Visual Studio 2013 Released 198
jones_supa writes "Final releases of Visual Studio 2013, .NET 4.5.1, and Team Foundation Server 2013 are now available. As part of the new release, the C++ engine implements variadic templates, delegating constructors, non-static data member initializers, uniform initialization, and 'using' aliases. The editor has seen new features, C++ improvements and performance optimizations. Support for Windows 8.1 has been enhanced and the new XAML UI Responsiveness tool and Profile Guided Optimization help to analyze responsiveness in Windows Store apps. Graphics debugging has been furthered to have better C++ AMP tools and a new remote debugger (x86, x64, ARM). As before, MSDN and DreamSpark subscribers can obtain the releases from the respective channels, and the Express edition is available zero cost for all."
Re: Who cares? (Score:3, Informative)
Both VS and TFS 2012 were massive improvements over the 2010 editions for what its worth. 2013 seems more iterative and superfluous.
Re: zero cost (Score:3, Informative)
The Express editions have a bunch of arbitrary limitations in them.
The two that bit me were:
1. You can't install plugins. I don't currently use any I can't live without, but several features in VS2013 -- e.g. NuGET, the thumbnail view replacing the scroll bar, better refactoring, visual indent level indication -- started out as plugins. Even if you take the view that eventually, all third-party plugin features eventually make it into the retail version, you're opting into being years behind the current state of the art.
2. The Express editions are artificially siloed into several versions, none of which has all of the features. If you need two features that are in different versions, at best you have to keep bouncing between the editions. If you need both features simultaneously, you're stuffed.
For me, the two features I needed simultaneously were the ability to create a mixed C# and F# program that ran on the desktop. To make a C# desktop app, you naturally need the desktop edition, but that edition doesn't include any F# support. For some demented reason, that's off in the Web edition, where it seems focused on ASP.NET development, not desktop development.
(And if you ask me why F#, well, this is Slashdot, isn't it? If I'd said Haskell instead, you'd just be nodding now. :) )
Re:As a new user of Visual Studio (Score:4, Informative)
Missing relative to other tools? Not terribly much, honestly; I wouldn't use VS for Java (by preference, I'd use NetBeans) or for POSIX native code, but both are possible. Some VS extensions are very handy; there's a tool for finding, installing and updating them called NuGet (should be built into current versions of VS, I think); you may want to check them out although it sounds like you've already found some plugins that you like. The git integration will probably improve over time; there has already been an update or two. Eclipse has slightly more refactoring power than is built into VS, but there are plugins for that and the Eclipse UI drives me nuts when I try to use it. The only major thing that comes to mind is that VS isn't going to run on anything except Windows (unless Wine support for it is a lot better than I remember) so, although there are Linux-compatible IDEs that can read its project files, it might not be the ideal tool for mixed environments.
Re: Who cares? (Score:4, Informative)
My experience was the opposite. VS2012 was night-and-day faster than VS2010 on my work machine, if only because it was much better at multi-threading. My peers had a similar experience. Perhaps my experience was different due to the fact that I don't run that many plug-ins.
VS2013 is an improvement as well, so I am curious to see how quickly I can get an upgrade approved.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, VS2012 and VS2013 still support XP. I'm running some stuff on Server 2003 right now, that I compiled with VS2013RC.
Here's how it's done:
Windows XP Targeting with C++ in Visual Studio 2012 [msdn.com]
Works exactly the same in VS2013 also.
Mandatory registration (Score:4, Informative)
Writing a program in Visual Studio requires mandatory registration, or the program will refuse to start up. This also gives Microsoft to arbitrarily deny specific programmers the ability to publish a program.
Oh, and this, from the VS 2010 Privacy Policy [microsoft.com], suggests that Microsoft can remotely target your computer after it does error reporting:
It's somewhat disappointing that Slashdot is used to advertise software like this. Fuck that, I'll stick with free (as in freedom) compilers like GCC, MinGW, LLVM etc. and free IDEs.