I finally moved my software dev machine from Vista to Windows 7. Specifically a Windows 7 SP1 x64 (Intel Core i5) laptop. All source code has been moved to the new machine and the old Vista laptop will be put into a box for a few months before I attempt to reload it with Windows 7 and see if it can become a useful machine again – it is way slow under Vista but then it was ALWAYS way slow under Vista (but weren’t most systems that came out in the Vista timeframe?).
Sadly Borland/CodeGear C++ Builder is not making the move with me. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved Borland for years, I have Borland compilers going back to Turbo C days and possibly even Turbo C 1.0 if I really work hard to dig out old floppy disks from the 80’s/90’s. This despite nearly 10 years of having free access to Visual Studio through the Microsoft MVP program. So why now you ask? Three reasons mostly.
The first and major reason is that still, at this point in time, CodeGear C++ still does not have a 64 bit compiler. This has been on the horizon for them for some time and unfortunately still is. I was waiting but just don’t want to wait any longer. I have had quite a few people sending emails asking for the “64 bit versions” of the utilities. And while all of them, to my knowledge, are working fine on x64 systems as x86 binaries and I don’t really see any major benefits of pushing my current tools into the x64 realm, I don’t want to be one of those developers who sits in the past with all x86 binaries. I would rather be on the other side of the imaginary line of developers who can offer either/or.
The second is that Code Gear C++ Builder 2009 seemed to have an issue running on Windows 7 when I tested it. I could compile debug versions of AdFind just fine, but release versions would break with random memory errors. While I could sit and figure that out, I would rather spend that time writing and releasing code, my goal isn’t to become an expert on the vagaries of compiling code with CodeGear C++ builder but to continue to release utilities that make people’s lives easier.
The third is that it is silly to spend thousands of dollars on compilers when Visual Studio is available to me for free. I didn’t think this was so silly years ago when VS was horribly non-compliant with the ISO C++ standards and darn near everything I would try to write would fail with odd compiler errors but Herb Sutter, I believe, has really helped push Microsoft into becoming standards compliant.
I will still have Code Gear C++ Builder installed, just in case I need to validate how something compiles or to fix some egregious bug that I haven’t migrated to the new compiler. It will be running either in XP Mode or a Vista Virtual, I haven’t sorted that out yet. Also if I need a quick and dirty GUI tool which I do sometimes put together but rarely share, I think C++ Builder beats Visual Studio here hands down. The ability to produce NATIVE code GUIs with a RAD environment in C++ Builder is something I love having the ability to do. I HATE HATE HATE HATE the fact that if I want to do that in Visual Studio, I have no choice but to use the .NET Framework.
Anyway, I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to set things up with VS 2010 and yes, even taking some of the tutorials to try and learn the IDE and processes on VS. Part of me is excited though a large part of me knows I am going to be stumbling around in the environment for a bit trying to forget my previous experiences of using older versions of Microsoft’s C++ compilers and stumbling over its ISO issues.
I am also going to take this opportunity to start using the Boost libraries. It is something I have wanted to do for some time but just never took that jump to rewrite my personal libraries to utilize the Boost stuff. Since I am already going to be reworking things because of Visual Studio and Visual C++ and x64 I figure adding in Boost makes sense. I am not sure why Visual Studio doesn’t have Boost built in… Anyway… Not worth the skull sweat to work that one out so I built the x86 version of the Boost libraries this morning, the x64 version of the libraries will be built,likely, this evening. What I am most excited about with Boost is <boost/regex.hpp>… yes Regular Expressions… I have long wanted to add Regular Expression capabilities to AdFind and this puts me that much closer…
joe
