7 ms·

Microsoft is discontinuing Visual Studio for Mac after major overhaul

116 points by alwillis 3y ago

ijustwanttovote 3y ago
Not to be confused with VSCode :)
- samspenc 3y ago
  Yeah for a second, I thought it was VS Code for Mac being discontinued and was surprised - but this is Visual Studio which is really only used for C# and .NET development. Looks like VS Code is safe :)
- windowshopping 3y ago
  Thank you that makes so much more sense. This was really confusing; their product naming is not helpful.
tpmx 3y ago
I didn't know it existed. Is it native (AppKit), webview/electron/etc-based or using some dotnet/mono weirdo UI framework abstraction? I guess they feel VS Code has gotten good enough for dotnet stuff now. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/
- tailspin2019 3y ago
  It was native! Which makes it all the more surprising. Personally I think it had a lot of potential, but perhaps they just decided they didn’t have sufficient focus/resources to compete with Rider.
  - tpmx 3y ago
    I normally hate web-based desktop apps with a passion, but VS Code on Mac made me switch from Emacs after 25 years of continous usage. (Hat tip to 'Awesome Emacs Keymap - VSCode emacs keybinding with multi cursor support' - https://github.com/whitphx/vscode-emacs-mcx https://github.com/whitphx/vscode-emacs-mcx.) I can see how they want to focus on that. Can't wait for Microsoft to ruin it, like they always do with all great apps eventually. Presumably as the awesome people who created them moved on, instead of doing 'maintenance'. And then that pressure for increased monetization. I have a feeling Emacs will always be there if they do, though.
IneffablePigeon 3y ago
Good news for Rider I guess
tailspin2019 3y ago
> Once the wheels fall off Visual Studio for Mac, Microsoft recommends accessing its IDE through Windows in a machine virtual on the Mac or in the cloud. Hmm that sounds appealing /s JetBrains Rider is the only viable alternative now. VS Code on Mac may catch up, but I dislike it as my primary IDE for C# (great for lots of other things though). Overall I think this is a mistake on Microsoft’s part unless they are also planning a significant move to pull out of cross-platform app development too (ie iOS/Android + desktop). They are crippling the app development story for .NET on Mac now IMHO, and it wasn’t great to start with. This weakens an already quite fragile ecosystem for creating Mac/iOS apps with .NET. This is on top of MAUI being launched before it was ready and Xamarin being discontinued much too quickly. This seems like a strong indicator to me that I should not pick .NET for greenfield cross-platform (mobile) app projects going forwards.
- redhale 3y ago
  This new (preview) official "C# Dev Kit" VS Code plugin seems relevant, should help close the gap: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dotnettools.csdevkit https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dotne... But also Rider is awesome, and I recommend it to everyone.
- NikkiA 3y ago
  > Hmm that sounds appealing /s I mean, it's better than 'buy a mac and pay us $100/year'.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  > They are crippling the app development story for .NET on Mac Honestly how many .NET developers ever used a Mac as their work machine? I have to think it's a tiny percentage.
  - clarky07 3y ago
    all the ones using it for ios development. i don't know how many did, but this really sucks for those of us that have been using xamarin / .net for ios
  - 3y ago
mpawelski 3y ago
Was it even popular? I think Rider is the king on Linux and Mac for .NET development (even quite popular on Windows machines)
- kcartlidge 3y ago
  I'm a paid user of Rider, but mostly use VS Mac as it's faster, cleaner, and more intuitive. Plus (and despite also being a paid user of Goland too) there's something about the JetBrains IDE range's font rendering I've never really liked; it seems somehow not crisp enough. Hard to put into words, though their new UI style is much improved. As long as VS Mac supports your project types over the last year and a half it has come on hugely. I've no problem switching to VS Code, and I saw this coming a while back, but it's a shame. I also use Visual Studio on Windows extensively. Whilst it does much more than VS Mac it's uglier and far less reliable, both of which matter to me in quality of life ways.
- klodolph 3y ago
  It’s the best option for Unity development, if you don’t want to pay. (There are a lot of people in this category—students who want to get into game development.)
legulere 3y ago
Related news from June: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/announcing-csharp-dev-kit-for-visual-studio-code/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/announcing-cshar...
rustybolt 3y ago
Well, that sucks, but Apple had it coming. Try developing an iOS app without spending a shitton of money on overpriced Apple hardware.
- saagarjha 3y ago
  How is this related to developing iOS apps?
  - clarky07 3y ago
    because visual studio for mac is the thing you used to develop ios apps with xamarin or .net for ios or .net maui?
  - ARandomerDude 3y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy
lapcat 3y ago
The Microsoft announcement is here: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-for-mac-retirement-announcement/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-fo... Previous HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37325427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37325427 Visual Studio 2022 announcement: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-2022/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-20...
racl101 3y ago
Too bad. Loved VS Code. Ok, well, I'm not doing JetBrains. Too fucking slow and costs money. I would renew my license if it was not such a slow set of IDEs. Like, how many fucking times does a program need to index before starting? One time I counted, it felt like it indexed like 5 times before I could type. The money is the least of my problems, but VSCode was unbeatable. Fast, versatile and free. I'm happy to pay for good software and I already do. Like TablePlus for example. Maybe I should look to vim or neovim. EDIT: whoops. I totally didn't read. Ok I rescind my comment. Mea culpa. I'm an idiot.
- izacus 3y ago
  You could at least read enough of an article to know that it's not talking about VSCode.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- bobwaycott 3y ago
  This is about Visual Studio, not Visual Studio Code. Two different products.
- rsstack 3y ago
  Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio are separate products. Only Visual Studio is leaving macOS, while VS Code will remain available (at least, until there's a separate announcement for VS Code).
  - extraduder_ire 3y ago
    This is a separate product still. "Visual Studio for Mac" is a rebrand of monodevelop/xamarin from after microsoft bought them out.
    - rsstack 3y ago
      Well, even more useless :)
tootie 3y ago
Was just talking about this on the "Why did Python win?" thread, but I think there's just a fundamental divide between IDE people and text editor people. Text editor people buy Macs so they can use a POSIX command line with a nice windowed UI. They use VS Code or maybe vim. IDE people want full VS (or IntelliJ) and they both run better on less expensive Windows machines. I think the target demos for OSX and Visual Studio just don't overlap enough.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > IDE people want full VS (or IntelliJ) and they both run better on less expensive Windows machines. No Windows machine comes even close to the battery lifetime and general performance of an M2 series Mac.
  - kcartlidge 3y ago
    I'm on an M1 Mac and even with that iteration you're totally right. Especially given for that battery life you usually still great performance and a silent machine. But I really miss my ThinkPad (with Mint) whilst I use it. I'm on the Mac probably 95% of the time but other than the battery life and efficiency it has nothing else going for it in comparison. It has a worse screen, awful keyboard, toy UI, and terrible accessibility as my eyesight ages. I wish the non-Apple world would get their act together.
  - tootie 3y ago
    Performance only needs to be good enough and my laptop is rarely unplugged. I prefer alternative form factors. Touchscreen is great. Trackpads without buttons suck.
  - leduyquang753 3y ago
    Dare giving some citation?
- mywittyname 3y ago
  I've never had a choice in development machines. I've been stuck on OSX for 7 years at this point.
pid-1 3y ago
Please discontinue Visual Studio in all platforms and improve C# support for VS Code.
- highwaylights 3y ago
  Oh please don’t. Visual Studio Code is nowhere close to the development environment that Visual Studio was 15 years ago. I’m not even sure how you’d add the features a lot of people need in VS to VS Code. It’s just not the same kind of tool.
  - b4ckup 3y ago
    I'm curious what are your use cases for which vs code is not suitable? I'm on windows and I work everyday in c# on the backend and I use vscode almost exclusively because I'm really sick of VS. I really dislike the button first Interface and I dislike it's input lag. In vscode keyboard focused workflow and extension interface is first class. You can set up your own extension and build custom stuff for your workflow in no time. It's truly empowering. The only time I start up VS is when I'm consolidating package versions of the solution, but maybe there is even an extension for that, I didn't look. People are shitting on vscode for electron but my experience is it uses less ram and it is far more responsive than VS (I did not use rider so I cannot compare).
    - highwaylights 3y ago
      It’s a lot of the higher SKU features mainly in VS that I haven’t found equivalents of elsewhere (although maybe they exist). Two examples that come to mind are IntelliTrace and the snapshot debugger (PDB snapshots from a live session are a step change in terms of debugging live issues).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
no_wizard 3y ago
In the official Microsoft announcement, they say this > optimizing Visual Studio, accessible through the C# Dev Kit for VS Code, which is accessible on any OS and Microsoft Dev Box also on any operating system. Can anyone explain to me how Visual Studio is accessible via C# Devi Kit for VS Code and how Microsoft Dev Box is meant to work here? I thought Dev Box was just a developer focused cloud workstation, which would run windows, which wouldn't really help here
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  C# Dev Kit [0] is a Preview extension for VS Code that adds a lot of the Visual Studio features people miss in VS Code into VS Code: Solution Explorer, Test Explorer (for C#), IntelliCode. C# Dev Kit runs on every platform supported by VS Code. [0] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dotnettools.csdevkit https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dotne...
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    Does this make VS Code a parity experience though, or is it always perpetually behind in some way that makes Visual Studio stand above?
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      "Parity Experience" is largely subjective, and I'm not sure that I can answer that. Especially with the complicated twist that "Visual Studio for Mac" for many was not close to "parity" with (regular) Visual Studio either. This announcement means VS Code plus C# Dev Kit (and optionally the MAUI extension) will be the only officially supported experience on macOS and Linux, nothing to directly compare "parity" to. Whether or not the experience feels "parity" on Windows versus (regular) Visual Studio may be irrelevant.
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      It totally depends on how you're using Visual Studio. If you're like me and use about 1% of the features, the VS Code probably covers all your bases.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
baz00 3y ago
I was expecting this since the day it went on the market. Total dead end. The 20-odd years I've been in the .Net ecosystem has been a complete schizophrenic rollercoaster. Glad I'm not dealing with it now. On a positive note I paid my mortgage off rewriting Silverlight apps in other things, getting rid of workflow foundation and replacing abandoned things like AppFabric and various ORM implementations.
scblock 3y ago
Pathetic. I assume some VP got their promotion though. Look at all the literally wasted time and effort.
teunispeters 3y ago
I really like Visual Studio. I work lately mostly on mac and linux though, and mostly in C and C++. Visual Studio on Mac ended up being regretware for me, as I don't do much in .NET. (mostly, just never needed to! No objections to the language at all, it just never fit what I needed) VSCode still works ... ok. It has a very hard time with refactored code though, so I've just gone back to my traditions and it's emacs everywhere once more. Except windows - where I'll still use Visual Studio if I can. Honestly, VSCode is probably great for 80%-90% of developers. Thanks to the messages here though, I'm going to look to see if Rider could work ... maybe. ;)
cutler 3y ago
Why did anyone believe M$'s hype about cross-platform .Net development? It was only a matter of time. Now Mac OS X is clearly a second class citizen. Anyone who lived through the late 90s/early 2000s will not be surprised. I also don't believe all the VS Code love. Sooner or later M$ will turn the screw.
- kcartlidge 3y ago
  DotNet is great for cross-platform. Native builds cross-compiled with a huge standard library and excellent performance. This is just about IDE priorities, and even though I use it I understand that VS Mac was always niche. Linux dotnet devs use VS Code or Rider anyway so no change there, and this just brings Mac in line with them. Worth remembering in all this that the developers of Go, Python, PHP, Ruby etc (to name a few, all of which I use and am not dissing) don't produce their own IDEs. You wouldn't expect them too, and would never say their cross-platform creds are bad because of it, so why is MS different just because they choose to produce optional extras beyond the basic language tooling? By that logic you'd have to reach the (ridiculous) conclusion that Go, Python, PHP, Ruby etc are even worse for cross-platform. Double standards really.
- shortrounddev2 3y ago
  Did you ever use Visual Studio on mac? It's not the same thing as VS on Windows, at all. They just bought another IDE and rebranded it. If you want to do Cross platform .Net development, I would use VS Code for it. Plus, when they said "cross-platform", I think they were thinking more about backend linux than they were about frontend mac/iOS.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    Yeah, to my understanding Visual Studio for Mac was a fork of MonoDevelop [0]. Microsoft does also mean mac/iOS frontend for cross-platform. There's a cross-platform MAUI Extension for VS Code in Preview: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/announcing-the-dotnet-maui-extension-for-visual-studio-code/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/announcing-the-d... [0] https://www.monodevelop.com/ https://www.monodevelop.com/
daft_pink 3y ago
This should really make clear that Visual Studio Code for Mac will continue to be supported somewhere sooner than the last sentence of the article.
threesevenths 3y ago
I am disappointed about this discontinuation. Vs for Mac was never great though it had two things that code does not have 1. Solution load. This will be in the C# DevKit though it’s in preview 2. Xamarin support. This will now be in the Maui extension for code. The timing of this is in line with getting the bad news out of the way before November however it’s still not great since the code extensions are in preview. Microsoft has committed to supporting VS for Mac for 1 year to fill the gap. Presumably the extensions will be GA by then.

116 points by alwillis 3y ago

ijustwanttovote 3y ago

Not to be confused with VSCode :)

samspenc 3y ago
Yeah for a second, I thought it was VS Code for Mac being discontinued and was surprised - but this is Visual Studio which is really only used for C# and .NET development. Looks like VS Code is safe :)
windowshopping 3y ago
Thank you that makes so much more sense. This was really confusing; their product naming is not helpful.

tpmx 3y ago

I didn't know it existed. Is it native (AppKit), webview/electron/etc-based or using some dotnet/mono weirdo UI framework abstraction? I guess they feel VS Code has gotten good enough for dotnet stuff now. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/

tailspin2019 3y ago
It was native! Which makes it all the more surprising. Personally I think it had a lot of potential, but perhaps they just decided they didn’t have sufficient focus/resources to compete with Rider.
- tpmx 3y ago
  I normally hate web-based desktop apps with a passion, but VS Code on Mac made me switch from Emacs after 25 years of continous usage. (Hat tip to 'Awesome Emacs Keymap - VSCode emacs keybinding with multi cursor support' - https://github.com/whitphx/vscode-emacs-mcx https://github.com/whitphx/vscode-emacs-mcx.) I can see how they want to focus on that. Can't wait for Microsoft to ruin it, like they always do with all great apps eventually. Presumably as the awesome people who created them moved on, instead of doing 'maintenance'. And then that pressure for increased monetization. I have a feeling Emacs will always be there if they do, though.

IneffablePigeon 3y ago

Good news for Rider I guess

tailspin2019 3y ago

> Once the wheels fall off Visual Studio for Mac, Microsoft recommends accessing its IDE through Windows in a machine virtual on the Mac or in the cloud. Hmm that sounds appealing /s JetBrains Rider is the only viable alternative now. VS Code on Mac may catch up, but I dislike it as my primary IDE for C# (great for lots of other things though). Overall I think this is a mistake on Microsoft’s part unless they are also planning a significant move to pull out of cross-platform app development too (ie iOS/Android + desktop). They are crippling the app development story for .NET on Mac now IMHO, and it wasn’t great to start with. This weakens an already quite fragile ecosystem for creating Mac/iOS apps with .NET. This is on top of MAUI being launched before it was ready and Xamarin being discontinued much too quickly. This seems like a strong indicator to me that I should not pick .NET for greenfield cross-platform (mobile) app projects going forwards.

redhale 3y ago
This new (preview) official "C# Dev Kit" VS Code plugin seems relevant, should help close the gap: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dotnettools.csdevkit https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dotne... But also Rider is awesome, and I recommend it to everyone.
NikkiA 3y ago
> Hmm that sounds appealing /s I mean, it's better than 'buy a mac and pay us $100/year'.
SoftTalker 3y ago
> They are crippling the app development story for .NET on Mac Honestly how many .NET developers ever used a Mac as their work machine? I have to think it's a tiny percentage.
- clarky07 3y ago
  all the ones using it for ios development. i don't know how many did, but this really sucks for those of us that have been using xamarin / .net for ios
- 3y ago

mpawelski 3y ago

Was it even popular? I think Rider is the king on Linux and Mac for .NET development (even quite popular on Windows machines)

kcartlidge 3y ago
I'm a paid user of Rider, but mostly use VS Mac as it's faster, cleaner, and more intuitive. Plus (and despite also being a paid user of Goland too) there's something about the JetBrains IDE range's font rendering I've never really liked; it seems somehow not crisp enough. Hard to put into words, though their new UI style is much improved. As long as VS Mac supports your project types over the last year and a half it has come on hugely. I've no problem switching to VS Code, and I saw this coming a while back, but it's a shame. I also use Visual Studio on Windows extensively. Whilst it does much more than VS Mac it's uglier and far less reliable, both of which matter to me in quality of life ways.
klodolph 3y ago
It’s the best option for Unity development, if you don’t want to pay. (There are a lot of people in this category—students who want to get into game development.)

legulere 3y ago

Related news from June: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/announcing-csharp-dev-kit-for-visual-studio-code/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/announcing-cshar...

rustybolt 3y ago

Well, that sucks, but Apple had it coming. Try developing an iOS app without spending a shitton of money on overpriced Apple hardware.

saagarjha 3y ago
How is this related to developing iOS apps?
- clarky07 3y ago
  because visual studio for mac is the thing you used to develop ios apps with xamarin or .net for ios or .net maui?
- ARandomerDude 3y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

lapcat 3y ago

The Microsoft announcement is here: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-for-mac-retirement-announcement/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-fo... Previous HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37325427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37325427 Visual Studio 2022 announcement: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-2022/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/visual-studio-20...

racl101 3y ago

Too bad. Loved VS Code. Ok, well, I'm not doing JetBrains. Too fucking slow and costs money. I would renew my license if it was not such a slow set of IDEs. Like, how many fucking times does a program need to index before starting? One time I counted, it felt like it indexed like 5 times before I could type. The money is the least of my problems, but VSCode was unbeatable. Fast, versatile and free. I'm happy to pay for good software and I already do. Like TablePlus for example. Maybe I should look to vim or neovim. EDIT: whoops. I totally didn't read. Ok I rescind my comment. Mea culpa. I'm an idiot.

izacus 3y ago
You could at least read enough of an article to know that it's not talking about VSCode.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bobwaycott 3y ago
This is about Visual Studio, not Visual Studio Code. Two different products.
rsstack 3y ago
Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio are separate products. Only Visual Studio is leaving macOS, while VS Code will remain available (at least, until there's a separate announcement for VS Code).
- extraduder_ire 3y ago
  This is a separate product still. "Visual Studio for Mac" is a rebrand of monodevelop/xamarin from after microsoft bought them out.
  - rsstack 3y ago
    Well, even more useless :)

tootie 3y ago

Was just talking about this on the "Why did Python win?" thread, but I think there's just a fundamental divide between IDE people and text editor people. Text editor people buy Macs so they can use a POSIX command line with a nice windowed UI. They use VS Code or maybe vim. IDE people want full VS (or IntelliJ) and they both run better on less expensive Windows machines. I think the target demos for OSX and Visual Studio just don't overlap enough.

mschuster91 3y ago
> IDE people want full VS (or IntelliJ) and they both run better on less expensive Windows machines. No Windows machine comes even close to the battery lifetime and general performance of an M2 series Mac.
- kcartlidge 3y ago
  I'm on an M1 Mac and even with that iteration you're totally right. Especially given for that battery life you usually still great performance and a silent machine. But I really miss my ThinkPad (with Mint) whilst I use it. I'm on the Mac probably 95% of the time but other than the battery life and efficiency it has nothing else going for it in comparison. It has a worse screen, awful keyboard, toy UI, and terrible accessibility as my eyesight ages. I wish the non-Apple world would get their act together.
- tootie 3y ago
  Performance only needs to be good enough and my laptop is rarely unplugged. I prefer alternative form factors. Touchscreen is great. Trackpads without buttons suck.
- leduyquang753 3y ago
  Dare giving some citation?
mywittyname 3y ago
I've never had a choice in development machines. I've been stuck on OSX for 7 years at this point.

pid-1 3y ago

Please discontinue Visual Studio in all platforms and improve C# support for VS Code.

highwaylights 3y ago
Oh please don’t. Visual Studio Code is nowhere close to the development environment that Visual Studio was 15 years ago. I’m not even sure how you’d add the features a lot of people need in VS to VS Code. It’s just not the same kind of tool.
- b4ckup 3y ago
  I'm curious what are your use cases for which vs code is not suitable? I'm on windows and I work everyday in c# on the backend and I use vscode almost exclusively because I'm really sick of VS. I really dislike the button first Interface and I dislike it's input lag. In vscode keyboard focused workflow and extension interface is first class. You can set up your own extension and build custom stuff for your workflow in no time. It's truly empowering. The only time I start up VS is when I'm consolidating package versions of the solution, but maybe there is even an extension for that, I didn't look. People are shitting on vscode for electron but my experience is it uses less ram and it is far more responsive than VS (I did not use rider so I cannot compare).
  - highwaylights 3y ago
    It’s a lot of the higher SKU features mainly in VS that I haven’t found equivalents of elsewhere (although maybe they exist). Two examples that come to mind are IntelliTrace and the snapshot debugger (PDB snapshots from a live session are a step change in terms of debugging live issues).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

no_wizard 3y ago

In the official Microsoft announcement, they say this > optimizing Visual Studio, accessible through the C# Dev Kit for VS Code, which is accessible on any OS and Microsoft Dev Box also on any operating system. Can anyone explain to me how Visual Studio is accessible via C# Devi Kit for VS Code and how Microsoft Dev Box is meant to work here? I thought Dev Box was just a developer focused cloud workstation, which would run windows, which wouldn't really help here

WorldMaker 3y ago
C# Dev Kit [0] is a Preview extension for VS Code that adds a lot of the Visual Studio features people miss in VS Code into VS Code: Solution Explorer, Test Explorer (for C#), IntelliCode. C# Dev Kit runs on every platform supported by VS Code. [0] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dotnettools.csdevkit https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-dotne...
- no_wizard 3y ago
  Does this make VS Code a parity experience though, or is it always perpetually behind in some way that makes Visual Studio stand above?
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    "Parity Experience" is largely subjective, and I'm not sure that I can answer that. Especially with the complicated twist that "Visual Studio for Mac" for many was not close to "parity" with (regular) Visual Studio either. This announcement means VS Code plus C# Dev Kit (and optionally the MAUI extension) will be the only officially supported experience on macOS and Linux, nothing to directly compare "parity" to. Whether or not the experience feels "parity" on Windows versus (regular) Visual Studio may be irrelevant.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    It totally depends on how you're using Visual Studio. If you're like me and use about 1% of the features, the VS Code probably covers all your bases.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

baz00 3y ago

I was expecting this since the day it went on the market. Total dead end. The 20-odd years I've been in the .Net ecosystem has been a complete schizophrenic rollercoaster. Glad I'm not dealing with it now. On a positive note I paid my mortgage off rewriting Silverlight apps in other things, getting rid of workflow foundation and replacing abandoned things like AppFabric and various ORM implementations.

scblock 3y ago

Pathetic. I assume some VP got their promotion though. Look at all the literally wasted time and effort.

teunispeters 3y ago

I really like Visual Studio. I work lately mostly on mac and linux though, and mostly in C and C++. Visual Studio on Mac ended up being regretware for me, as I don't do much in .NET. (mostly, just never needed to! No objections to the language at all, it just never fit what I needed) VSCode still works ... ok. It has a very hard time with refactored code though, so I've just gone back to my traditions and it's emacs everywhere once more. Except windows - where I'll still use Visual Studio if I can. Honestly, VSCode is probably great for 80%-90% of developers. Thanks to the messages here though, I'm going to look to see if Rider could work ... maybe. ;)

cutler 3y ago

Why did anyone believe M$'s hype about cross-platform .Net development? It was only a matter of time. Now Mac OS X is clearly a second class citizen. Anyone who lived through the late 90s/early 2000s will not be surprised. I also don't believe all the VS Code love. Sooner or later M$ will turn the screw.

kcartlidge 3y ago
DotNet is great for cross-platform. Native builds cross-compiled with a huge standard library and excellent performance. This is just about IDE priorities, and even though I use it I understand that VS Mac was always niche. Linux dotnet devs use VS Code or Rider anyway so no change there, and this just brings Mac in line with them. Worth remembering in all this that the developers of Go, Python, PHP, Ruby etc (to name a few, all of which I use and am not dissing) don't produce their own IDEs. You wouldn't expect them too, and would never say their cross-platform creds are bad because of it, so why is MS different just because they choose to produce optional extras beyond the basic language tooling? By that logic you'd have to reach the (ridiculous) conclusion that Go, Python, PHP, Ruby etc are even worse for cross-platform. Double standards really.
shortrounddev2 3y ago
Did you ever use Visual Studio on mac? It's not the same thing as VS on Windows, at all. They just bought another IDE and rebranded it. If you want to do Cross platform .Net development, I would use VS Code for it. Plus, when they said "cross-platform", I think they were thinking more about backend linux than they were about frontend mac/iOS.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  Yeah, to my understanding Visual Studio for Mac was a fork of MonoDevelop [0]. Microsoft does also mean mac/iOS frontend for cross-platform. There's a cross-platform MAUI Extension for VS Code in Preview: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/announcing-the-dotnet-maui-extension-for-visual-studio-code/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/announcing-the-d... [0] https://www.monodevelop.com/ https://www.monodevelop.com/

daft_pink 3y ago

This should really make clear that Visual Studio Code for Mac will continue to be supported somewhere sooner than the last sentence of the article.

threesevenths 3y ago

I am disappointed about this discontinuation. Vs for Mac was never great though it had two things that code does not have 1. Solution load. This will be in the C# DevKit though it’s in preview 2. Xamarin support. This will now be in the Maui extension for code. The timing of this is in line with getting the bad news out of the way before November however it’s still not great since the code extensions are in preview. Microsoft has committed to supporting VS for Mac for 1 year to fill the gap. Presumably the extensions will be GA by then.