15 replies to this topic

[SymLinked]

Hi,

I have the opportunity to download MSVC 2012 Pro with a student license and I'm currently using 2010.
I'm curious if anyone has anything to say about migrating from 2010 to 2012, primarly in regards to performance in C++.

I would love some better intellisense, but can't afford Visual Assist. Is intellisense any better in 2012? How responsive is the IDE? I've read they focused on Virtual Memory enhancements, but that's from Microsoft and I would appreciate other sources than the creator of the product.

Thanks!

Edited by SymLinked, 29 October 2012 - 01:58 PM.

[frob]

Better performance in what way?

As for the IDE: it is responsive on a modern machine. It takes more resources than earlier editions, but that is normal for software.

As for the compiler: 2012 compiler is not significantly difference in terms of performance.

[AdeptStrain]

Managed C++/CLI intellisense is busted in VS2010 but that's about the biggest difference I've seen so far (I'm sure there are more). My general rule with Visual Studio is to wait till SP1 comes out and see how well that is received. Not to mention VS2012 isn't supported by some toolsets/plugins yet (NVidia NSight comes to mind).

Personally, I'd just save your money for now unless you REALLY want 2012 for some reason.

[Ripiz]

VS2012 has better syntax highlighting than VS2010; classes, namespaces, typedefs have colors now.
I imagine VS2012 would be a little bit better than VS2010, afterall it's newer, so I guess it might have better auto-vectorization, new C++11 features (move, etc) should make it better as well.

IDE itself is responsive. No problems that I haven't had with VS2010, sometimes random freezes, intellisense messing up, etc. Restart fixes it most of the time.

[Adam_42]

The main thing to watch out for is that anything compiled with the 2012 compiler won't work on XP.

There are some code generation enhancements - it's a bit smarter with intrinsics for example. However the only way to find out for sure is to test it on the code you care about.

Having said all that you can try it for free - just download the express edition. http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/products/visual-studio-express-products

[Ryan_001]

I like VS2012 express for C++. Seems to be a bit quicker on my system than 2010. I haven't tried the new auto-vectorization but I've heard good things about it. Intellisense is still hit and miss. Works a bit smoother when it does work, but seems to just turn itself off from time to time and takes all the syntax hilighting goodness with it (I find that quite visually jarring TBH). And macros (like boost preprocessor library) still cause it to give up and just start posting errors/squigillies all over. It also seems to go crazy over complex macros, inserting braces and enters at weird spots and straight up refusing to work.

Its a step up IMO, but not by much. I was hoping for me TBH.

[saejox]

2012 is faster and less buggy than 2010. tip: uninstall extensions, they use way too much memory.
do you write directx? vs2012 has surprisingly good amount of features for directx. it even has a hlsl designer.
2012 cant create xp programs. so its not really option as a go-to IDE for a lot of people.
visual studio intellisense if still not good enough. i get a lot of false errors.
code compiles fine but intellisense insists on reporting hundreds of errors.
there is not enough options to tweak it neither.

my setup: Eclipse for coding, cmake for building, VS for debugging.
seems to be the best setup for productivity.
more people should use Eclipse, it is not slow as it used to be.

[SymLinked]

I was mainly concerned with IDE performance, not how well the code optimizer works etc.

I'm a student so I got access to it for "free" - but if it doesn't yet work with NSight then it's not very interesting for me until it does.
I was hoping they improved Intellisense some because many times even clicking "Go to Declaration" doesn't actually go there, it just shows a lot of classes with the same method name which is quite useless.

Edited by SymLinked, 30 October 2012 - 03:06 AM.

[tanzanite7]

2012 cant create xp programs. so its not really option as a go-to IDE for a lot of people.

This should not be true anymore:
http://blogs.msdn.co...8/10357555.aspx

... will try it myself soon.

edit: yep, works as advertized.

Edited by tanzanite7, 01 November 2012 - 03:08 PM.

[achild]

I like VS2012 express for C++. Seems to be a bit quicker on my system than 2010. I haven't tried the new auto-vectorization but I've heard good things about it. [...]

If you haven't done anything, it is already auto-vectorizing stuff. I have not done any artificial tests - only checked the log on my actual code - and it tries to auto-vectorize a LOT of things for me at least.

[bioglaze]

If you're coding C++11, 2012 is a must.

[Ryan_001]

I'm gonna have to take back what I said about VS2012. After having used it for a few days now on a larger project, intellistupid and syntax hilighting on it are broken. Even the smallest change in your source code and it has to re-parse, even if its something as simple as deleting a comment. Since the hilighting is tied to the intellistupid you change anything and all your text reverts back to black/white with nothing but keywords hilighted. Even simple macros or templates cause it to get completely lost, causing red squiglies everywhere. The code will compile fine, but intellistupid still can't figure it out. Even when everything's seemingly fine it'll still just randomly turn itself off for no particular reason. It still can't tell the difference between a declaration and a definition. Moving around in large-ish code bases (TBH its not even that large) is now a complete PITA.

VS2010 wasn't great, but it wasn't THIS bad. My productivity has definitely decreased having moved to VS2012. I'm seriously contemplating reverting back.

[SymLinked]

That's my experience in VS2010 Ryan, hence my interest in 2012.

I'm also not a big fan of the IDE shutting down on me 2-3 times every few days when I have a lot of files open. This never happened in VS2008, at least not here. It was the most stable release of MSVC that I ever tried.

Edited by SymLinked, 03 November 2012 - 03:28 AM.

[tanzanite7]

My experience with VC2010: if intellisense is enabled then the IDE will crash frequently and goes nuts often (ie. does not recognize anything and marks all of is as bogus errors). VC2012 has never crashed so far (VC2010 crashed daily, often multiple times per coding session) and intellisense has not gone nuts so far either (time will tell if its apparent stability is a statistical error or not) - however, i do have the update that among fixing various bugs adds XP targeting installed (ie. perhaps the update fixed stuff and it was crishy-crashy before that - i do not know).

So, installing the update might be worth trying:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34818
Download and install "vsupdate_KB2707250.exe" from there (it will download all the stuff it needs itself).

[Ryan_001]

My experience with VC2010: if intellisense is enabled then the IDE will crash frequently and goes nuts often (ie. does not recognize anything and marks all of is as bogus errors). VC2012 has never crashed so far (VC2010 crashed daily, often multiple times per coding session) and intellisense has not gone nuts so far either (time will tell if its apparent stability is a statistical error or not) - however, i do have the update that among fixing various bugs adds XP targeting installed (ie. perhaps the update fixed stuff and it was crishy-crashy before that - i do not know).

So, installing the update might be worth trying:
http://www.microsoft...s.aspx?id=34818
Download and install "vsupdate_KB2707250.exe" from there (it will download all the stuff it needs itself).

This update has made a notable difference. Thank-you ; )

[kunos]

I have been using Visual AssistX for 2 years now.. but after installing VS2012 I decided to try without VAX and I found intellisense has improved A LOT compared to VS2010. I am still using just VS2012 with no VAX... thumbs up to VS2012 for me.