, with apps + vs installed I still have 2.5GB free), and this thing requires me to have nigh on 6GB of data free??!!?
Even the completed install of Visual Studio 2010 without a service pack is less than 3 times this size.
The only reason I stayed with VS2010 this long was because of their dynamic underlining of issues – it can save time in the long run.
Sadly, the frequent crashes (where it tells me it may have been caused by an extension, when I have none installed), buggy updates, intellisense not functioning at all & twice as long compile times (for simple C++ apps) have actually become more of a hindrance. While typing this I have just reinstalled VS2008, and it’s already done – and without a reboot!!!
Microsoft need to sort their “stuff” (for lack of my desired word) out if they want to keep people using their software, which is becoming noticeably more bloated and slower as time progresses.
I loathe Apple (the company, not the products), but they had the right idea – break the backwards compatibility once to allow for a tech upgrade to get back with the modern world, else they’ll have no customers left.
Richard 03.28.11 at 19:29
At work, I run VS2010 on a quad-core desktop with 16 GB of RAM, a RAID-1 startup drive (no SSDs, so the previous comment from Jeffrey Zhang is a bit of an outlier: everything is fast on an SSD), and on a clean boot (Windows 7 x64), the IDE takes 3 minutes to load. I could live with that, if I had to, but what I can’t forgive is how the UI freezes during C# builds:it’s like I’m back on the Sun 3/60 with vi and make, only they were a heck of a lot more usable.
VS 2010 is dreadful: I have no idea why more people aren’t complaining loudly about this.
Joe 03.29.11 at 18:03
VS2010 is indeed a pig even with SP1. I am running Win 7 64-bit. Dual Quad Core Xeons, 12gb ram, non ssd hds in raid -1.
Terrible slow. Takes minutes to open. Lags while typing. Indexing takes forever. c++ is useless in this :/ I am bummed we moved to this. I do my editing in VS 2008 now and just switch to 2010 to do builds when my code is done.
sherifffruitfly 03.29.11 at 18:26
(shrug) Works fine for me on a new-ish dual core laptop. Installation did take awhile, though. But nowhere near the 24 hours you claim. More like an order of magnitude less.
Daniel Lemire 03.29.11 at 18:31
@sherifffruitfly
You mean 2.4 hours to install a piece of software?
Does it compile it from source?
Do you include the time to download it from the Internet?
What can it be possibly doing for 2.4 hours on your machine? Solving some NP-hard problem?
ramakrishnan 03.29.11 at 19:25
for me, It was happend in 2 – 3 minutes, No Problem.
Nick 03.30.11 at 12:00
I normally use VS2008 because most of my code base is there, but I have used VS2010 for debugging crash dumps since it is much better in that regard. I hadn’t noticed any particular slowness, so I just ran a test. I started it, created a Windows Forms app that put “Hello World” in a textbox, and the total time from start (opening VS2010) to creation, compiling to displaying the form was 2 1/2 minutes on a rather slow dual core laptop.
Were you using pre-production version? (My VS2010 version is 10.0.30319.1 RTMRel.)
While I probably could have written a Hello World C console app faster with a text editor, calling an old complier from DOS, I certainly could not have written a forms app any faster.
JC 04.02.11 at 18:21
@Daniel
I would assume sherifffruitfly meant with the download included since the OP said it took about a day including the download. I actually did a fresh install of VS2010 a few minutes ago, and it took about 40 minutes — another 100 minutes or so for the download seems plenty. But unfortunately, I don’t remember how long my download took since I downloaded it several months ago.
Andrew Mogford 04.03.11 at 10:48
I have been using Microsoft’s Development products since Visual Basic 2.0
I have used all the releases of Visual Studio since it came out.
After a couple of weeks of working in VS 2010 my experience has been mostly positive. Targeting Outlook with a plug in went like a dream.
One thing I did find strange was opening forms in a windows application, even a basic form was taking many seconds to load. However, on subsequent requests for an other instance of the same form, it was almost instant.
It does mean I will have to suggest to my clients that they leave my applications running, rather than stop and start them frequently. I can live with that I think.
I also found that the Janus Suite that I use did not work, and I will have to upgrade to the latest version.
I am going to stick with VS 2010
DILIP 04.06.11 at 09:08
Yes, VS2010 is a pig, i started my installation of VS2010 Professional at 6 PM now it is 8 PM, still it is not completed 10% of installation.
I have my own local copy and from there i am installing this.
I am running Win XP sp3 32-bit. Pentium Dual Core , 1GB ram.
John 04.06.11 at 09:11
DILIP: Only 1 GB RAM? I suspect that’s part of your problem.
(I never thought I’d say “only 1 GB RAM.” I was floored the first time I heard of a machine with that much RAM.)
Brian 04.06.11 at 09:21
I agree with John. 1GB RAM is probably a bottleneck. Great if you only log on and do 1 thing, but if you have more than a couple programs open, even with XP, that Pentium Dual-Core is *probably* going to struggle to keep up, and the hard drive will be very busy using the pagefile to make up the difference.
Daniel Lemire 04.06.11 at 11:16
@Brian
I agree with John. 1GB RAM is probably a bottleneck
In 2020, this statement will read: 100 GB RAM is a bottleneck. Come on! Get with the program. You need 1TB RAM and 1024 cores..
John V. 04.06.11 at 13:39
@Daniel
Yep, but it will still take a few minutes to start Windows …
Daniel Lemire 04.06.11 at 13:46
@John V.
Yes, and Windows will have a requirement that says “runs better with 256 cores or more”.
Brian 04.06.11 at 13:50
Even better, in 2020 you won’t be running it on your PC at all, but rather on the cloud, and performance will be determined by how many broadband connections you have coming into your home/business.
Note: For best performance, Microsoft recommends having at least 25 broadband connections. Please consult the National Broadband Distributuion Office branch closest to you if you need help determining how many connections you have, or how you can qualify to obtain more.
Beau 04.13.11 at 22:05
Just thought I should point out that pigs actually run quite fast.
Nick D 05.14.11 at 19:19
please vote the below issue up (to disable accidentally dragging windows & detaching them – who on earth would want this????)
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/593822/please-provide-an-option-to-disable-floating-windows-or-to-lock-a-windows-as-not-floating
Darren Balforte 05.15.11 at 15:15
@ Beau
3 legged pigs run fast? I really dont want to know how you tested that….
Johnathon Cotner 05.28.11 at 01:07
You people are crazy. If your vs is running slow.. then your os is also running slow.. For programmers you guys are really dumb. While it’s true vs loads times are longer than with express versions (Think about it, that ide only loads configurations for 1 language, as with vs you can have different setup’s per language), overall it’s about as snappy as vs6 on my whimpy Pentium dual core lappy. As far as linux coding goes. QtCreator is excellent. Qt overall is excellent. But even the creator of C++ himself is fond of VS2010 .. C++Ox compliance (whistles). (of note, also, the new intel compiler is C++ Ox compliant, and not a bad compiler either, i use it integrated with VS
cary abramoff 07.28.11 at 19:24
vs 2010 is bloated stuttering schizo environment & i’m an mcsd.net with 20+ years experience with all things msft.
i have made a vow this is my last c#/asp.net app and I will find a way to code exclusively in jquery hereafter.
the worst part of all is watching the msftard link jockeys try to offer help for all performance issues. if you follow the thread, weeks go by, beards are grown, nothing is remedied, and it always ends with, “did ya try to rewrite your registry in hebrew while juggling chainsaws jerky boy? please let me know if i can be of further service. SUCKAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”
Just an opinion you realize.
ps- i am only reading this cuz i’m bored while my dell poweredge with 12 gigs of RAM and dual cpu mega whatever cores squirms helplessly while vs takes 10 minutes to unfreeze.
cary abramoff 07.28.11 at 19:29
ps- i have a macbook too. WTF? spinning donut POS. claustrophobic windows. tard browser features. egyptian hieroglyphs for hotkeys?
I am hoping Chrome becomes the OS du 2012 and all future dev is done in JQUERY and all compilers go the way of the dinosaur.
Database? How bout turning NAS into a database. I would gladly code my own RI rather than lose decades to the not responding hell that is VS development.
oh.. any maybe one day IE will support HTML5 file API. WTF? c’mawwwwwn.
Deus 08.06.11 at 09:52
Took a day to install? Mine took only 20 minutes, mate. It’s pretty much on part with VS2008 in term of performance. So before you blog VS2010 is a pig, better check your pc specs. It could be running Pentium II with 256 MB of RAM.
greg 08.11.11 at 11:27
I urge anybody reading this to follow David Berg’s post above. I have tried everything else until I found his post. I went through each step and after disabaling the hardware acceleration (STEP4 :Uncheck ALL checkboxes) … and also setting the spaces thing (Step 2), i had a massive improvement
greg 08.11.11 at 12:24
Me again – well the performance increase lasted exactly 20 mins and now its back to be impossibly slow – unable to work with it anymore and keep my sanity. Clearly there are major bugs in the system.
Holi 08.16.11 at 03:17
Even now, over 1 year later, with the Release and SP1, the Studio is still very buggy and un-handy. Visual Source Safe integration is quite useless and probably was designed for one specific workflow.
In some cases, only putting the caret/cursor from one line to some other line by mouse takes up to 20 seconds!!! (no CPU load or disk usage at that time). Probably it’s not a good idea to use .NET framwork for programming VS2010 too much; native is still quite more performant.
What is still very good amongst many other products is the debugger, now with very useful in place information; the objects get resolved very well.
Some nice features unfortunately – although stolen from other products (i.e. eclipse) – are only available through PowerTools but then again make the whole app quite slower.
To be very productive, I think one still requires VisualAssistX.
Alen 09.18.11 at 02:15
Is it only VS2010 Ultimate beeing so slow or same with VS2010 Pro?
Law 09.27.11 at 07:24
Visual studio 2010 seems to be a step backwards from 2008. 2008 was significantly faster and more stable. Visual studio reliably hangs for 3+ minutes whenever I open a xaml file (and yes, this still happens even if I have designer mode disabled). VS 2008 never had that problem. Also, go to definition is also dreadfully slow, it can take up to 7 minutes in some cases.
cary abramoff 09.27.11 at 07:49
Telerik has just release Kendo UI beta. Telerik’s Ajax & SL suite made .NET life very good minus the intrinsic quirks in ASP.NET development. But now that Amazon has matured S3/Cloudfront and the JQuery UI is quite mature; Kendo UI finally offers to lead us out of .NET hell.
If only there was an infinitely scaling cloud database (SimpleDB .. not!) developers could actually be LOVING LIFE rather than stealing the sailor’s cursing spotlight.
JQuery UI- Kendo UI- JQuery – HTML5 – Amazon S3 & CloudFront: This is a very bright future and alternative to .NET hell.
David 10.07.11 at 03:08
Where to start? There is no excuse for bad performance. “Get a better PC” is always a stupid argument. If I buy a new PC, I don’t do so to waste the extra CPU power on badly written software. I want the extra power for something useful.
There is no doubt that Visual Studio is getting slower over time. This is not surprising if native C++ is being replaced by managed code (the same thing has happened to SQL Server, which is now horribly bloated and slow).
However, I’ve got to say that VS2008 is faster opening and shutting down than VS6. And its performance is an improved over the horrible VS2005. My main gripe is how many things get broken in the new versions, for example:
- Edit and Continue (broken for C++ since at least VS2005; fails to show error messages)
- Intellisense (horribly broken for C++ since VS2005; frequently fails and works badly with precompiled headers)
- Compiling sources with headers on a network (broke because of impossibly slow performance in VS2005; haven’t tried it since)
Class view is almost totally unusable in VS2008 because it takes so long to parse the source files (sometimes half a hour), and then the tree view is prone to extremely erratic behaviour. To be fair, the tree in class view has been behaving weirdly since VS6.
As for why we don’t change to another platform, well that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? It would require a huge investment of time, and that would only be justifiable if things got much worse. Microsoft should be careful, though. Many people are accumulating resentment about their slow and bloated software, and they may one day reach breaking point. Once they leave, they’ll be no winning them back.
David 10.07.11 at 03:11
Incidentally, all this means that I’m no hurry to upgrade these days. Microsoft has made it clear that it doesn’t care about C++ and is intent on pushing .NET bloat into everything.
So I can be fairly sure that new versions like VS2010 will have more of what I don’t want, and won’t fix the bugs I care about. So why bother upgrading?
David 10.07.11 at 05:43
I wonder whether ClassView has improved any in VS2010. Using VS2008 has reminded me that not only does it take an age to update, but it stops updating altogether once you start debugging. The result is, it’s 13:43 and I still haven’t got ClassView!!!
Lasse 11.08.11 at 06:20
I would discourage from upgrading to Visual Studio 2010. Since it is such a slow pig and things that has always worked – such as for example remapping the key F2 to jump to next bookmark – doesn’t work anymore.
The compilers are fine, but the GUI is shamelessly horrible in my opinion. Stay away from it if you’re not sure that you need it!
rigo 11.15.11 at 10:48
i recommend to use VS 2008, it’s better than VS 2010
fatlab 01.15.12 at 21:58
I agree its a pig although I think you are being generous!
I recently Converted a large vs2008 project to vs2010.
It runs fine on vs2008 and is pretty snappy on my quad core i5 desktop with a SSD system disk.
vs2010 constantly stops to think and freezes with a busy cursor while I am trying to work.
Every 2 or 3 times I compile the project I get: “fatal error C1001: An internal error has occurred in the compiler.” with no useful information indicating how to solve the problem. If I restart it goes away for some time!?
I am running out of hair!
kraft 01.16.12 at 02:15
I had this problem for well over a year on a verrry large .NET site I was working on.
I was able to make it go away finally by doing the following:
1. Removing tons of non-essential files that I had used as “one-offs” for backup purposes.
2. Further a large portion of “middle-tier” .net c# classes that had dependencies through inheritance were optimized.
I don’t know what your codebase is like but I program fast and tend to quickly create multiple version of source code by using “Save As” so that
myImportantClass.cs becomes
myImportantClassBackup.cs right before I make a change that I may wish to rollback.
After a while I end up with a large # of these.
What I am trying to convey is that my freezes turned out to be a direct result of a large multitude of files that VS needed to ensure were compilable.
When I refactored as explained and further moved most of my middle tier to a separate project that I compile into a DLL and reference that way the problem disappeared permanently.
My experience is where there are a great deal of inheritance dependencies the interminable “hanging” is VS 2010 trying to ensure you are not f@$#(&@#$ s$)(^T up
)
So the bottom line is don’t ask it to think too hard or you might hurt its wittle head!