At 06:17 PM 4/12/2006, Bruce K3CMZ wrote:
A few comments on the answers I got about the code
Dan KB5My talked about some formal education
As he took some classes in 1993, I was retired at the
end of 1993, after 40 years with the ding-a-ling
company my school daze were over, but thanks anyway.
Eric suggested searching for "#region"
and Ken N9VV pointed me to Sharp Develop to look
at the code, both good points and free.
Bob and Jim talked about the IDE, but thats not
a go because of the cost, I could pay to heat my
house for a year if I went for the full MicroSuck
dot net thing! And there is a lot of stuff in there
that I just do not need!
Cost isn't an issue...
You can download the "VCsharp 2005 Express" edition for *free*, but that's
.NET 2.0. I suspect you can download the equivalent older .NET 1.1 version
too. It's about 400+ MB. Somewhere in the archives in the last couple
months are the links for the older versions.
The express editions will let you look at the code, compile it, etc. What
the free version doesn't give you is useful stuff like breakpoints, but it
does allow you to generate fully functional versions.
If you went fullboat "Enterprise Edition MSDN" it's something like
$2000. That's massive overkill, but still fairly reasonable: If you want
to engage in heavy development of a "software radio" you need the tools.
Consider that in the same category as an investment in oscilloscopes,
signal generators, and spectrum analyzers if you want to go develop
microwave radios. You have a choice: low cost tools, and a tedious and
slow development process (Yes, you CAN do microwave development with a
surplus diode probe and a voltmeter; or develop software by the recompile
with lots of debug printfs method) OR, you can invest in some tools, and
make life easier. It is your choice..
( I think Visual Studio Standard Edition would probably work, and that's
$199 upgrade... And you can probably upgrade from almost any manky old
IDE.. but I'd check... Pro Edition is $550.. not sure exactly which one
would be needed... the differences are in things like XML/XSLT)
Steve, Jim and Bob talked about the rebuild to v1.7.
This thing started about four years ago, first in VB6
then in C#. It ain't done yet, but it is real good!
A rebuild will take some time, maybe a few more years!
And MicroSuck dot Net 2003 is already three years old!
Bringing up the interesting question of what the migration plan to .net2.0
is. It's something that needs to be explicitly planned for. Eventually,
.net 1.1 isn't going to be supported (in a few years), nor will MS be
gracious enough to give away free development tools. Threading works a lot
better in 2.0.
As I may not be able to even see the screen, v1.7 is
not in my future, I will stick with v1.6.x for now.
I would like to point out that a rebuild might better
be a whole new start from scratch thing, using what has
been done as a quide. The good work already done is not
a waste, and should serve quite well for some time.
And I would like to see an IDE used that is not dependent
on a company that wants to suck up every last dollar! Prehaps
the first order should be to select an IDE that our kids and
grandkids can afford, and would not expire every year or so!
I agree, in general, however, I suspect that you periodically update your
PC hardware. You're not contemplating running PowerSDR 2.0 on that old
8088 PC in the garage. If you want to actively develop software,
periodic tool upgrades are a fact of life, just like buying bigger hard
disks, blank CD-ROMs for backups, etc.
MS is pretty good these days about providing a very low entry cost (as in
free) development environment, but only for their latest products.
Not every last dollar... just most of them. All your bases belong to us!
You will be assimilated!
Jim
