I sense a mouse


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    Holy Hercules the Hera-Fucker, what the fuck is wrong with you sometimes, Microsoft?

    Got my new development environment set up, finally. Code is checked out. New control dropped onto an .aspx page. Time to do some code-behinding.  Start typing and... hmm, Intellisense no poppy upping. (For those not familiar with .Net, it's the super-powerful autocomplete function that literally makes coding in Visual Studio the best experience you'll ever have. And I don't mean just coding. In life. Period).

    Close project and re-open. Nope. Close VS and reopen. Nope. REBOOT and reopen. Nope.

    An hour of De Goggling later, and...

    [url="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2010/04/15/issues-between-visual-studio-microsoft-wireless-laser-mouse-and-windows-2008-server.aspx"]Microsoft Mouse Fucks Up Visual Studio[/url]

    In short, a bug in the drivers for (some?) Microsoft mice eats up all the Idle time that Visual Studio would normally use to let Intellisense to it's thing. And it just so happens that the mouse I randomly grabbed the the IT Bin was one of those mice.

    I know bugs happen when shit interaction, but come the fuck on, Microsoft!  This is your IDE, and your fucking mouse drivers. And this bug was in the wild since at least Vista, and the solution I found was dated 2010.  Does not a single developer working at Microsoft use a Microsoft mouse?  I mean, you guys DO make fairly good hardware. At least ONE guy working for you must use a MS mouse.  Did, like, no one say "hmm, weird-- I'm having a showstopping issue with VS, I better file a bug on this one".  In fact, fuck showstopping-- breaking Intellisense isn't just showstopping. It, like, stops the entire run of the show. nnonono-- it stops the run of ALL shows. Yes, breaking Intellisense should be like someone plugging in bulb to a lightboard, and all of Broadway fucking going offline. All of it. Even Off-Broadway.

    How did this get into the wild? How? HOW?  HOW? GIANT RED COMIC-SANS HOW THAT I AM TOO LAZY TO CHANGE THE HTML FOR?!??!?!?



  • s/I sense a mouse/I smell a rat/



  •  Mouse pointer has moved please rebboot to update



  •  that's what you get when you are too nice(2)


  • Considered Harmful

    @Lorne Kates said:

    In fact, fuck showstopping-- breaking Intellisense isn't just showstopping. It, like, stops the entire run of the show. nnonono-- it stops the run of ALL shows. Yes, breaking Intellisense should be like someone plugging in bulb to a lightboard, and all of Broadway fucking going offline. All of it. Even Off-Broadway.

    Intellisense is a convenience (a damn nice one, but a convenience still). If you're completely unable to develop without it, perhaps you should work on your core competencies as a developer.



  • @joe.edwards said:

    Intellisense is a convenience (a damn nice one, but a convenience still). If you're completely unable to develop without it, perhaps you should work on your core competencies as a developer.

    Bullshit. The resource that limits development productivity is memory. ANY memory aid is a huge boost to productivity.

    BTW, this OP is how you gripe about Microsoft.



  • And then there is than old bug with Intellimouse wheel that's causing extreme scrolling speed with some programs (namely, Microsoft Internet Explorer). The bug is there since forever.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @joe.edwards said:
    Intellisense is a convenience (a damn nice one, but a convenience still). If you're completely unable to develop without it, perhaps you should work on your core competencies as a developer.

    Bullshit. The resource that limits development productivity is memory. ANY memory aid is a huge boost to productivity.

    BTW, this OP is how you gripe about Microsoft.

    It's not just a memory-aid, it's a typing aid. Even a simple "tab complete strings which are already present in files loaded into memory" is a wonderful thing to have.


  • Java Dev

     @joe.edwards said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    In fact, fuck showstopping-- breaking Intellisense isn't just showstopping. It, like, stops the entire run of the show. nnonono-- it stops the run of ALL shows. Yes, breaking Intellisense should be like someone plugging in bulb to a lightboard, and all of Broadway fucking going offline. All of it. Even Off-Broadway.
    Intellisense is a convenience (a damn nice one, but a convenience still). If you're completely unable to develop without it, perhaps you should work on your core competencies as a developer.
    I'm on linux, and use vi. Hence, I'm bereft of the beauty that intellisense undoubtably is. However, I know I wouldn't work without syntax highlighting for the world, and I imagine the feeling is similar...



  • Personally I prefer Tomato's. Whole Tomato's.

    Always preferred them over Intellisense. I don't know if using it would fix your 'issue' though.

    Another thing that winds me up however is that I work with embedded systems a lot, and we commonly add USB ports on them that show up as a serial port, and Windows regularly thinks they are "Standard Serial Mouse"'s. How long do we have to go for before Microsoft drops such hardware ? I mean, I think I scrapped my serial mouse when I upgraded to Windows 95 for crying out loud!



  • @Mole said:

    Another thing that winds me up however is that I work with embedded systems a lot, and we commonly add USB ports on them that show up as a serial port, and Windows regularly thinks they are "Standard Serial Mouse"'s. How long do we have to go for before Microsoft drops such hardware ? I mean, I think I scrapped my serial mouse when I upgraded to Windows 95 for crying out loud!

    You use Windows in Embedded systems ?
    You already have more problems than a serial mouse



  • @joe.edwards said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    In fact, fuck showstopping-- breaking Intellisense isn't just showstopping. It, like, stops the entire run of the show. nnonono-- it stops the run of ALL shows. Yes, breaking Intellisense should be like someone plugging in bulb to a lightboard, and all of Broadway fucking going offline. All of it. Even Off-Broadway.

    Intellisense is a convenience (a damn nice one, but a convenience still). If you're completely unable to develop without it, perhaps you should work on your core competencies as a developer.

    In all honesty, working with Intellisense kinda makes me feel like a hack. Because it's so convenient, I can't remember shit by myself anymore. Now, what namespace was that in again?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @joe.edwards said:
    Intellisense is a convenience (a damn nice one, but a convenience still). If you're completely unable to develop without it, perhaps you should work on your core competencies as a developer.

    Bullshit. The resource that limits development productivity is memory. ANY memory aid is a huge boost to productivity.



    I can't tell if you are being ironic here or not.

    If you are, that's a pretty funny play on words. If you aren't, you are a fucking idiot.

     



  • @joe.edwards said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    In fact, fuck showstopping-- breaking Intellisense isn't just showstopping. It, like, stops the entire run of the show. nnonono-- it stops the run of ALL shows. Yes, breaking Intellisense should be like someone plugging in bulb to a lightboard, and all of Broadway fucking going offline. All of it. Even Off-Broadway.
    Intellisense is a convenience (a damn nice one, but a convenience still). If you're completely unable to develop without it, perhaps you should work on your core competencies as a developer.

     

    I wouldn't classify the ability to memorize namespaces, class names, methods, properties, and parameters as a "core competency", but I do agree with the point that, while it will be a bigger PITA without it but it should not be beyond one's abilities to look things up in the documentation.

     

    On the topic though: I have been using a wireless Microsoft mouse for years. I probably haven't encountered this issue because I Don't install their intellipoint or whatever it's called.

     

     

     



  • @Mole said:

    Personally I prefer Tomato's. Whole Tomato's.

    Tomato's what?

    @Mole said:

    I mean, I think I scrapped my serial mouse when I upgraded to Windows 95 for crying out loud!

    A ps/2 style mouse is still a serial mouse, albeit in a different connector. My first USB (to be pedantic this is still "serial" but not RS232) mouse was circa 2000: the original Microsoft Explorer optical. It still works, even if the kids gave it a good workout. But for years I used it via ps/2 due to compatibility and minimal available USB ports.



  • @Zemm said:

    @Mole said:
    Personally I prefer Tomato's. Whole Tomato's.

    Tomato's what?

    wholetomato.com

    @Zemm said:

    @Mole said:
    I mean, I think I scrapped my serial mouse when I upgraded to Windows 95 for crying out loud!

    A ps/2 style mouse is still a serial mouse, albeit in a different connector. My first USB (to be pedantic this is still "serial" but not RS232) mouse was circa 2000: the original Microsoft Explorer optical. It still works, even if the kids gave it a good workout. But for years I used it via ps/2 due to compatibility and minimal available USB ports.

    You've probably never experienced it then. Build an embedded product, give it a USB connector, for simplicity show as a COM port on Windows, watch in amazement as Windows thinks your product is a mouse and then your pointer goes completely nuts. Have to change the product to stop Windows thinking you are a mouse.



  • @fennec said:

    s/I sense a mouse/I smell a rat/
    Yes.  In the early '60s, writer Jack Douglas picked up an altered phrase from his Japanese-born wife and started indicating suspicion of anything by saying "I sniff a mouse".

    Shakespeare fans might prefer to simply blurt out "surströmming!" as a rendition of "something is rotten in Denmark--er, Sweden".



  • @da Doctah said:

    "I sniff a mouse"

    That's some sort of furry sex thing, isn't it?



  • @Mole said:

    , watch in amazement as Windows thinks your product is a mouse and then your pointer goes completely nuts.

    From memory those com port mouses use magic strings to identify themselves to the os/driver. Obviously your product sends just the right string to trigger this behaviour.

    I remember getting a similar problem when flicking between 2 (Microsoft) and 3 button (Mouse Systems) mode on my original 1993 mouse after it had initialised.



  • @joe.edwards said:

    @Lorne Kates said:
    In fact, fuck showstopping-- breaking Intellisense isn't just showstopping. It, like, stops the entire run of the show. nnonono-- it stops the run of ALL shows. Yes, breaking Intellisense should be like someone plugging in bulb to a lightboard, and all of Broadway fucking going offline. All of it. Even Off-Broadway.

    Intellisense is a convenience (a damn nice one, but a convenience still). If you're completely unable to develop without it, perhaps you should work on your core competencies as a developer.

    IntelliSense is a productivity multiplier. I wouldn't say I'm completely unable to develop without it, but I'm measurably slowed down without it. (This is also one of the reasons that ReSharper is effectively mandatory IMO.)

    On that topic - does anyone else think that job interviews that ask you to write code, without an IDE, are completely pointless? It's not like you're going to NOT be using an IDE in your day-to-day development, unless the prospective employer intends for you to code in Notepad, in which case aborting the interview is the only logical option.



  • @mikeTheLiar said:

    @joe.edwards said:
    @Lorne Kates said:
    In fact, fuck showstopping-- breaking Intellisense isn't just showstopping. It, like, stops the entire run of the show. nnonono-- it stops the run of ALL shows. Yes, breaking Intellisense should be like someone plugging in bulb to a lightboard, and all of Broadway fucking going offline. All of it. Even Off-Broadway.

    Intellisense is a convenience (a damn nice one, but a convenience still). If you're completely unable to develop without it, perhaps you should work on your core competencies as a developer.

    In all honesty, working with Intellisense kinda makes me feel like a hack. Because it's so convenient, I can't remember shit by myself anymore. Now, what namespace was that in again?

    You must be using resharper, too, then? Because without it, you would still have to manually add namespaces... If you do (use resharper) then I concur, I just type something, press enter and it magically makes all changes for me...



  • @Zemm said:

    @Mole said:
    , watch in amazement as Windows thinks your product is a mouse and then your pointer goes completely nuts.

    From memory those com port mouses use magic strings to identify themselves to the os/driver. Obviously your product sends just the right string to trigger this behaviour.

    When I investigated, I found out that Windows opened the COM port at 1200 baud and if it got data which "looked" like position data it assumed a mouse. Of course, the USB driver we are using doesn't care what you set the COM port baud rate to (as it never converts to a "real" serial port), and just delivers all data anyway, so Windows very quickly thought we were a mouse.



  • @PleegWat said:

    I'm on linux, and use vi. Hence, I'm bereft of the beauty that intellisense undoubtably is.
     

    You should try the vim plugin "youcompleteme".



  • @Mole said:

    @Zemm said:
    @Mole said:
    , watch in amazement as Windows thinks your product is a mouse and then your pointer goes completely nuts.

    From memory those com port mouses use magic strings to identify themselves to the os/driver. Obviously your product sends just the right string to trigger this behaviour.

    When I investigated, I found out that Windows opened the COM port at 1200 baud and if it got data which "looked" like position data it assumed a mouse. Of course, the USB driver we are using doesn't care what you set the COM port baud rate to (as it never converts to a "real" serial port), and just delivers all data anyway, so Windows very quickly thought we were a mouse.

    That's happened to me too. I very quickly learned to unplug debug connections from dev kits when rebooting my PC, or to power down the dev board and not turn it back on until Windows was fully up and running.



  • Yep, Intelisense. That stupid thing that makes VisualStudio take 10 seconds to update a character after you type. Yeah, it's nice, but would be better if it worked.

     Anyway, Microsoft periferals are great. They are quite well made, and usable... Just don't try to plug them on Windows, beause they come with Microsoft software. And somehow, the software they come with is of lower quality than even Windows.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    How did this get into the wild? How? HOW?  HOW? GIANT RED COMIC-SANS HOW THAT I AM TOO LAZY TO CHANGE THE HTML FOR?!??!?!?

    FTFY. I can't believe that after 25 replies no-one took this most-important task up on himself



  • @Mcoder said:

    Yep, Intelisense. That stupid thing that makes VisualStudio take 10 seconds to update a character after you type. Yeah, it's nice, but would be better if it worked.

    Thats why I prefer Visual Assist, yes it costs money, but its what IntelliSense should have been!



  • @Mcoder said:

    Yep, Intelisense. That stupid thing that makes VisualStudio take 10 seconds to update a character after you type. Yeah, it's nice, but would be better if it worked.

    It works great, assuming you aren't trying to run it on a toaster.



  • @grinderofl said:

    You must be using resharper, too, then? Because without it, you would still have to manually add namespaces...

    Right-click, "Resolve", pick the namespace.

    Every time someone tries to sell me on ReSharper, they list off a laundry list of features that Visual Studio already has. Hell just a couple weeks ago, I showed a guy the standard VS "refactor" dialog, and he said, "oh I thought that was a ReSharper feature..."

    I think ReSharper is a scam. All it does is rearrange keyboard shortcuts, and convinces dumb programmers that it's solving all these problems. Oh, and enforces using "var" everywhere for no good reason.



  • @Mcoder said:

    Yep, Intelisense. That stupid thing that makes VisualStudio take 10 seconds to update a character after you type. Yeah, it's nice, but would be better if it worked.

    Yeah, it's really slow on my VIC-20, too. m$ sux lol!



  • @Mcoder said:

    Yep, Intelisense. That stupid thing that makes VisualStudio take 10 seconds to update a character after you type.

    Well I think the problem is they ported it to the Commodore-128 which simply doesn't have the horsepower to run it.

    Try using a computer built in this decade, see if it helps.



  • @Dogsworth said:

    Yeah, it's really slow on my VIC-20, too. m$ sux lol!

    SIMUL-COMMODORE-JOKE!!!!!



  • @flop said:

    @PleegWat said:

    I'm on linux, and use vi. Hence, I'm bereft of the beauty that intellisense undoubtably is.
     

    You should try the vim plugin "youcompleteme".

    I was going to say that there are all kinds of plugins to emulate this for vim. Of course, if he's really using vi, and not vim, then it's a moot point.



  • @The_Assimilator said:

    IntelliSense is a productivity multiplier. I wouldn't say I'm completely unable to develop without it, but I'm measurably slowed down without it. (This is also one of the reasons that ReSharper is effectively mandatory IMO.)

    Really? While that kind of stuff is certainly helpful for speeding up the time it takes to physically type out code, I'd be very surprised if that's a meaningful fraction of the work you do. I know that I personally spend maybe 10% of my productive time actually typing, and most of the time either debugging, testing or designing (usually on a scratch pad). And that's coming from a guy at the low end of the totem pole who doesn't even do any architectural work.

     


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Snooder said:

    @The_Assimilator said:

    IntelliSense is a productivity multiplier. I wouldn't say I'm completely unable to develop without it, but I'm measurably slowed down without it. (This is also one of the reasons that ReSharper is effectively mandatory IMO.)

    Really? While that kind of stuff is certainly helpful for speeding up the time it takes to physically type out code, I'd be very surprised if that's a meaningful fraction of the work you do. I know that I personally spend maybe 10% of my productive time actually typing, and most of the time either debuggingtweeting, testingfacebooking or designing (usually on a scratch pad)commenting on TDWTF. And that's coming from a guy at the low end of the totem pole who doesn't even do any architectural work.

     

    FTFY



  • @Snooder said:

    I know that I personally spend maybe 10% of my productive time actually typing, and most of the time either debugging, testing or designing (usually on a scratch pad). And that's coming from a guy at the low end of the totem pole who doesn't even do any architectural work.

    That's true and I agree with you that, as I've said dozens of times here, the actual code is one of the least-important parts of programming.

    But intellisense is still invaluable for when you're typing that code, as you don't need to clutter your brain with pointless trivia about function order or namespaces or what-not, you can keep your entire scratch pad-developed design in your skull while you type.

    Also if you spend much of your time debugging, intellisense is perfect for that. You can look at the values inside a variable RIGHT THERE ON THE VARIABLE ITSELF IN THE ACTUAL CODE, not in some stupid window somewhere else. Nor do you have to add rarely-inspected variables to a stupid watch list or shift windows around, you just scroll to it and hover your mouse over it.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @Snooder said:

    @The_Assimilator said:

    IntelliSense is a productivity multiplier. I wouldn't say I'm completely unable to develop without it, but I'm measurably slowed down without it. (This is also one of the reasons that ReSharper is effectively mandatory IMO.)

    Really? While that kind of stuff is certainly helpful for speeding up the time it takes to physically type out code, I'd be very surprised if that's a meaningful fraction of the work you do. I know that I personally spend maybe 10% of my productive time actually typing, and most of the time either debuggingtweeting, testingfacebooking or designing (usually on a scratch pad)commenting on TDWTF. And that's coming from a guy at the low end of the totem pole who doesn't even do any architectural work.

    FTFY



    Well, I did specify "productive time." I made no statement about how much of the time I spend at work is productive.

    Besides, I don't have a twitter, and I haven't been on facebook since I graduated. ALL my time is spent commenting on TDWTF.

     


  • Java Dev

    @DrakeSmith said:

    @flop said:

    @PleegWat said:

    I'm on linux, and use vi. Hence, I'm bereft of the beauty that intellisense undoubtably is.
     

    You should try the vim plugin "youcompleteme".

    I was going to say that there are all kinds of plugins to emulate this for vim. Of course, if he's really using vi, and not vim, then it's a moot point.

     

     Granted, I've got this problem of consistently saying vi when I mean vim. And I do use ctags for jumping and completion. Might wanna look at some plugins though, I keep having to jump when I want to look up function parameters.

     



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @grinderofl said:
    You must be using resharper, too, then? Because without it, you would still have to manually add namespaces...

    Right-click, "Resolve", pick the namespace.

    Every time someone tries to sell me on ReSharper, they list off a laundry list of features that Visual Studio already has. Hell just a couple weeks ago, I showed a guy the standard VS "refactor" dialog, and he said, "oh I thought that was a ReSharper feature..."

    I think ReSharper is a scam. All it does is rearrange keyboard shortcuts, and convinces dumb programmers that it's solving all these problems. Oh, and enforces using "var" everywhere for no good reason.

    And when you need to add a using for a namespace in a library your project isn't currently referencing? Then it's fun times browsing through Visual Studio's clunky Add Reference dialog. Whereas ReSharper automatically adds the reference - meaning you stay in the code; your flow of concentration is not interrupted. This is but one example.

    Back when VS2010 came out, my employer bought ReSharper for pretty much all the senior guys, including me. When we moved to VS2012, it was decided that a new round of ReSharper licenses was too expensive. (Or to put it another way, management decided the funds would be better used buying high-end laptops for management, so they can run Excel on discrete graphics.) Going from VS2010 + ReSharper to VS2012 without it was a step back, even with the built-in improvements in 2012.

    I know I sound like I'm trying to sell the tool, but it really is worth every cent of the extortionate license cost. ReSharper's IntelliSense is better than VS's in all cases, and when it comes to IntelliSense for dynamically-typed languages like JavaScript, ReSharper blows VS out of the water. I have held off on buying ReSharper on my personal dime until now, because I'm a fucking cheapass, but the fact that I'm moving more and more into web work is really making me consider purchasing it on my own dime, despite the ridiculous "upgrade" costs.

    As for foisting var on its users - I'm pretty sure you can turn that off :).


  • Considered Harmful

    @The_Assimilator said:

    Back when VS2010 came out, my employer bought ReSharper for pretty much all the senior guys, including me. When we moved to VS2012, it was decided that a new round of ReSharper licenses was too expensive. (Or to put it another way, management decided the funds would be better used buying high-end laptops for management, so they can run Excel on discrete graphics.) Going from VS2010 + ReSharper to VS2012 without it was a step back, even with the built-in improvements in 2012.

    I know I sound like I'm trying to sell the tool, but it really is worth every cent of the extortionate license cost. ReSharper's IntelliSense is better than VS's in all cases, and when it comes to IntelliSense for dynamically-typed languages like JavaScript, ReSharper blows VS out of the water. I have held off on buying ReSharper on my personal dime until now, because I'm a fucking cheapass, but the fact that I'm moving more and more into web work is really making me consider purchasing it on my own dime, despite the ridiculous "upgrade" costs.

    My favorite is that it grays out redundant or dead code. I've been saved several times by "expression is always true" [or false], but it also helps tremendously in identifying/removing redundancies and simplifying existing code.


  •  @Mcoder said:

    Yep, Intelisense. That stupid thing that makes VisualStudio take 10 seconds to update a character after you type. Yeah, it's nice, but would be better if it worked.

    Either you're using an system that should be in a museum, or you have too much shit running when you're trying to code. On a well setup system, Intellisense is seamless and works beautifully. I know I'd be less productive without it. It certainly makes it easier to get the right property from a class when it could go by one of a dozen different names because the program is 10 years old and has had 15 different programmers, most of whom didn't follow the coding standards because they thought they were "too good" for the standards.

     


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