The Update to Visual Studio 2012 (which I am only just catching up with) now allows me to target XP again. Now I can use this #$%$** thing to support my code base.
My frustration with the current generation of tools is difficult to put into words. The chronic stupidity of Microsoft and their effort to force developers to move to their new platforms while sabotaging everything else has made my life a mess over the past couple of years.
On one hand the Uni is dragging its feet about upgrading from WinXP to Win7... which has only really (mostly) finished in the past month. However, I still have XP machines in the labs becasue research boxes are not allowed to use the precious Win7 license pool.... so they have tried to drag all the development machines up to Win7 (becasue Visual Studio 2012 will not run on XP) but still deploy on XP..... as you can imagine this makes the whole debugging round trip just stupidly painful.
So I have been trying to get things done on virtual machines, or using older compiler chains, or just building my own boxes for development while not mangling the code base....
Then I have all the hell of the library situation. DirectX 9 is still kina alive... but the ways to handle it across two or three different platforms is not exactly the same. .NET is a moving target for all the GUI stuff. My options of moving to Qt or WxForms or some other third party windowing library have just resulted in hours of chasing my tail.
In the mean time I have picked up lots of other small projects that sucked my time up and distracted everything by filling my head with all sorts of other half baked possible solutions.
I have even started looking at developing on the Mac... except the Uni has gone on another anti-Mac crusade... all while purchasing iPads aplenty.... that I have no tools to develop for....
Toss in a few new research systems that have endless weirdnesses, python dependencies, funny little closed wireless networks, medical instrument suppliers that lie through their teeth, debugging licensing systems for companies that just have to invent their own wheels.... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Every so often I wonder what keeps my brains from leaking out my ears....
All I want is a stable platform and a stable set of tools to just get some work done.
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