Free Desktop Software Development Dead In Windows 8 462
benfrog writes "Microsoft has decided to restrict Visual Studio 11 Express, the free-to-use version of its integrated development environment, to producing only Metro-style applications. Those who would like to produce conventional desktop applications or command line -based applications are stuck with Visual Studio 2010 or buying the full version. Microsoft announced the Visual Studio 11 lineup last week."
Wait, what now? (Score:4, Insightful)
So if you are crying about this, what about coming up with those open source IDE's?? I understand that they have never matched Visual Studio, but seriously. I even buy good web development IDE's to my OS X, like Coda 2 [panic.com]. Stop being a cheap-ass winer and pay for quality tools.
You know what this story actually tells? That even FOSS users don't like their IDE's. They want to use Visual Studio from Microsoft because frankly, it is much better than the open source alternatives.
Visual Studio 11 is an improvement in many ways over Visual Studio 2010. Its C++ compiler, for example, is a great deal more standards-compliant, especially with the new C++ 11 specification. It has powerful new optimization features, such as the ability to automatically use CPU features like SSE2 to accelerate mathematically intensive programs, and new language features to allow programs to be executed on the GPU. The new version of the C# language makes it easier to write programs that do their work on background threads and avoid making user interfaces unresponsive. The .NET Framework, updated to version 4.5, includes new capabilities for desktop applications, such as a ribbon control for Microsoft's WPF GUI framework.
Taken together, there are many new features in Visual Studio 11 that are relevant, interesting, and useful for desktop developers. Indeed, things like the new WPF capabilities are only useful for desktop developers.
If Microsoft is so bad then why the hell there isn't better open source versions of these things??
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:4, Funny)
They're not better, they just have all the swanky advertising.
Haven't you see the hot girls giving away free Microsoft stuff at conventions...Stallman just can't compete with that, even if you're into it.
Which you're not. Don't even try to kid us. You aren't.
Why Forbes name Ballmer one of the worst CEO? (Score:4, Interesting)
When I read Forbes naming Ballmer one of the 5 worst CEO, I had some doubt
After reading TFA, the doubt is gone
Indeed, Ballmer is utterly clueless on how to run Microsoft !
Re:Why Forbes name Ballmer one of the worst CEO? (Score:4, Insightful)
Give them time to react to developer response. Who knows, maybe they'll end up following the Windows Phone model and pay people to develop on the platform.
Re:Why Forbes name Ballmer one of the worst CEO? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is the TV problem. Visual Studio 11 is free to use, but not free to produce. You're not the customer, you're the product that Microsoft is buying. And Microsoft wants you to produce metro applications, that drive demand for their new products (and phones/tablets), not drag users back to their previous products that people have already bought.
It's as simple as that.
Don't like being used ? Pay for what you need. It'll be a whole other story, even with the very same Microsoft products.
Btw: as a developer I thought I'd add that Visual Studio is a fast, usable and well-integrated IDE, it's also a very, very industrial one. It is much less elegant than most of the alternatives.
Or just developer for android (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows RT doesn't run anything but IE (Score:3)
Wait, who says we'd need to be bound by Miocrosoft's implementation
Microsoft does. Windows RT doesn't run anything but IE [slashdot.org].
Re:Why Forbes name Ballmer one of the worst CEO? (Score:5, Interesting)
I find the decision very strange. The software that matters will still be developed for the desktop because big companies just buy Visual Studio (or more precisely have subscriptions). Trying to push Metro-style apps via students and hobbyists is in my opinion ridiculous. Also you get all the devs' rage and all the bad P.R. of Internet articles. If I saw any reason for them to do something evil, enslave the devs with their tools or push metro down our throats I would understand but this decision makes no sense to me in any way.
Re:Why Forbes name Ballmer one of the worst CEO? (Score:4, Informative)
Basically, they are frightened by Apple's relative success in mobile computing devices. They previously had a strategy around tablet computing, and Windows 7 represented them addressing all the obvious tweaks to be applied to the desktop environment for tablet use case. That market still hasn't taken off, so they assume Metro and ARM are required.
Of course, I think WP7 lackluster performance in the phone space demonstrates that perceived value of Windows on ARM is not particularly compelling. They might still think that the large form factor tablets might be more competitive, but I don't see any reason to believe it. In tablet space, MS best hope is probably Medfield and Brazos based devices, bringing the massive set of MS compatibile applications.
Forcing Metro on Desktop users to the extent possible is probably also a strategy to effectively throw the desktop usability under the bus to force people to get used to the interface. The hope being if users end up using Metro UI every day, it would grow on them or at least they would tolerate and understand it, and consistency between Windows Phone and Windows desktop gives the phone product a boost.
Re:Why Forbes name Ballmer one of the worst CEO? (Score:4, Insightful)
All of which might be a reasonable strategy, except that the typical uses for a Windows desktop PC are totally different to the typical uses for a tablet or similar mobile device. One is for power and content creation, the other is for easy content consumption. They just happen to overlap in that both can involve a web browser some of the time.
If MS sticks to its guns and tries to force Metro on everyone, I think it really will be the end of them, at least in their current monolithic form. I don't think they can afford another Vista or another poor assault on the mobile space, and Windows 8 has the potential to be both at the same time.
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Is there anything you can do on Windows 7 that you can't do on Windows 8?
I don't know. Unless I missed the quietest product launch in Microsoft history, Windows 8 isn't out yet.
However, it appears (from the fact that we're having this discussion at all) that Microsoft are indeed restricting the capabilities of their new generation of developer tools that go with Windows 8, so to that extent the answer to your question would be "yes".
Also, I'll mention here that the default presentation Microsoft chooses will probably have a big effect on a lot of users, even if there are technic
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Give them time
No thanks
Re:Why Forbes name Ballmer one of the worst CEO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a fan of his personality but since Gates has left: XBox, .Net, Windows server ~3X gain in market share, dido database solutions. Dominant in most large corporations for email as well. They've done some good things, they've done some bad things like all companies. In pure business sense they are doing pretty good: http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/earning_yield#series=type:company,id:MSFT,calc:earning_yield&zoom=&startDate=6/30/2002&endDate=5/25/2012&format=real&recessions=false [ycharts.com] earnings yield went from ~1.75% to ~10% since 2002 (couldn't get a chart out to 2000 when Gates left) while they traded ~flat since the dot com boom. So MS today has the earnings to back up the valuation versus MS of Gates day. They might have boggled the phone, screwed the pouch with Vista etc but they earn money, at least now. Consumer software isn't the only source of revenue.
I think CEOs that need to be crapped on are the ones that gave them selves bonuses when they were getting government bailouts and losing money. Or the second they got out of government ownership decide to reward themselves with 10's of millions as deferred payment for all those hard years of ~1M/yr salaries.
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Keep in mind that Gates is still chairman of the board, and was still effectively directing strategy as chief software architect in 2006. That means he was still there overseeing things including the launch of XBox360 and .Net. I don't know where you source the gain in market share to discern what timeline you *think* Ballmer was responsible for. Effectively, up until ~2007 Ballmer had training wheels on.
MS offerings actually haven't signiicantly changed since Vista, which was released very shortly after
Re:Why Forbes name Ballmer one of the worst CEO? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Not a fan of his personality but since Gates has left: XBox, .Net, Windows server ~3X gain in market share, dido database solutions."
This isn't because of some magical action, but because Ballmer left them alone to go down the path Gates had already set them on. Effectively all Ballmer had to do was recognise these segments were growing and leave the teams the fuck alone to keep growing them - even a CEO as shit as him can manage that.
The key issue is that under Ballmer no new product lines have arisen and been succesful. Just about every succesful product line Microsoft has now, stems from the Gates era. There have been a number of new high growth markets - portable media players, tablets, cell phones, and in every case, Ballmer has failed to grasp them and form a cohesive and succesful strategy around them. Even the web he's struggled with, I've never heard of anyone using Office 365, but I know plenty of people that use Google Apps for example. Their closest thing to success there has been Bing which basically just had an absolute fuckton of money thrown at it in terms of getting it as a default browser, and shit loads of advertising until it actually got to a slightly better than negligible market share.
I don't disagree that Microsoft is still doing well as a business, but the point is it's basically on cruise control and that only works until you run out of gas. The world of computing is changing, it's become, and becoming more and more web and mobile based, but Microsoft isn't managing to follow - it's profits still come almost entirely from the desktop and server markets.
This is why Ballmer is an abysmal failure of a CEO, because all he's achieved at Microsoft is to keep it on the same path it's been for the last 10 years, which sure, means that it's growing whilst that path remains viable, but what about when that path stops being viable? what if something comes along and eats into that path? What if say, Apple decides it is willing to start shipping and supporting Mac OS X for PCs and an office suite now that they have more than enough money to pursue that kind of venture? We know Jobs wouldn't have allowed it, but the new Apple, where Cook gives shareholders more of a say? What then for Microsoft? Their bottom line is under threat and they have nowhere else to run to.
The fact is that Gates built a company so big, strong, and powerful that even the worst CEO in the world would take a few decades to really kill it off. You only have to look at Sony for another example of this - it's only just now really beginning to start having to explain it's failings, despite having been run fairly incompetently for at least a decade, getting on for two. Sony's looking right now like it may well end up fading into the history books with it's continued decline, but it's taken along time, and it'll probably take at least another decade yet to truly falter, that's assuming they don't get their act together and bring in competent management in the meantime.
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Distinction between a "consumer" and a "creator" (Score:3)
most people outside of work are primarily content consumers not content creators
The distinction between a "consumer" and a "creator", as opposed to a participant in culture, is the whole problem that locked-down tablets perpetuate.
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You do realize why so much of the corporet segment is XP and IE6 right? It's because it's 'good enough'. Change for the sake of change is expensive. Vista started a wave of migration work, many aborted projects and feedback to MS from corporate customers on *why* they didn't want to deal with Vista. Much of the Windows 7 changes were driven by corporate requirements.
iPad's represent a far more drastic change than would iPad-centric model. The same holdouts for XP will not exactly be jumping at the cha
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iPad is your future.
As a developer and, more important to me, as somebody who truly enjoys hacking all I can say is please have mercy and let the end be quick. If that's how it's going to be then just slit my wrists or better yet my throat.
Thankfully, Apple's continued quest for thinness uber alles will soon produce a macbook air thin enough to cut the vital blood vessel(s) of your choice with. Of course, the firmware will be cryptographically restricted to only support cutting those arteries that Ives sees as aesthetically pleasing; but so it goes...
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Exactly. I might add that I live in a country that didn't go tits up a few years ago so while money was used to stimulate the economy their wasn't much of a bailout (other than a bit to the US autos since we make a lot of parts for them). I'm spiteful (not jealous because I want to be worth the money they earn not just earn it) that these performance incentives get given when the performance is good and when it is bad. That companies have interlocking board memberships effectively guaranteeing every year th
uH, wHAT? and Uh, What? (Score:5, Funny)
You sir, are a goon.
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I don't think it was an accident that XBox was good and cheap. Design decisions: commodity PC like hardware: oddles of people that already know how to code games for something like that, the hardware's commodity use in other areas give you volume effects you are unlikely to get with some odd "emotion engine" architecture etc. For XBox 360: HDDVD: bad guess, at the time no one knew which would win I don't think this is the reason why XBox 360 was cheaper, it was cheaper because it used relatively more mainst
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I just received a chair in the mail.
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They're not better, they just have all the swanky advertising.
I am an open source fan, but use Visual Studio at work. In my opinion Visual Studio is the best I have used for Windows only development. Now if you want to develop cross-platform its a whole different ballgame.
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It's worth noting that Visual Studio wasn't always free.
More to the point, though, I doubt they're going to stop shipping the WDK, and that DOES include a C compiler. I hope you like nmake, though!
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:5, Informative)
Windows 8 WDK won't include one. Neither will the Windows 8 SDK.
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Huh - sure enough they now leverage the compiler from outside the WDK.
I sure as shit wouldn't pay for Visual Studio. I guess it's time for some other compilers to step up!
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Re:Wait, what now? (Score:5, Insightful)
And is there any actual reason for why you would not pay for Visual Studio?
You know that among modern OSes, Windows is unusual in that it doesn't come with a compiler as a standard feature.
You don't have any actual point apart from "I don't want to pay for the tools I use to get money".
If there's one thing Microsoft is smart about, it's that they try to please developers. People developing software that runs on Windows is good for Microsoft. It gives others a reason to want to use Windows. How many people are unable to fully switch to Linux (but would like to) because some software they must use is Windows-only?
This decision by Microsoft means that, up until now, Microsoft has considered such effects to be valuable enough to justify giving away Visual Studio. Now they are asking for money in addition to this effect. Complaining and trying to convince Microsoft to change their minds is standard haggling.
Besides which, not everyone who programs on Windows is selling the software they produce. Some of them are developing FOSS. They would naturally be more reluctant to pay than someone who is actually engaged in a commercial use and considers it a cost of doing business.
What part of this is so absurd to you?
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:4, Informative)
You know that among modern OSes, Windows is unusual in that it doesn't come with a compiler as a standard feature.
It's not quite so - it does come with compilers, just not with a C++ compiler. It does come with .NET (since Vista), and .NET runtime includes both C# and VB compilers, for the sake of runtime codegen (System.CodeDom).
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You know that among modern OSes, Windows is unusual in that it doesn't come with a compiler as a standard feature.
The 4 most popular operating systems are: Windows, OS X, Android, and iOS. None of them come with a compiler as a standard feature.
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, Apple stopped shipping GCC a long time ago. /usr/bin/gcc is just a compatibility-wrapper on top of LLVM which translates command line options for GCC to the equivalents in LLVM.
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They've offered the free "express" version lately, but it has always been kind of demo version, or for students. You have always had to buy the full version to do some serious development.
Bollocks. I've done 'serious development' of open source Windows software in the 'express' version of Visual Studio.
You had to manually download and install SDKs, but nothing prevented you from building complex code.
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:4, Interesting)
And is there any actual reason for why you would not pay for Visual Studio?
Maybe the fact that the price starts with $500?
And it wasn't such a big deal, say, ten years ago, but now, when Xcode and Qt Creator and Eclipse are all free? Even if they aren't as good, that's still a hefty price to account for.
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:5, Interesting)
VS Express does, though. While it doesn't come with project templates with desktop apps, nor the header files for Win32 stuff, the compiler is the real deal. So you could, in theory, take VS Express compiler and combine it with headers and libs from WinSDK, to get a complete command-line tool chain.
Or you could just install Qt SDK, which includes MinGW, Qt Creator, and Qt itself. All working out of the box with zero hassle.
(I never thought the day would come when I'd have to recommend QC over VS on Windows...)
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The problem is that they are no longer releasing a free compiler
You didn't get the point of my post. VS Express 11 is free, and it does include the compiler.
The problem is that it's not at all obvious how to marry that with Windows SDK (you can, but it's not exactly documented anywhere), and that the IDE itself doesn't provide support for non-Metro projects. But the compiler, you can have.
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:5, Informative)
The Windows SDK won't ship with MSVC, but Visual Studio Express 11 still does. Visual Studio Express 11 still includes the full compiler toolkits and you're free to use those however you want as you could with the Windows SDK. But the IDE itself will only support creation of Metro-style projects.
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You are missing the point. If you use Windows it is the decelopment environment. Unless you write enterprise Java servlets you use vs.net with MSDN.
Even if you switched to intels compiler and vi m you miss out on the docs from msdn and the project files from the internet to learn coding. Its the same with xcode from Apple.
Only linux doesnt tie things like this to the ecosystem. There is a reason Borland is gone
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Borland isn't gone either - They're CodeGear now.
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You can (at least as the moment not sure when VS 2011 Win 8 ships) get the .net compiler for free. You can still code in .Net and compile it. An MSDN subscription might be useful but most things you can find out for free on the web, heck the framework docs are all up on the web for free too (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/618ayhy6%28v=vs.100%29 for example). Compiling .Net from the command line is no worse than doing a C build with gcc from the command line. Search a bit to figure out what you need
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:4, Informative)
Visual Studio is hardly the only development IDE on Windows.
What open-source C/C++ compilers for Windows support the full range of APIs? Last I checked, MinGW had no support for Direct2D and DirectWrite, which are hardly obscure or brand-new. And MinGW also does not support structured exception handling.
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I wonder, what do you really need SEH for? The exceptions that use it - like access violation, or division by zero - are not the kind of things that should be generated in the first place, and if they do, the best thing you can do is let the process crash right there and then, so that the crash dump has full context of what went wrong.
Direct2D and DirectWrite are a matter of producing the appropriate headers - it's all COM, so the compiler can handle it, you just need the corresponding declarations.
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:4, Interesting)
It could be a problem for those who believed that Microsoft and open source could be conjugated together, but this is another question.
Here it's not a matter of money, it's a matter of openness. The deprecation of Win32, the arrival of the Windows store, the bootloader lockdown, now the deprecation of the Windows SDK - the direction that Windows is taking is clear (and it converges towards the same trail that Apple are following with OSX and iOS - but at least they still give a full development kit with their OS).
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There never has been compiler tools out of Windows. You don't even need to be old to remember this
And perhaps I'm so old that I'm starting to forget things then, because I seem to remember that the official way to build Windows binaries was the Platform SDK ( / Windows DDK), that you could get for free from Microsoft. The news today is that future versions of the SDK will no longer include a compiler.
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently, the SDK has always had a basic compiler included.
As for alternatives, that's probably what will happen; people without MSDN access will just use GCC or Clang instead. However, given that the open source alternatives are far better supported under Linux or OS X, why write software for Windows? We're more likely to get new software projects targeting Linux, OS X or the mobile equivalents (Android/iOS) and ignoring Windows entirely. Alternatively, we get more web apps hosted on Linux servers that do not care about the type of client used. Either way, Microsoft and Windows users end up losing out on native software.
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I dont remember details but IIRC it was actually Borland who held the patent that made the MingW/GCC guys not want to support SEH.
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Microsoft controls the APIs and can release new versions of Visual Studio simultaneously with the new releases of Windows? Because anybody who wants to do an open IDE for Windows has to wade through the craptastic Microsoft documentation to be a year behind the curve, right about time for the next set of API changes?
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:5, Interesting)
what about coming up with those open source IDE's?? I understand that they have never matched Visual Studio...
You know what this story actually tells? That even FOSS users don't like their IDE's. They want to use Visual Studio from Microsoft because frankly, it is much better than the open source alternatives.
If Microsoft is so bad then why the hell there isn't better open source versions of these things??
I have recently migrated off of Visual Studio, onto Qt Creator [qt-project.org] because Creator has matured to be clearly better than Studio.
Everyone has their own needs and preferences, I have copies of Studio, Eclipse and Creator on all of my machines at work and home - Eclipse is a necessary evil for some targets, but for the desktop, I was using Studio because it was the better environment - until the last six months or so.
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I have recently migrated off of Visual Studio, onto Qt Creator [qt-project.org] because Creator has matured to be clearly better than Studio.
Can you (or anyone) give some clear examples on what you think is better about QT than VS? And don't say things like "the editor is clearly better" That doesn't really help me. What is features do you like that one has and the other doesn't?
I happen to like VS, the only other IDE I've used lately is xcode and it has some better autocompletion but otherwise I don't like it.
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:4, Informative)
Don't forget that Nokia owns Qt (and Qt creator, etc), and they are now basically beholden to Microsoft. It is currently is a semi-symbiotic relationship, but there is plenty of past evidence to suggest that Nokia will eventually be forced to bend their knee to Microsoft.
True, however from the web site.
Qt Creator is available under GPL v3, LGPL v2 and a commercial license. i am quite sure even Microsoft would have a difficult time of forcing Nokia to stop making Qt freely available since the GPL does have teeth if the occasion arrises.
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Let me give one example to clarify this: suppose you want to write an application which needs to interact with web content, say, a map (Google Maps or OpenStreetMaps for instance). You want GUI controls on the C++ side which interact with markers on the map, you want to in
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:5, Informative)
1) That you haven't read the article. Not only is Microsoft dropping the free edition of Visual Studio, they're also dropping the compiler from Windows SDK, therefore forcing you to buy the paid version of Visual Studio or, some people are suggesting here, rip the compiler out of the "free" Metro version of Visual Studio (I'm assuming that they found some guarantee by Microsoft that they will always make this hack possible both technically and legally).
2) That you haven't ever used an open source IDE, as there are some which are perfectly competitive with Visual Studio (Netbeans, QT creator).
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No. What it tells is that there are some FOSS developers that like Visual Studio, and they are now complaining loudly and publicly. The others are just not concerned and rightfully so. There is no basis for any quantitative evaluation.
Personally, I do not get the whole IDE thing. I started out with IDEs and tried new ones from time to time. I find them to stand in my way once I have a certain skill-level with the respective language. By now I believe IDEs are mainly a crutch for the semi-competent and do ac
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You must not know many people, then. Since I started using test-driven development, I find I rarely turn to a debugger any more. Not that I ever used one much in the first place. In the early days, I found I was most likely to need a debugger when I started getting sloppy, so I tried to stop being sloppy, with reasonable success, and my use of a debugger dropped dramatically.
But it's partly a matter of style. Some people like to step through their code to make sure it's all doing what they expect. I f
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows developers have almost the exact same problem as Android developers. There's exactly one officially-blessed IDE, and just about every book, blog, howto, and forum post assumes you're using it.
NBandroid is a noble project that many people work hard maintaining. Unfortunately, it gets zero love from Google, and as a result, support for the latest and greatest Android SDK tends to arrive about a month or two after one of its developers gets a new phone that uses it. Like Eclipse, it has some bugs. Truthfully, most of them are minor... IF you've completely mastered Netbeans, Eclipse, Android development, and the use of build scripts. Otherwise, it'll probably stop you dead in your tracks, with little hope of moving forward any time soon unless you throw in the towel, move everything over to Eclipse, and hope that the situation improves for your next Android project.
The story with Windows is more or less the same. If you have a problem building a C# program under VS10, you can find four hundred resources online to help troubleshoot it in 18 seconds with Google. Have a similar problem with something like SharpDevelop, Eclipse, Netbeans, or another non-VS IDE, and you'll probably be looking for the answer for quite a while.
It's even worse if your native language isn't English. Visual Studio is so pervasive worldwide, even people who speak regional languages can find abundant help in their own language. There might even be one or more entire BOOKS about Visual Studio in it. Deviate from Microsoft's chosen path, and you'd better be fluent in English. OK, I'm exaggerating a little... lots of the independent IDEs are written by authors in non-English-speaking countries, and provide support in their own language as well.
At one time, I would have been optimistic and said that Microsoft's future lack of free support might encourage more progress with free alternatives. Three years of Android development have disillusioned me. NBandroid has come a long way and made enormous amounts of progress, but thanks to Google's total contempt for Netbeans, it still ends up holding *me* back whenever I try using it, and there's no way in hell I could recommend it to somebody who's learning Android programming for the first time. And we're talking about a Java development ecosystem that has historically had only TWO viable free IDEs, both of which were widely viewed as the two best IDEs available, period. Compare that to Windows, where NONE of the alternatives has market share that would count as "sloppy seconds" compared to the overwhelming dominance of Visual Studio, and all of which have real drawbacks and disadvantages compared to Visual Studio.
At the end of the day, Visual Studio is kind of like a 97 year old benevolent dictator of a prosperous country who's been ruling since he was a teenager -- people might have complaints, especially if he starts getting senile in his old age... but he's been the only government anybody in that country has ever known, and not even his fiercest opponents can really see themselves taking his place, because over the past 80-odd years, he's basically become synonymous with the country, its government, and the cultural identity of the people who live there. With the possible exception of Commodore 64 BASIC, it's hard to think of any development environment that's been more dominant and pervasive within its platform than Visual Studio within its platform and era.
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I imagine it has something to do with it being a user with a brand new account (first post was 3 days ago), who has posted overwhelmingly pro-MS, anti-Google posts, who posted a lengthy and well-formatted reply to this story the exact same minute as the original story was posted.
There has been a lot of this nonsense recently. I think most moderators have got into the habit of down-modding these just automatically.
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:5, Informative)
Too many windows fanboys/paid flacs have Slashdot accounts these days and mod anything that has legit criticism of MS products down...I've been watching this happen for the past little while here...and I would not be suprised if many of the IP address of those moding down post that are critical of MS come from Microsoft campuses or those employed by MS.
Not quite; note the time of the article and the time of the first post. Yes, even beating out the first post trolls. Here, let me repeat that just to make sure it doesn't get lost in other sentences:
That post beat out the first post trolls.
We've had an infestation of not-at-all-subtle paid Microsoft shills with ready-made posts like that in here for a while, desperate to astroturf wherever they can. The mods are going to downvote them to oblivion, simple as that. It's just that there's no "-1 Spam" or "-1 Shill" mod, so "-1 Troll" is the closest we've got.
Re:Wait, what now? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason there's no "-1 Shill" mod is because there is absolutely no proof that these are paid posts, and it wouldn't matter if they were or not.This could just as easily be someone with a personal agenda, or a troll who loves reading reams of "you got paid to write that waaaaa" posts that inevitably follow a swiftly written, pro-Microsoft post. And yes, there is a "-1 Spam". If you think the point has been made too many times before, use "-1 Redundant".
What you're really asking for, is "-1 Inconvenient to my View of the World", which is not going to happen. I suggest people, including you, stick to answering the posts for their content and not for their source. In the end, it doesn't matter if they're paid for or not - if the post is inaccurate, refute it. If you disagree, argue. Don't, however, cry about that fact that a post you don't like ended up higher than yours. It doesn't come across as reasonable discussion, it comes across as complaining for the sake of it.
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I use emacs for 99% of my stuff, and I have to say, while it's a great editor, I wish I had IDE-level code browsing abilities (and to a lesser extent, intellisense-style stuff). I'd kill someone for good "go to definition" support. Ctags-style stuff is a shitty substitute, at least on our code base, and I've never really been able to get the fancier stuff to work well. VS isn't perfect there either, but it's still a lot better...
Could you explain this a little more? It seems to me that "go to definition" is a rather basic thing for any IDE and since CTAGS' primary job is exactly that, I don't understand why it would not work so well on your particular code. I mean, all it has to do is understand the difference between a definition and not a definition (i.e. it doesn't need to fully understand the code), so if it is having trouble doing that job it certainly reflects poorly on the tool.
I guess I'm just curious what sort of code or code layout would cause it problems.
(I'm the grandparent who praised Emacs.) Did you ever use TAGS and C++? It works well for "go to definition" in C, but C doesn't have function overloading. If your code has a a dozen classes and two class templates which contain foo(), how can TAGS know which one you mean when you say "go to definition of bar->foo()"?
I agree this sucks. Fortunately decent C++ code is more structured than C, so I can normally find my way around the code base without TAGS. But it's still embarassing.
Dumbest Decision Ever (Score:3)
This is really stupid. I mean, I understand the (stupid) reasoning behind it, given the direction they want to go... but it's just shooting themselves in the foot.
At least VS2010 Express will still be available, but still... this is going to burn a LOT of good-will (such as it is) with Windows developers.
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Of course there are other IDEs, for which I and others will be grateful. The point is that Microsoft went from mildly sane to Full Retard in the span of one OS release. VS 2010 Express (especially when combined with a Platform SDK) was quite useful for making what they now call "classic apps". Now we have to pay in, or sanction M(isadv)e(n)tro.
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Re: (Score:3)
Express editions were also very useful for F/OSS folk who often do development primarily on Linux (or, these days, also OS X), but want a Windows port - VC++ 2010 Express is full featured enough to compile anything you throw at it, and to create project files and other similar stuff to publish for others (the "serious work" guys with VS Ultimate who want to use that F/OSS library) to easily integrate into their project.
Re:Dumbest Decision Ever (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Your comment would make more sense if you'd realize that WinRT does not subsume .NET - indeed, .NET is one of the three frameworks/toolchains available to target WinRT (the other two being C++ and HTML5/JS).
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Actually, it's more like a synthesis of old and new. For example, take Silverlight - the new XAML-based UI framework to Metro is pretty much it, except rewritten in native code - but, thanks to WinRT language projection magic, still accessible from .NET as if it were managed. For simple Silverlight apps, you can often get away literally with just renaming a bunch of namespaces in your "using" statements, the rest just works. On the other hand, now you can also use it from C++ (also with XAML, data bindings
Pfeh... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worth noting that there's enough toolchains that are perfectly capable of producing desktop applications in that are Free (in both senses) that're capable of producing quality results.
Quite simply, if they're willing to cut their own throats in this space this way...let 'em.
Oh come on (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter how you read this, the headline is completely misleading. There are other compilers/IDEs for Windows that cost $0. And the term "free" can mean two things on Slashdot; this headline makes it sound like Microsoft is trying to kill FOSS.
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makes it sound like Microsoft is trying to kill FOSS
Which is exactly what they've been doing during all their history. FOSS developers can either be aware of this, stay away from them and be happy, or they can trust them every time they promise again that they've changed, that now they've embraced openness etc., and then get screwed by them once again when they show their true nature with moves such as this one.
If you don't like VS10, (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess perl and python must be dead too? (Score:2)
Just because I can't write c# console apps doesn't mean I can't write console apps...
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Windows SDK no longer includes toolchain (Score:4, Informative)
Just download the MS SDK. It's been free for years and includes the compiler et al. It's only the pretty IDEs that are a problem.
Not anymore: [microsoft.com]
"The Windows SDK no longer ships with a complete command-line build environment. The Windows SDK now requires a compiler and build environment to be installed separately."
are they trying to turn us into win7 zealots (Score:2)
There isnt a week where I dont come upon a story like this and laugh out loud. Its a shame too as Win 8 has nice features.
It was just Metro and now the lack of media player outside ultimate, no gui with aero in desktop mode, and now this?! What the hell are they going to fuck uo next?
There are work arounds like win7start and the intel compilers and eclipse (sucks to use phenom), but buying a machine with win 7 instead is a lot less hassle.
XP was bashed here on slashdot for years and then came Vista. Now the
Is Apple really that great role model? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is Apple really that great role model? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like with this move and generally the Metro and Windows 8 walled garden stuff, Microsoft is going more and more "the Apple way". Is it really in their best interest? Is it just me, or hasn't the open-ish (compared to Apple) Intel + Microsoft Windows ecosystem served a desktop market niche that is different from the Apple universe? Does Microsoft have an exit strategy in case they fail in closer competition with Apple at Apple's game?
I wish I had mod points today....
This nails the point EXACTLY.
Microsoft is in such a rush to try and capture their own share of the mobile market and stay relevant, they are dumping 30 years of solid R&D in desktop user interfaces for an unintuitive tablet-centric UI, and in an effort to drive developers into the walled garden, they are now enforcing Metro development with their free tools.
The short-sighted idiots driving this nonsense at Microsoft are forsaking the desktop world with this move, though. As bad as we thought Vista was, it still sold well enough (tied to new systems) - but the user furor over Windows 8 will make the Vista flap seem like a blip in comparison. It's a wrong-headed approach to try and shove the genie back into the bottle, Microsoft... and worse, trying to do it by creating a hybrid UI that does no specific job particularly well for users of either environment. Compromises that sacrifice millions of dollars of very good research into user interfaces will end up costing you far more in the long run. ....and if consumers will be rebelling against Windows 8, what do you think will happen in the enterprise world? It's just starting to deploy Windows 7 desktops, warily approaching it after the nightmare that was Vista. Windows 8 demands retraining that will cost some organizations MILLIONS to implement. The introduction of Metro will also likely introduce a whole new firestorm of exploits for IT admins to face.
Congrats, Microsoft, for turning into a dumbass company overnight.
Do yourselves a big favor, Microsoft.... dump everybody in the company who thought Win8 Metro was a good decision for the desktop. FIRE THEM, and scrap the launch before it's too late. Pretend it never happened and begin working on Win9 with a Start Button and the improvements users WANT (like a new file system, for example, DLNA that works, improved stability and app fault recovery), instead of forcing limitations and touchscreen UIs down their throats.
Qt for Windows (Score:3)
Why not write in Qt for Windows? It's certainly pleasant to work with, and you get Linux and OSX ports basically for free.
Developers, developers, developers.... (Score:5, Funny)
Get Lost, Get Lost, Get Lost.
Enuff said. The desktop is the only saving grace for Microsoft, let alone Windows. Talk about killing the golden goose.
I'd like to take a moment... (Score:3)
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Hmmm... yet from what I see on the Windows SDK features page:
Visual C++ 2010 Compilers and C Runtime (CRT)
"The new Windows compilers and CRT for the x86, x64, and Itanium (IA64) operating systems are included in the Windows SDK and integrated into its command-line build environment. These compilers and CRT are the same as those that are included in Visual Studio 2010."
According to their own feature page, the compilers are included in the SDK. /Have MSDN Sub, but won't be worrying about Win8 development for
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The compilers are not included in the Windows 8 SDK anymore.
Microsoft has forgotten what business they're in (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is so consumed with "Apple envy" that they seem to have forgotten what their bread and butter is: the business desktop. They are so obsessed with being a competitor in the tablet market that they are making a product that actively hurts their core demographic.
Why do people use Windows? Legacy support is a BIG reason – and yet Microsoft under Ballmer seems dedicated to trying to kill it as quickly as possible. Guess what? If legacy support goes away, so does a large part of the reason for people not switching to another OS! After all, if they have to rewrite everything anyway... Ballmer once understood that "developers, developers, developers" were what made Microsoft's platform dominate; now he seems to be going for tablet/smartphone-using hipsters and tweens, and giving developers the middle finger.
Re:Microsoft has forgotten what business they're i (Score:4, Informative)
But a lot of them do target XP, which is no longer supported in either version.
Chasing Smartphone marketshare it will never get (Score:3)
Even if older versions of Visual Studio can be used, they are notorious for breaking under new OSs. VS2003 won't work on Vista or Windows 7. VS2005/2008 is slower, and VS2010 doesn't support global directories so you must enter your search paths manually into every single library, making porting time consuming and tedious. What Microsoft are doing here is saying if you don't want to develop METRO apps, then it's time to leave the Windows platform.
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In addition, the desktop is likely to be the high profit margin market in the future. CAD/CAE, publishing, software development graphic design, etc, and most office work will still need large screens. The mobile market could easily turn into a race to the bottom. I'm surprised that MS wants to be there.
Qt Creator >= Visual Studio (Score:5, Interesting)
In my view, the biggest problem it has is it's name, "Qt-Creator", which i wish developers would change. Even if Qt is hands down the best library and toolit i've ever used for mobile and desktop development, it works perfectly fine for non Qt related development too, so plenty of developers writing non-Qt are missing the best opensource C++ IDE.
Free is not dead (Score:3)
Free is not about the price, but about the freedom. And there are other compilers than the microsoft one.
Re:Worry not: QT Creator IDE (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Worry not: QT Creator IDE (Score:5, Informative)
The Qt SDK has an option to be used with LGPL v 2.1 [nokia.com] which will allow developers to release proprietary executables without being required to release their source code. Source release is only required if the developers make changes to the Qt SDK itself, which usually shouldn't be an issue. There's also a commercial license [digia.com] available if even this is too onerous.
Re:Worry not: QT Creator IDE (Score:5, Informative)
You are forced to release your software as GPL if you use the QT sdk tough.
No you aren't [nokia.com]. Get your facts straight.
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Re:That'll Drive 'em Away... (Score:4, Informative)
Qt for Windows builds with mingw, so YES it is possible to build Windows desktop apps for free.