Sunday, August 19, 2007

It can't be true.

Well, I am proud to be a visual studio developer. I know VB, C#, and 10 other languages. I love visual studio, and in general I think Microsoft is a great company. I mean, I would work for them. But sometimes I just have to take a step back and say "It can't be true!"



Do a search for the topic of developing code with admin rights. There are hundreds of comments with advise about how developers should not develop code under any administrative account. Clearly, this is a good practise in today's world. Developers don't need admin rights. The reasoning makes since. I agree. In fact, I don't just say I believe it, my company and I are drinking the cool aid. That is the way to have been developing for 2 years now. I develop using VS2005 on XP Pro and I am a standard user. It is a real PAIN sometimes. Sometime in the future I will have to enumerate all the issues I have encountered and how to get around them. There are lots of issues, but you can get around most of them. It is possible to develop code WITHOUT admin rights.



Soon our company will be changing my development box to Vista. I thought, sure, maybe I will do more .NET 3.0 development. (I know I can do that now, but when the company has Vista everywhere, the question of "Does the client machine have .NET 3.0 installed?" is gone. )Anyway, I was not worried. Then a coworker emailed me the following comment and link:



Microsoft’s advice when using Visual Studio 2005 under Vista: Run as an administrator. Period.
Here’s the link:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa972193.aspx



I do mostly web development against a local copy of SQL Server. The company now has a policy that developers can not develop as an admin.



I hope this is fixed soon. How are we suppose to follow the excellent advise to "code under any administrative account" if we have to using Microsoft's products. "Come on...." :(



Well, can I develop as a normal user with VS2008? I will look into that. Since you can target .NET Framework 2.0, 3.0, or 3.5 with VS2008, if standard user development is possible that would not be a bad change. I just have to convince the company to make that move as well. At this point, I can not assume anything.



OK more later.