I got my Windows 2003 machine installed without a problem (well, except for the bloody floppy disk drive being needed). After installing SP1 and Office 2003, I decided to go put on what I had been waiting for since Saturday: Whidbey Beta 2.Install went smooth and fast. I think it was under 30 minutes (not inc. MSDN). I install almost everything except J# (haha), Crystal Reports (yuck), and Dotfuscator (I have way better!).I reboot, install MSDN, run Visual Studio.---------------------------Package Load Failure---------------------------Package 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage, Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.TestCaseManagement, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' has failed to load properly ( GUID = {A9405AE6-9AC6-4F0E-A03F-7AFE45F6FCB7} ). Damn, there goes all the testing features. While all the pretty icons are in, none of them work.*Update! A friend who works on Team System says that not installing the Team Foundation Client will cause problems with Beta 2. I'm also told that I don't need to wait to install TFS first. So, I'll go install it. Thanks, I hope that works!Next, open up a project, try the properties. Everything works smoothly. The properties window even closes correctly. This was a major pain point before.Performance testing. Oh, wait, that doesn't work:---------------------------Microsoft Visual Studio---------------------------Could not load type 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.Performance.PerfWorkItem' from assembly 'PerfPkg, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'.---------------------------OK ---------------------------OK, well, I don't use those features everyday. I'm sure someone will find a fix shortly. I haven't even looked yet. *Update: Supposedly related to not having the TF Client installed.I got a crash while saving my settings (I can't resist going through all the nifty options). But I tried again and it worked. Graphically, the whole program looks quite polished. Except for the test on the splash screen not being antialiased, and a few icons here and there (solution icon in the solution explorer), it looks very refreshing. The docking tabs (is that what they are?) for the toolbox, solution explorer, etc, are redesigned. A tad space wasting, but attractive. Dragging a toolbox around has a nicer targeting system. There have been a lot of great colourizing enhancements. (Yes, and my suggestion of maroon-coloured strings is now a default! Yea!)Seems quite fast. Compiling my only real Whidbey app (~25K lines of C#) works great. UI does not lock up while compiling. Compiling web projects does not take forever (before, it'd hang for about 10 seconds).ASP.NET... ok, here's the big one... *IT IS NOT FIXED*. Yep. Everyone (like me) who was hoping that the ASP.NET team would stop tripping before Beta 2... welcome to reality. You're gonna develop your web apps like ASP Classic, and you're gonna like it, dammit. Basically, it boils down to that every bloody class is its own freaking assembly. What a pain in the ass. I mean, seriously. They do ASP.NET 1.0, and blow everyone away. Then they think that even though people like me have been saying it should be this way for years, they feel it is too early to introduce real app development to web apps. If you want to share code, you have to put it in the “App_Code“ directory. I guess this helps people who are used to <!-- #include “inc/functions.asp“ -->.Another thing, ASP.NET isn't listed in the new project dialog. Somehow the ASP.NET team things that they aren't projects. I'd *love* to find out why this is, besides “idiots who could barely figure out PHP couldn't figure out ASP.NET need help“. Why I have to have this “file based“ “web project“ thing just keeps annoying me. But, despite my complaining, I will, like an abused girlfriend, keep coming back for more from ASP.NET 2. The other features (i.e., great designer, awesome C# code editor, freaking fantastic framework) outweigh the huge annoyance that ASP.NET projects have become. I swear, if it wasn't for ASP.NET's new features (like Master Pages), I would not, repeat, would NOT, develop new web apps with VS 2005. But, they know this. They know their feature set is so sexy, I'm gonna happily get smacked around. They know I'm addicted and will play whatever little game they want to play to keep using. They want to treat me like dirt^H^H^H^HMort, fine. Whidbey is such a huge jump ahead that I'll just have to move on. Really. I will. Eventually. BTW, I'm not just complaining for no reason. Even on the relatively small projects (say, 18 project solution, ~100K lines) that I've done, I can't imagine ever, ever, using this new project model. Of course, maybe I'm just missing something, and it actually is fixed. If I missed it, then I guess I deserve it. But I'm pretty sure they aren't hiding much.Moving on...I am also going to install Team Foundation Server and the Team Client. In the TFS setup, it says to install the client after the server (*Update: which might be incorrect). And the server needs SQL Server 2005, so I'm waiting for that to finish downloading. Finally.... real source control, defect tracking. Wow. I'm also looking forward to playing with the revised (hopefully revised) data tools. The ones in Beta 1... were next to unusable. I understand they've been fixed and features left in (like diagrams). I heard there was community integration, and sure enough, there's a Community menu item. However, clicking anything there ends up with a:---------------------------Microsoft Visual Studio---------------------------The operation could not be completed. The RPC server is unavailable. ---------------------------OK ---------------------------Maybe the install is messed up. Or maybe it's a crappy error message for “Couldn't contact Microsoft's community servers.” No idea. In C++, I've had more success with the “go to reference” feature than before. This is a non-Microsoft C project. I'm using VS as the editor only. The experience seems to be improved over Beta 1. Cool.MSDN works! It's fast too! Quite fast actually. And so does the search (well, haven't tried in detail, but before it was pretty crappy). Upgrading. On my 25K line project, I had 34 errors and 10 warnings. The majority of them were from ASP.NET's changes (the ones that improved it from Beta 1). Not bad!Well, that is my first quick glance. I'll have some real time during the next while to really get involved.
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