5 ms·

What is the long term value to Microsoft for VS Code? It is definitely improving their image within the web development community, and I imagine it is also winn

What is the long term value to Microsoft for VS Code? It is definitely improving their image within the web development community, and I imagine it is also winning them favor with Go developers. Have people noticed a network effect after using VS Code? Are you getting sucked into the rest of the MS ecosystem at all?

Joeri 10y ago
I used vs code to play around with typescript, which led me to check out the bot framework. I then built a prototype bot for work, showed it to my boss, and got the time to turn it into a product whose primary interface is skype. That product uses the luis natural language service, which we now pay for on azure. So, at least for me there was a strong network effect.
- paulryanrogers 10y ago
  What product?
  - Joeri 10y ago
    An enterprise room assistant that can help people book meeting rooms, navigate to them and give more information about a room, including comfort derived from sensor data. We're in a soft-launch to our existing customers right now so I can't point to a website.
- rubicon33 10y ago
  What is the "bot framework" you speak of?
  - ctolkien 10y ago
    https://dev.botframework.com/ https://dev.botframework.com/
    - rubicon33 10y ago
      thanks
rchowe 10y ago
Their long-term plan seems to be that Azure is going to be the best / easiest platform to host the projects they contribute to on. Therefore, their open source projects like TypeScript and .NET Core act as a funnel to drive people to Azure. I also think that they are trying to position .NET Core as a viable competitor to Java, for which they need decent cross-platform tooling.
- k__ 10y ago
  True. I have to admit, since I switched from Atom to VSCode, I'm also re-evaluating other Microsoft products. I even bought a copy of Win10 (but it wasn't as good as I hoped, haha). Also, I worked with a few DevOps people who really hated AWS usability and some of them said Azure should be much better.
  - philliphaydon 10y ago
    Azure goes through ups and downs. It can be really good, and also really shitty. The transition of Classic to ARM (Azure Resource Manager) made me drop Azure for AWS. Now ARM is more or less stable so there's no issues, but damn when they started it was complicated. But in terms of UI... GCE > AWS > Azure.
- jastanton 10y ago
  Wait what? So I switch from Sublime Text to Azure? Where is the missing node here... How do you go from using VS Code to using Azure?
  - hashhar 10y ago
    Pointing to another comment ITT. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768580
  - frogfuzion 10y ago
    Not you, the solo developer, but maybe a team at BigCo currently running their own datacenter or a hybrid.
yarper 10y ago
Visual studio code is also the best option for writing Rust on any platform these days (imo!). Haven't noticed myself buying more microsoft products, but have noticed how much more interested I am in what microsoft is releasing these days (.NET core for example)
- sushisource 10y ago
  Rust plugin for IntelliJ is very strong
tnuc 10y ago
The earnings on developer tools have never been huge but the revenue on Windows server has been huge. The market is shifting from buying windows server to azure. By having an editor that works seamlessly with Microsoft's azure options it cements Microsoft as a long term player in the hosting market. Microsoft also spends a lot of resources on documentation which makes it an easy choice for the frustrated developer who can't get something working on another companies offering.
jackmott 10y ago
It makes C# and F# development possible (Without pain) on Linux and Mac, so there is that.
- mee_too 10y ago
  JetBrains Rider is far better IMHO.
  - smoothdeveloper 10y ago
    Sadly, JetBrains Rider is the sole .NET IDE without F# support.
chrisper 10y ago
All I noticed is since I started using VSCode is how much the developers communicate with the users. I filed a few bug reports and both got addressed rather quickly. I don't think this has happened before to me that I "complained" about something and it got actually fixed!
coldtea 10y ago
>and I imagine it is also winning them favor with Go developers. All 10 of them? Sorry, but to think it's some kind of ploy for Go developers specifically does not really compute. It might very well be a "goodwill" project, but Go devs are insignificant compared to the web developer community at large.
- Rapzid 10y ago
  In volume perhaps. One of the most influential open source projects of recent times is Docker. Docker is written in go. MS has gotten behind docker. Another, kubernetes. I'm not saying this influenced Visual Studio code. But to say Go devs are insignificant is a little out of touch.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >One of the most influential open source projects of recent times is Docker. Docker is written in go. MS has gotten behind docker. Which is orthogonal to Go, as Docker is a language agnostic container manager. People using Docker are not, by and large, Go programmers and most don't even care about Go.
marcus_holmes 10y ago
No network effect here. I'm using VSCode on a Mac to write Golang, and there's no reference or pull to any other MS products that I notice.
jpalomaki 10y ago
One option: To have full control of the user experience when people are working with Microsoft tools and technologies. And maybe to push the whole editor market to a direction they like. A bit like what Google did with Chrome. Think about for example Typescript language service. Now they have been able to push the idea and demonstrate how useful it is. Probably this generates demand from users for other editors to add same feature.
SiVal 10y ago
What is the long term value to Microsoft for VS Code? A strategic tool for a strategic group (to MS's future): developers. It's not a very big team, so even a total failure would be capped at a fairly small downside, but the upside of capturing significant loyalty is not capped. "Loyalty" here is to VSCode, not to Microsoft, but if MS controls a tool that large numbers of developers are committed to, it can make sure that a large number of developers have an easy, reliable way to use technologies MS wants to push. I'm not saying that MS would capture developers and then force them to use MS technologies. That would kill the goose laying the golden eggs. They can just build their own extensions that work extremely well and make any necessary changes to the base product and extension system to support the extensions so that developers have an easy and reliable way to adopt new MS technologies on all platforms, not just Windows. This might not end up being of great practical value to them or it could turn out to be huge at some point in the future. Limited downside, unlimited potential upside. It's a speculative bet, but apparently they think it's worth trying.
moogly 10y ago
Long-long-term it is probably going to supersede regular Visual Studio, which isn't (and without gargantuan effort probably never really can be[1]) cross-platform. [1]: more effort than bringing VSCode up to feature parity

Joeri 10y ago

I used vs code to play around with typescript, which led me to check out the bot framework. I then built a prototype bot for work, showed it to my boss, and got the time to turn it into a product whose primary interface is skype. That product uses the luis natural language service, which we now pay for on azure. So, at least for me there was a strong network effect.

paulryanrogers 10y ago
What product?
- Joeri 10y ago
  An enterprise room assistant that can help people book meeting rooms, navigate to them and give more information about a room, including comfort derived from sensor data. We're in a soft-launch to our existing customers right now so I can't point to a website.
rubicon33 10y ago
What is the "bot framework" you speak of?
- ctolkien 10y ago
  https://dev.botframework.com/ https://dev.botframework.com/
  - rubicon33 10y ago
    thanks

rchowe 10y ago

Their long-term plan seems to be that Azure is going to be the best / easiest platform to host the projects they contribute to on. Therefore, their open source projects like TypeScript and .NET Core act as a funnel to drive people to Azure. I also think that they are trying to position .NET Core as a viable competitor to Java, for which they need decent cross-platform tooling.

k__ 10y ago
True. I have to admit, since I switched from Atom to VSCode, I'm also re-evaluating other Microsoft products. I even bought a copy of Win10 (but it wasn't as good as I hoped, haha). Also, I worked with a few DevOps people who really hated AWS usability and some of them said Azure should be much better.
- philliphaydon 10y ago
  Azure goes through ups and downs. It can be really good, and also really shitty. The transition of Classic to ARM (Azure Resource Manager) made me drop Azure for AWS. Now ARM is more or less stable so there's no issues, but damn when they started it was complicated. But in terms of UI... GCE > AWS > Azure.
jastanton 10y ago
Wait what? So I switch from Sublime Text to Azure? Where is the missing node here... How do you go from using VS Code to using Azure?
- hashhar 10y ago
  Pointing to another comment ITT. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13768580
- frogfuzion 10y ago
  Not you, the solo developer, but maybe a team at BigCo currently running their own datacenter or a hybrid.

yarper 10y ago

Visual studio code is also the best option for writing Rust on any platform these days (imo!). Haven't noticed myself buying more microsoft products, but have noticed how much more interested I am in what microsoft is releasing these days (.NET core for example)

sushisource 10y ago
Rust plugin for IntelliJ is very strong

tnuc 10y ago

The earnings on developer tools have never been huge but the revenue on Windows server has been huge. The market is shifting from buying windows server to azure. By having an editor that works seamlessly with Microsoft's azure options it cements Microsoft as a long term player in the hosting market. Microsoft also spends a lot of resources on documentation which makes it an easy choice for the frustrated developer who can't get something working on another companies offering.

jackmott 10y ago

It makes C# and F# development possible (Without pain) on Linux and Mac, so there is that.

mee_too 10y ago
JetBrains Rider is far better IMHO.
- smoothdeveloper 10y ago
  Sadly, JetBrains Rider is the sole .NET IDE without F# support.

chrisper 10y ago

All I noticed is since I started using VSCode is how much the developers communicate with the users. I filed a few bug reports and both got addressed rather quickly. I don't think this has happened before to me that I "complained" about something and it got actually fixed!

coldtea 10y ago

>and I imagine it is also winning them favor with Go developers. All 10 of them? Sorry, but to think it's some kind of ploy for Go developers specifically does not really compute. It might very well be a "goodwill" project, but Go devs are insignificant compared to the web developer community at large.

Rapzid 10y ago
In volume perhaps. One of the most influential open source projects of recent times is Docker. Docker is written in go. MS has gotten behind docker. Another, kubernetes. I'm not saying this influenced Visual Studio code. But to say Go devs are insignificant is a little out of touch.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >One of the most influential open source projects of recent times is Docker. Docker is written in go. MS has gotten behind docker. Which is orthogonal to Go, as Docker is a language agnostic container manager. People using Docker are not, by and large, Go programmers and most don't even care about Go.

marcus_holmes 10y ago

No network effect here. I'm using VSCode on a Mac to write Golang, and there's no reference or pull to any other MS products that I notice.

jpalomaki 10y ago

One option: To have full control of the user experience when people are working with Microsoft tools and technologies. And maybe to push the whole editor market to a direction they like. A bit like what Google did with Chrome. Think about for example Typescript language service. Now they have been able to push the idea and demonstrate how useful it is. Probably this generates demand from users for other editors to add same feature.

SiVal 10y ago

What is the long term value to Microsoft for VS Code? A strategic tool for a strategic group (to MS's future): developers. It's not a very big team, so even a total failure would be capped at a fairly small downside, but the upside of capturing significant loyalty is not capped. "Loyalty" here is to VSCode, not to Microsoft, but if MS controls a tool that large numbers of developers are committed to, it can make sure that a large number of developers have an easy, reliable way to use technologies MS wants to push. I'm not saying that MS would capture developers and then force them to use MS technologies. That would kill the goose laying the golden eggs. They can just build their own extensions that work extremely well and make any necessary changes to the base product and extension system to support the extensions so that developers have an easy and reliable way to adopt new MS technologies on all platforms, not just Windows. This might not end up being of great practical value to them or it could turn out to be huge at some point in the future. Limited downside, unlimited potential upside. It's a speculative bet, but apparently they think it's worth trying.

moogly 10y ago

Long-long-term it is probably going to supersede regular Visual Studio, which isn't (and without gargantuan effort probably never really can be[1]) cross-platform. [1]: more effort than bringing VSCode up to feature parity