bobpeers -> blog

I’ve been playing around with ASP.NET for a few weeks now which has of course meant using Windows much more than I’m used to (apart form at work that is). One area I have to admit that Microsoft excels in is Programming IDEs. I downloaded the free (as in beer) Visual Web Developer Express Edition and even on my old slow laptop it’s very responsive and enjoyable to use.

The same is true of the Visual C++ Express Edition. Compared to either Anjuta or especially Netbeans it’s incredibly fast to run. Start up takes just a few seconds and code completion is almost instantaneous whereas using Netbeans there’s a noticeable delay before the list appears.

I understand that Microsoft only makes tools for Windows so they can optimise them for that environment whereas Netbeans runs on nearly any platform but it makes me wish that there was an Open Source IDE that can compete with Microsoft only tool when it comes to performance.

It’s not an IDE but the best known example of this is Microsoft Office compared to Open Office running on the same hardware. It probably takes 30 second to start OO on my laptop and about 2 seconds using MS Office. Even once running, just dragging the mouse over a few cells in a spreadsheet in OO to select them produces a lag.

I actually compared OO Calc to Google Docs and I think it’s more responsive running in a browser.