 Demo of VB "Whidbey"
started 8/2/2003; 3:38:09 AM - last post 8/7/2003; 4:05:39 PM
|
|
Ehud Lamm - Demo of VB "Whidbey" 
8/2/2003; 3:38:09 AM (reads: 2353, responses: 14)
|
|
| Demo of VB "Whidbey" |
|
Language purists like myself may find it unfortunate but IDEs are an important part of the "language experience." And, indeed, IDEs are often at the center of lively debates on the LtU discussion group.
In this demo Ari Bixhorn, Lead Product Manager of Visual Studio, shows some of the new features and language enhancements in Visual Basic "Whidbey," including the long-awaited "edit and continue."
The demo itself is here.
Posted to general by Ehud Lamm on 8/2/03; 3:43:44 AM
|
|
|
|
Sjoerd Visscher - Re: Demo of VB
8/2/2003; 4:42:54 AM (reads: 1257, responses: 0)
|
|
|
A few years ago I worked at a company that did technical support for companies that used applications written in various (usually ancient) business basic languages. They all had this edit and continue feature. It regularly happend that errors showed up at runtime. With "edit and continue" it was usually possible to fix these bugs remotely within a few minutes, and let the program correctly finish what it was doing.
|
|
Mike Summers - Re: Demo of VB
8/2/2003; 5:24:18 AM (reads: 1239, responses: 1)
|
|
|
I'm not sure what the fuss about "Edit & Continue" is.
In 1982 we were using Debug on an original IBM PC and were always editing the code in-hex in-memory and then continuing with execution.
The old guys weren't impressed, they'd been doing that for years on mainframes.
|
|
|
|
|
Are there edit&continue tools that work for something like c or java?
|
|
Patrick Logan - Re: Demo of VB
8/2/2003; 7:21:51 AM (reads: 1240, responses: 0)
|
|
|
For Java, see about the ODB.
I guess all we have to do now to complete the assimilation is convince everyone to use Cambridge Polish Notation.
|
|
Isaac Gouy - Re: Demo of VB
8/2/2003; 10:35:41 AM (reads: 1210, responses: 0)
|
|
edit and continue
Smalltalk debuggers give access to the message-sends (context stack - source code not hex) that were waiting for a return when a breakdown occured. Those methods can be edited/recompiled in the debugger, the process restarted at the beginning of the edited method, or any prior context.
When the development environment was included with application deployment, a breakdown could page a programmer, who would hot-fix the code and resume. (Saving the business many $$)
What about Lisp/Scheme?
For Java
IBMs VA for Java (following it's Smalltalk heritage) provided the same facility. It was one of the few things that Java programmers (rather than Smalltalkers) actually liked about VisualAge.
Why would this only be available for VB not for C# and other .Net languages?
IDEs are an important part of the "language experience."
The trilogy of language, libraries, tools? Even if it's pencil and paper, some tool is always involved.
|
|
scruzia - Re: Demo of VB
8/2/2003; 10:41:20 AM (reads: 1231, responses: 0)
|
|
|
Sun's dbx debugger for Solaris has had this feature (they called it "fix and continue") since the early 1990's. For C and C++ at least, maybe Fortran too.
|
|
Patrick Logan - Re: Demo of VB
8/2/2003; 11:21:33 AM (reads: 1193, responses: 0)
|
|
|
What about Lisp/Scheme?
There have been many kinds of debuggers over many years and implementations. The basic expectation of any "real" implementation is some kind of edit and continue debugger. (Which is not hard to implement even for a semi-capable toy implementation since almost certainly it will have "eval").
Henry Lieberman wrote the first time travelling debugger I know of, in Lisp. More recent updates of zstep are available.
|
|
nickmain - Re: Demo of VB
8/2/2003; 1:19:48 PM (reads: 1172, responses: 0)
|
|
|
Java has "hot" class redefinition in its standard debug api. Eclipse (at least) leverages this to provide edit-continue - even for Java apps running on a remote machine.
The really useful thing about the JPDA is that it provides a complete Java wrapper around the debug wire protocol. I've used this to write code that adds bytecode level instrumentation to methods in classes already running in a remote JVM.
|
|
Kragen Sitaker - Re: Demo of VB "Whidbey"
8/2/2003; 9:09:03 PM (reads: 1118, responses: 0)
|
|
|
So what else was in this demo? For whatever reason, I can't see it in my browser, and the site doesn't seem to have a summary.
|
|
Chris Rathman - Re: Demo of VB
8/3/2003; 12:00:24 AM (reads: 1086, responses: 0)
|
|
|
I guess I just can't get too excited about altering code on the fly. Seems to me to be an encouragement of sloth - the read and react form of coding.
|
|
Ehud Lamm - Re: Demo of VB
8/3/2003; 1:13:14 AM (reads: 1103, responses: 0)
|
|
|
Modifying machine code is, of course, completely different than changing high level constructs.
|
|
Isaac Gouy - Re: Demo of VB
8/3/2003; 9:42:26 AM (reads: 1037, responses: 0)
|
|
encouragement of sloth
PersonalChoiceElevatedToMoralImperative meets the 7 Deadly Sins ;-)
In this context, is Sloth a "glass half empty" view of Productive?
The demo pitch was making VB developers the most productive in the world - by reducing the amount of code they need to write to do common tasks (mostly through code generation, and presuming certain kinds of application).
to complete the assimilation
The assimilation of ancient Lisp technology into the mainstream?
This topic seems to have picked up some of a previous LtU discussion of VB and debuggers.
|
|
mattias waldau - Edit & Continue has existed for ages for VB
8/7/2003; 1:13:54 PM (reads: 894, responses: 0)
|
|
|
MS just dropped it in the first release of VB.NET.
It is really wonderful, and it is really a shame that no Java IDE supports it if Java has supported it forever.
(I haven't tested Eclipse, is it ready for use now?)
|
|
Patrick Logan - Re: Demo of VB
8/7/2003; 4:05:39 PM (reads: 835, responses: 0)
|
|
|
I haven't tested Eclipse, is it ready for use now?
Without a doubt.
|
|
|
|