Aqua Bird Consulting » Get a VS2010 Ultimate Experience for Less

As of writing this blog post, there are thousands of developers converging in Las Vegas for the official release of Visual Studio 2010. I’ve been using Visual Studio 2010 for the a while now and it has been a generally positive experience. While as was exploring the VS2010 site I saw this question posed. “What Edition is Right for Me?” That prompted me to look through the editions. Microsoft has planned to sell for commercial versions: Professional, Premium, Ultimate, and Test Professional. A much smaller selection that the VS2008 editions, but that is a good thing. What shocked me was the outrageous price jump from Professional to Ultimate, from $799 to $11,899; that is over $11,000 difference for one copy of Visual Studio. So this blog post is to show you how to get an Ultimate experience for less, so that you can utilize that extra money for pizza and beers for you development staff.

1.) Visual Studio Professional ($799)

you are going to need this right? So what is missing from Professional that is in Ultimate?

Intellitrace (Historical Debugger)
Static Code Analysis
Code Metrics
Profiling

a.) Intellitrace ( $0 no alternative )

sadly I couldn’t find something that replaced this feature. It is very cool. Look at it this way though, the fact that Microsoft moved it up to the premium edition makes me think that they feel the common developer probably doesn’t need it. I also rarely used this feature in my own development.

b.)Static Code Analysis & Code Metrics ($410)

so what is static code analysis? Wikipedia defines it as the analysis of computer software that is performed without actually executing programs built from that software. Hmm… this sounds familiar, I think I’ve done that before. Oh wait I have! NDepend is a great static analysis tool that has been around for a while now.

c.) Profiling ( $0 – $500 )

There are a ton of profilers for the .Net framework, and some of them are FREE! In this post I chose the two that a company might buy ANTS Memory Profiler and JetBrains ReSharper.

2.) Testing

So you are a testing kind of developer, that’s great but you want all the extras that ultimate offers.

Code Coverage
Test Impact Analysis
Coded UI Test
Web Performance Testing
Load Testing
etc…

a.) Code Coverage ($479)

NCover is a mature and great tool for code coverage.

b.) Web Performance Testing and Load Testing($0)

The web has been around long before VS2010, so this problem has been solved a million times. Realizing that there are a ton of tools out there to do this and I won’t list each of them. Just Google and prepare to be overwhelmed by the possibilities.

c.) Coded UI Test ($0)

Watin allows you to code tests for UI interaction of web applications, which is probably the hardest interaction to test for.

d.) Resharper ($349)

I have to mention this tool just because it is so good and it improves the unit testing experience inside of visual studio, regardless of your framework.

3.)Database Development

the dreaded database…. how do we handle this stuff?

Database Deployment
Database Change Management
Database Unit Testing
Data Generation

a.) Database Deployment ($0 – not needed)

In theory this sounds great, but the majority of companies have a company structure that forbids any developer from making database pushes; the job of pushes are usually left to a Database Administrator. They will probably want to execute SQL that they have crafted and labored over.

b.) Database Change Management ($0 – code option)

again this is probably left up to your DBA with a combination of your source control (SVN, Hg, Git, TFS). I recommend looking into a migration framework if you really want to control the versioning of a database.

c.)Database Unit Testing (Whaaaaat? $0)

this troubles me on two fronts. First off you probably shouldn’t be unit testing enough of your database to have a whole project dedicated to it. Secondly, this is what developers refer to as integration tests and you don’t need any other tools other than your favorite unit testing package to do this. Granted, VS2010 probably has some nice UI tools to make this more pleasurable, but in my opinion tests are about results and not how pretty the UI is.

d.) Data Generation ($0)

This is a problem that isn’t that complicated to solve, and again has been solved. Check out AutoPoco which allows you to generate a ton of data easily through a fluent interface. After generation, just go ahead and pump this data into your database with your favorite ORM or DAL.

4.)Architecture and Modeling ($100)

Buy a whiteboard for modeling and get your team involved. There is nothing worse than an Ivory tower architect that pushes his architectural will on the team without discussion.

5.)Source Control ($300)

Unfuddle is a great online source control provider and in my opinion gives you a lot of things your business will use from Team Foundation Server. When I quote the $300, I am talking about for your whole company and not per developer. This is a huge cost savings. There are also a ton of other online source control providers that are similar to Unfuddle.

Tools I have to mention: TortoiseSVN, MsysGit, TortoiseHg, AnkhSVN (all free)

Conclusion and Total Price: $2637 ($2832 less than Premium and $9262 less than Ultimate)

That savings per developer is nothing to joke about. You could save over $9000 dollars but just looking around more. So what is the downside? Well you will have a hodgepodge of tools to use and many of these options might lack UI tools and possibly Visual Studio integration. Do your homework and see if the benefits of buying these tools outweigh your desire to have a all in one tool like VS2010. If you have a team of five developers, I just saved you over $45k. Your welcome.

Adrian C Dunne

Just reading this makes me want to buy Ultimate, I’m already overwhelmed by the number of software licenses and instance I need to track for all my developers, what a messy solution this would be. This blog is also very subjective, take database deployment for example…who mentioned anything about production? This is a priceless tool for quickly deploying changes to dev and test environments and not to mention the ability to have my database assets under version control, being able to compare them post deployment to ensure everything is in the right place. Now let’s take another example, architecture…come on now… a whiteboard? Don’t be so ridiculous. Everyone let’s throw away all our architecture tools to get a whiteboard! Of course people have whiteboards, of course they discuss (or should) discuss designs, but where does your whiteboard drawing end up? How are new team members supposed to understand existing systems? How are you supposed to validate implementation against a design the team agreed upon? How do we generate all those code stubs? I guess your answer to that is to take a picture on your camera phone and distribute the jpeg. Let’s face facts, yes it’s expensive, but look at what you’re getting in one package. Let’s not get into the ALM discussion.
Adrian C Dunne

“If you have a team of five developers, I just saved you over $45k. Your welcome.”

Sure, you just saved us $45k in license fees. Unfortunately, we lost all that and more in productivity due to a hefty injection of chaos into my development team with this huge bucket of tools. You have also increased my training costs and complexity per developer, tester, architect and project manager. Not to mention the fact that hardly any of these tools talk to each other, meaning another unhealthy dosage of productivity loss. Hope you don’t take offense if we don’t thank you.
Anonymous

I’m sorry you feel overwhelmed by learning technology, but I have been using most if not all the tools above successfully for the last several years. I’ve worked in teams that use TFS and have Ultimate and most don’t even care that the features are there. Don’t get me started about TFS.

Also training a team of developers is a natural evolution, you don’t just sit them down and try to cram the knowledge into their brains. It’s disheartening the lack of confidence in your own development team. “…chaos into my development team.” The idea that your developers are resistant to any new introduction into their ecosystem and that these options would send them spiraling into chaos is ludicrous.

“This is a priceless tool for quickly deploying changes to dev and test environments and not to mention the ability to have my database assets under version control, being able to compare them post deployment to ensure everything is in the right place.”

All my current projects manage the version of the database they are on and can also seed data into the necessary tables. All done from code and managed in source control. My applications are also smart enough to know if the database is out of sync and needs to upgrade itself. All this for FREE. To deploy, just build and xcopy to production. Not sure who wouldn’t like that?

Respectfully I am not being ridiculous. I’ve also used whiteboards to motivate and drive a project more successfully than a document hidden in a windows share that nobody knows is there. Spending hours creating a document that is not always visible is a waste of time. A whiteboard gives a sense of this is important, but the team can change it. A document gives a sense of “don’t change this cause that guy will get pissed, see his name is all over it.”

“How do we generate all those code stubs?” This is a sign of problems in your architecture. How does a code generator know you business intentions. I have a huge problem with code generators because all it represents is a facade of productivity. “Look how many lines I created today!” Any seasoned developer would laugh hearing that line.

“I guess your answer to that is to take a picture on your camera phone and distribute the jpeg.” Sure why not, what’s wrong with that, or better yet. Just leave it and buy another whiteboard while the project is ongoing.

Lastly “How are new team members supposed to understand existing systems?” You have unit tests right? You can easily build your application in the devs environment correct? Let them deep dive into the code and play around. Code should be self explaining. When a kid gets a Lego set, do they sit there are read the manual or do they just start playing with the blocks?