4 ms·

Lots of "commercial open source" products use limited features in the open source tool to sell the "pro version". Maybe what we're seeing is not MS being awful,

Lots of "commercial open source" products use limited features in the open source tool to sell the "pro version". Maybe what we're seeing is not MS being awful, but executing a pretty normal open/premium type strategy (hi there ElasticCo). As a developer I'd love to be able to use .NET like I do Python, Go, JavaScript and Nim (ok, and Java, too). I love being able to write software that can run anywhere, using the editors and tooling that I like. VS Code is amazing in that it fits into my world. VS on the other hand, forces me to run a specific OS, and use a prescribed tool chain. FWIW, sometimes the prescribed way might be better, but it's not the way I want to do it.

thrower123 5y ago
You could use Rider. It performs much better than Visual Studio anyway. Visual Studio has fallen quite far behind at this point.
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  There are a few scenarios where it breaks. UWP and Xamarin is dicey. Ironically, it hasn’t been able to edit android layouts involving ConstraintLayout and a few other common layouts/views for a few releases now (ironic because they also make Android studio, which has best in class android layout editing). Visual Studio is great for the common platforms/languages, but as soon as you try going cross platform or adding unloved platforms (UWP, Xamarin) it gets bad. Unfortunately, those also happen to be the things Rider is bad at.
smitty1e 5y ago
> Maybe what we're seeing is not MS being awful, but executing a pretty normal open/premium type strategy There is a difference of degree, if not kind. It's one thing for a smaller vendor to offer an 80% solution for free, and 20% enterprise features where there is competition to protect the market and the users. It's quite another for a monopoly-level player that, for example, owns GitHub, to flex and threaten the market. I'd support some serious anti-trust looks at what's going on across all of BigTech. MisterSofty is not alone in needing a review.
- CyanLite4 5y ago
  The software is still open source. If you want the premium feature for Hot Reload, then it’s like $13 a month for a license for Linux/Mac/Windows. Everything else is fully supported for free.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Again, what pisses people off is not that some features are premium but rather when features are promised to be free/open source, was working in the open source version but then pulled back to be a premium feature when Microsoft changed their mind.
    - true_religion 5y ago
      While that’s true, since we are talking about trust… I can trust Microsoft’s intentions more than I can Googles or Facebooks. Microsoft wants to make money by charging for features. Unlike Apple, they consider developers to be actual customers. So I trust them to take care of our needs, and trust that their only ultimate motive is to get us to willingly empty our wallets in order to be more productive at work. They won’t steal our data to sell to political relations companies like Facebook, create walled gardens and charge us 30% to import goods to our own captive customers like Apple, or arbitrarily try to control what can and can’t be done on the internet like Google. They will just charge money for features like a normal business.
      - capableweb 5y ago
        Why would trust anything to any company? They are not entities that you can trust and then everything is fine. They are face-less entities that turns on a dime if it makes them profit, because that's how capitalism works. Don't look for companies intentions, look for their actions, as that's the only thing that matters.
        true_religion 5y ago
        Well, I don’t mean trust as in human to human. It’s more trust in the sense of noticing a pattern, and having a hypothesis that it is nonrandom.
cmiles74 5y ago
I'm not sure anyone really enjoys working with Visual Studio anymore. It was compelling, back in the day, when I was doing desktop apps. But for web development I just don't think it has any real edge over other tools in this space. In my experience it's also a resource hog. I have to quit and restart it every so often to keep it from bogging everything down.
- xvilka 5y ago
  I should also note that modern Visual Studio is way too heavy. Just compare it with another leader of commercial IDEs - JetBrains. Now, with latest Clion and Rider they rival VS while being more modern and sleeker. Not to say they are crossplatform.
  - blibble 5y ago
    visual studio is the only piece of software I've ever used that has a dialog with a progress bar for opening a source code file
- pjmlp 5y ago
  For desktop apps it depends, for classical Forms/WPF/MFC it is fine as always, for anything related to UWP/WinUI it is a mess currently.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
Sure. There is just one thing though: we tend to treat companies like people. So e.g. if they say something today, we expect it to be valid also tomorrow. We also tend to expect them to behave in a way humans do, that is, if they present a certain vision, we somehow expect they would follow. And if they follow certain steps, we assume they walk the talk and give them credit for that. But the reality is much more complex. You have competing teams of individuals each with their own interests. You have managers who come and go. You have sudden decisions that change everything during one afternoon. As an employee, you believe in something only to discover a few months later you were in fact mistaken. I'm not cynical, but the best strategy is to be realistic. We all know Microsoft will do everything in their own interest and they are not basically different from any other company. That's a fact. Whatever they say about their love for Linux or Open Source is correct as long as it benefits them, not an inch more. Whoever goes in their way will be mercilessly crushed, as happened in numerous companies in the past like Lotus, Novell, Borland and so many others. Don't build your business based on their products, and if you do, have a backup-up plan and an exit strategy ready.
pjmlp 5y ago
I am an advocate of such kind of features, however the way this situation was handled is quite messy, the feature was already there and available on dotnet watch, when they decided to kill it. I own a VS license, so it doesn't affect me, but it leaves a sour taste.
sneak 5y ago
Open source is a philosophy and ideology. Software freedoms are important. People who release some software as open source and some software as proprietary don't believe in software freedoms. You can't mix and match without philosophical inconsistency.
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  IMO free software is a philosophy and an ideology. Microsoft's actions (proprietary VSCode extensions, crippling dotnet) are designed to generate goodwill, but hurt the freedom of its users anyway.

thrower123 5y ago

You could use Rider. It performs much better than Visual Studio anyway. Visual Studio has fallen quite far behind at this point.

n8cpdx 5y ago
There are a few scenarios where it breaks. UWP and Xamarin is dicey. Ironically, it hasn’t been able to edit android layouts involving ConstraintLayout and a few other common layouts/views for a few releases now (ironic because they also make Android studio, which has best in class android layout editing). Visual Studio is great for the common platforms/languages, but as soon as you try going cross platform or adding unloved platforms (UWP, Xamarin) it gets bad. Unfortunately, those also happen to be the things Rider is bad at.

smitty1e 5y ago

> Maybe what we're seeing is not MS being awful, but executing a pretty normal open/premium type strategy There is a difference of degree, if not kind. It's one thing for a smaller vendor to offer an 80% solution for free, and 20% enterprise features where there is competition to protect the market and the users. It's quite another for a monopoly-level player that, for example, owns GitHub, to flex and threaten the market. I'd support some serious anti-trust looks at what's going on across all of BigTech. MisterSofty is not alone in needing a review.

CyanLite4 5y ago
The software is still open source. If you want the premium feature for Hot Reload, then it’s like $13 a month for a license for Linux/Mac/Windows. Everything else is fully supported for free.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Again, what pisses people off is not that some features are premium but rather when features are promised to be free/open source, was working in the open source version but then pulled back to be a premium feature when Microsoft changed their mind.
  - true_religion 5y ago
    While that’s true, since we are talking about trust… I can trust Microsoft’s intentions more than I can Googles or Facebooks. Microsoft wants to make money by charging for features. Unlike Apple, they consider developers to be actual customers. So I trust them to take care of our needs, and trust that their only ultimate motive is to get us to willingly empty our wallets in order to be more productive at work. They won’t steal our data to sell to political relations companies like Facebook, create walled gardens and charge us 30% to import goods to our own captive customers like Apple, or arbitrarily try to control what can and can’t be done on the internet like Google. They will just charge money for features like a normal business.
    - capableweb 5y ago
      Why would trust anything to any company? They are not entities that you can trust and then everything is fine. They are face-less entities that turns on a dime if it makes them profit, because that's how capitalism works. Don't look for companies intentions, look for their actions, as that's the only thing that matters.
      - true_religion 5y ago
        Well, I don’t mean trust as in human to human. It’s more trust in the sense of noticing a pattern, and having a hypothesis that it is nonrandom.

cmiles74 5y ago

I'm not sure anyone really enjoys working with Visual Studio anymore. It was compelling, back in the day, when I was doing desktop apps. But for web development I just don't think it has any real edge over other tools in this space. In my experience it's also a resource hog. I have to quit and restart it every so often to keep it from bogging everything down.

xvilka 5y ago
I should also note that modern Visual Studio is way too heavy. Just compare it with another leader of commercial IDEs - JetBrains. Now, with latest Clion and Rider they rival VS while being more modern and sleeker. Not to say they are crossplatform.
- blibble 5y ago
  visual studio is the only piece of software I've ever used that has a dialog with a progress bar for opening a source code file
pjmlp 5y ago
For desktop apps it depends, for classical Forms/WPF/MFC it is fine as always, for anything related to UWP/WinUI it is a mess currently.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

Sure. There is just one thing though: we tend to treat companies like people. So e.g. if they say something today, we expect it to be valid also tomorrow. We also tend to expect them to behave in a way humans do, that is, if they present a certain vision, we somehow expect they would follow. And if they follow certain steps, we assume they walk the talk and give them credit for that. But the reality is much more complex. You have competing teams of individuals each with their own interests. You have managers who come and go. You have sudden decisions that change everything during one afternoon. As an employee, you believe in something only to discover a few months later you were in fact mistaken. I'm not cynical, but the best strategy is to be realistic. We all know Microsoft will do everything in their own interest and they are not basically different from any other company. That's a fact. Whatever they say about their love for Linux or Open Source is correct as long as it benefits them, not an inch more. Whoever goes in their way will be mercilessly crushed, as happened in numerous companies in the past like Lotus, Novell, Borland and so many others. Don't build your business based on their products, and if you do, have a backup-up plan and an exit strategy ready.

pjmlp 5y ago

I am an advocate of such kind of features, however the way this situation was handled is quite messy, the feature was already there and available on dotnet watch, when they decided to kill it. I own a VS license, so it doesn't affect me, but it leaves a sour taste.

sneak 5y ago

Open source is a philosophy and ideology. Software freedoms are important. People who release some software as open source and some software as proprietary don't believe in software freedoms. You can't mix and match without philosophical inconsistency.

nyanpasu64 5y ago
IMO free software is a philosophy and an ideology. Microsoft's actions (proprietary VSCode extensions, crippling dotnet) are designed to generate goodwill, but hurt the freedom of its users anyway.