7 ms·

I think that non-windows devs don't realize how much Windows devs LOVE Visual Studio. They will spend however much money it costs to use it. Also, VS is like $5

I think that non-windows devs don't realize how much Windows devs LOVE Visual Studio. They will spend however much money it costs to use it. Also, VS is like $500-600? Devs pay that for IntelliJ all day long, so why not VS? Honestly, for a tool you would use all day long at work, $500 is cheap. If you NEED Visual Studio for C++, then it's worth the money. Sure, on Linux and OS X you get free dev tools like XCode and GCC, but MSFT spends a lot of money building these tools, so if they decide they no longer want to subsidize them by offering them free, it's their business. They want devs making Metro apps, not old Win32 C++ apps. If they don't get Metro apps to be built in a big way, Windows 8 tablet edition for human beings 2012 is never going to take off. It makes sense for Microsoft.

excuse-me 14y ago
Indeed - why not make a $2500 MSDN subscription compulsory to develop for the Windows desktop. After all if you are writing apps you can afford it. If they decide that they don't want any apps on Windows other than Office it's their business. But it's a bit of a change from developers-developers-developers!
- batista 14y ago
  >Indeed - why not make a $2500 MSDN subscription compulsory to develop for the Windows desktop. After all if you are writing apps you can afford it. You're being sarcastic, but it would a possible move too. And yes, if you're writing apps you can afford it. It's not like Windows has too few apps, anyway, the could use the price as a quality control to throw one-man software companies out (there goes 99% of shareware).
  - excuse-me 14y ago
    They could introduce an app store for windows8 where only MSFT approved apps could run. They might not get many desktop upgrades from Win7 though !
    - tar 14y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Store http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Store
  - Drbble 14y ago
    Quality is not the same as quantity.
  - gouranga 14y ago
    Shareware is what made windows what it is (the good bits that is). That would be like going into McDonalds and shooting everyone but the cleaners.
27182818284 14y ago
I've only used VS for 180ish days, but it is good enough that my confidence in LightTable increased when I found out Chris Granger was previously involved with VS.
lucian1900 14y ago
The biggest problem is that they apparently will no longer provide free compilers. That will make continuous integration windows backends even harder to deal with than they currently are, and basically unavailable to most open source projects.
- astrodust 14y ago
  There's always the Cygwin + gcc + duct tape solution.
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    Cygwin+gcc isn't an option, and may no longer work in win8 anyway. Mingw may work, but it's still not a first-party tool, and it's still not fully compatible to microsoft's compilers.
    - koenigdavidmj 14y ago
      Why may Cygwin no longer work on Windows 8?
      - lucian1900 14y ago
        It's already shoddy on Win7, with all the emulation it does.
        koenigdavidmj 14y ago
        I use it everyday. Yes, it has quirks. Yes, it's slow. But that's not because of Windows 7; it's always been like that. Is there anything new that Windows 8 is doing that will cause Cygwin to regress?
  - ajasmin 14y ago
    Mingw would make more sense than Cygwin as VC++ replacement. Cygwin is for porting over Unix code.
daed 14y ago
Apple spends money developing Xcode yet when they started charging $5 for it there was a huge outcry. I feel like HN often upvotes the most contrarian comment by default (assuming it's well argued).
- pm90 14y ago
  I feel like HN often upvotes the most contrarian comment by default (assuming it's well argued) so does the rest of the world, unfortunately.
wcarss 14y ago
It sounds to me as though your logic double-flipped at the end of your message... I'm going to try to break it down into propositions: Proposition A: Developers who write windows apps love Visual Studio. Proposition B: Developers who NEED Visual Studio can afford a $500 piece of software. Proposition C: Other OSes still provide free tools Proposition D: MSFT spends money on developing this, so they can choose to charge money for supplying this Proposition E: MSFT wants people to make metro apps in a big way, and not to work on win32 stuff Conclusion: Charging money for Visual Studio is sensible Propositions A, B, and D form a coherent argument in support of your conclusion, and Proposition C may be nice to include, but isn't helping here. Proposition E appears to run entirely counter to your point. edit: as my responder points out, I'm incorrect in this assessment -- proposition E fits into the argument just fine. This is the folly of reading comments before having read the article!
- gecko 14y ago
  Proposition E is actually in line with his point: if you read the article, WinRT development remains free. It's Win32 development only that now requires a paid Visual Studio license. So, in essence, what I read the original poster as saying is: "Visual Studio is sufficiently awesome that full-time developers--the ones who need Win32 support--can easily afford $500. For those who can't, Microsoft is making a deal: they'll give you a free copy of Visual Studio, but it's only good for targeting the new Windows 8 Metro environment. In other words, if you're willing to take the risk of developing for the new hotness that currently has basically zero apps for it, Microsoft will foot the bill. If you want to target the massive installed base that is Windows 7 and younger, you foot the bill." I'm not saying I agree, but the argument is coherent.
  - wcarss 14y ago
    Thank you for pointing this out! I tend to read comments before the article to get a feel for the cultural context and perceived value of an article (it filters a lot of linkbait), and then I jumped the gun here. I've added a note to my original comment. After having read it, the article's title really doesn't fit the reality. If you want to develop traditional win32 apps, you can keep using VS2010. VS2011 has all the latest and greatest tech for them, but that's similar to the present divide between Express and Ultimate. This article appears to be trying very hard to frame the debate or sensationalize things. It's fair to point out that if this trend continues into the next generation so that VS2010 becomes a sort of ghetto-compiler it's very bad, but we have no reason to believe right now that it will. Microsoft probably isn't stupid enough to shoot themselves that hard.
gouranga 14y ago
developers only like visual studio because either they haven't had much experience with anything else, they use languages that require massive amounts of IDE to be practical or they paid for it which results in 'money bias'. Its rarely because they knowingly like it. That's the opinion I've managed to deduce after working with over 200 heavy vs users over 10 years.
- CJefferson 14y ago
  Interesting. I develop C++ on windows, linux, and mac OS X, and I find visual studio better than any of the alternatives. Obviously visual studio only excells for those languages it has support for, but for those it is best.
  - gouranga 14y ago
    I've dealt with primarily C# and VB.Net users so that may be where the discrepancy is.
- lucidquiet 14y ago
  Or they paid for it because the alternatives weren't any better. Visual Studio Debugger is very nice, I don't know of anything that's as good, and as mature. Attach To Process with a nice UI is a great tool compared to the command line debugger. VS 2008 and 2010 are worlds better than 2005 -- so if we count the last 10 years nearly half of that will be people using 2005, and yes that was awful. Two version later, is it worth asking for a good price for a full featured version? Probably.
  - gouranga 14y ago
    DDD, Netbeans debugger and Eclipse's debugger are on equal standing. I've used all heavily. However, I tend to rarely use the debugger on my own code in any language since I started doing incremental TDD and using assertions galore all over the place to check inputs, outputs and assumptions. Prevention is better than cure (or debugging).
pnathan 14y ago
Absolutely agreed. As a rule of thumb, Windows devs are mentally locked into Visual Studio and GUIs. They do not want to touch the command line. Open source scares them because it's libre & free. It's like some freaky movie where the Alien Software got downloaded into human brains and started issuing commands. It's like some of these guys don't do computer programming any more. They program Visual Studio using C#. Of course, Visual Studio ain't bad, but the Visual Studio users are pretty rabid. They would fork over thousands for their addiction.
- thwest 14y ago
  That has not been my experience at all, even at primarily Windows targeting shops. Yes, Windows devs do love Visual Studio for intellisense and debugging. However, the few that I've met that weren't competent with gcc/cygwin/ssh/git/cmake/&c were more embarrassed about it than anything else.
- martijn_himself 14y ago
  I disagree. Your points are not substantiated and are attacking fellow programmers. I know many programmers (myself included) who have programmed and are reasonably competent in different languages using different text editors and IDE's on different operating systems and have made a conscious decision to use Visual Studio because, well, it is the tool that allows them to be the most productive. Companies choose Visual Studio because it allows their teams to be most productive. I find myself using VS more and more for personal projects, as I haven't found anything that can beat the combination of F# and C# when used from VS. The .NET framework and languages have seen the introduction of some really exciting stuff such as LINQ, Reactive Extensions etc. etc. which are all supported by VS and offer more than enough for developers to keep interested in the platform.
- josephcooney 14y ago
  This is a terrible rule of thumb. You sound very out of touch.
- Total_Meltdown 14y ago
  Your "rule of thumb" is a pretty rash generalization. I use Visual Studio because I have a Windows machine, and on this platform it's the best tool for the job I'm doing. I am primarily a C++ developer, both at my day job and on my own projects. I got started using vim, gcc and make. I am perfectly comfortable on a Unix terminal, but I avoid terminals on Windows because - and maybe you've noticed - Windows terminals are dreadful. Here's a rule of thumb for you: Good developers use the best tool for the job without getting religious about platforms.
teyc 14y ago
Maybe this is more of an internal fight between DevDiv and Windows. DevDiv's team had been stripped, their projects like WPF and Silverlight end-of-lifed, while the Windows team has made a fourth version of XAML. The only for DevDiv to regain its honour is by reminding Windows Divisino that the oxygen Windows lives on is in DevDiv creating new developers. Given that VS11 Express is only a toy, and requires a presumed $99 annual subscription to deploy, it is going to be difficult for any students to justify. This civil war is going to maim the Windows ecosystem at a time when it is especially weak.
- georgieporgie 14y ago
  This is a very insightful theory and I really, really hope you're wrong. Regarding students, though, Microsoft has DreamSpark, which looks like BizSpark for students (all the way down to high school students, apparently). They can get free access to VS and at least some subset of operating systems.

excuse-me 14y ago

Indeed - why not make a $2500 MSDN subscription compulsory to develop for the Windows desktop. After all if you are writing apps you can afford it. If they decide that they don't want any apps on Windows other than Office it's their business. But it's a bit of a change from developers-developers-developers!

batista 14y ago
>Indeed - why not make a $2500 MSDN subscription compulsory to develop for the Windows desktop. After all if you are writing apps you can afford it. You're being sarcastic, but it would a possible move too. And yes, if you're writing apps you can afford it. It's not like Windows has too few apps, anyway, the could use the price as a quality control to throw one-man software companies out (there goes 99% of shareware).
- excuse-me 14y ago
  They could introduce an app store for windows8 where only MSFT approved apps could run. They might not get many desktop upgrades from Win7 though !
  - tar 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Store http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Store
- Drbble 14y ago
  Quality is not the same as quantity.
- gouranga 14y ago
  Shareware is what made windows what it is (the good bits that is). That would be like going into McDonalds and shooting everyone but the cleaners.

27182818284 14y ago

I've only used VS for 180ish days, but it is good enough that my confidence in LightTable increased when I found out Chris Granger was previously involved with VS.

lucian1900 14y ago

The biggest problem is that they apparently will no longer provide free compilers. That will make continuous integration windows backends even harder to deal with than they currently are, and basically unavailable to most open source projects.

astrodust 14y ago
There's always the Cygwin + gcc + duct tape solution.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  Cygwin+gcc isn't an option, and may no longer work in win8 anyway. Mingw may work, but it's still not a first-party tool, and it's still not fully compatible to microsoft's compilers.
  - koenigdavidmj 14y ago
    Why may Cygwin no longer work on Windows 8?
    - lucian1900 14y ago
      It's already shoddy on Win7, with all the emulation it does.
      - koenigdavidmj 14y ago
        I use it everyday. Yes, it has quirks. Yes, it's slow. But that's not because of Windows 7; it's always been like that. Is there anything new that Windows 8 is doing that will cause Cygwin to regress?
- ajasmin 14y ago
  Mingw would make more sense than Cygwin as VC++ replacement. Cygwin is for porting over Unix code.

daed 14y ago

Apple spends money developing Xcode yet when they started charging $5 for it there was a huge outcry. I feel like HN often upvotes the most contrarian comment by default (assuming it's well argued).

pm90 14y ago
I feel like HN often upvotes the most contrarian comment by default (assuming it's well argued) so does the rest of the world, unfortunately.

wcarss 14y ago

It sounds to me as though your logic double-flipped at the end of your message... I'm going to try to break it down into propositions: Proposition A: Developers who write windows apps love Visual Studio. Proposition B: Developers who NEED Visual Studio can afford a $500 piece of software. Proposition C: Other OSes still provide free tools Proposition D: MSFT spends money on developing this, so they can choose to charge money for supplying this Proposition E: MSFT wants people to make metro apps in a big way, and not to work on win32 stuff Conclusion: Charging money for Visual Studio is sensible Propositions A, B, and D form a coherent argument in support of your conclusion, and Proposition C may be nice to include, but isn't helping here. Proposition E appears to run entirely counter to your point. edit: as my responder points out, I'm incorrect in this assessment -- proposition E fits into the argument just fine. This is the folly of reading comments before having read the article!

gecko 14y ago
Proposition E is actually in line with his point: if you read the article, WinRT development remains free. It's Win32 development only that now requires a paid Visual Studio license. So, in essence, what I read the original poster as saying is: "Visual Studio is sufficiently awesome that full-time developers--the ones who need Win32 support--can easily afford $500. For those who can't, Microsoft is making a deal: they'll give you a free copy of Visual Studio, but it's only good for targeting the new Windows 8 Metro environment. In other words, if you're willing to take the risk of developing for the new hotness that currently has basically zero apps for it, Microsoft will foot the bill. If you want to target the massive installed base that is Windows 7 and younger, you foot the bill." I'm not saying I agree, but the argument is coherent.
- wcarss 14y ago
  Thank you for pointing this out! I tend to read comments before the article to get a feel for the cultural context and perceived value of an article (it filters a lot of linkbait), and then I jumped the gun here. I've added a note to my original comment. After having read it, the article's title really doesn't fit the reality. If you want to develop traditional win32 apps, you can keep using VS2010. VS2011 has all the latest and greatest tech for them, but that's similar to the present divide between Express and Ultimate. This article appears to be trying very hard to frame the debate or sensationalize things. It's fair to point out that if this trend continues into the next generation so that VS2010 becomes a sort of ghetto-compiler it's very bad, but we have no reason to believe right now that it will. Microsoft probably isn't stupid enough to shoot themselves that hard.

gouranga 14y ago

developers only like visual studio because either they haven't had much experience with anything else, they use languages that require massive amounts of IDE to be practical or they paid for it which results in 'money bias'. Its rarely because they knowingly like it. That's the opinion I've managed to deduce after working with over 200 heavy vs users over 10 years.

CJefferson 14y ago
Interesting. I develop C++ on windows, linux, and mac OS X, and I find visual studio better than any of the alternatives. Obviously visual studio only excells for those languages it has support for, but for those it is best.
- gouranga 14y ago
  I've dealt with primarily C# and VB.Net users so that may be where the discrepancy is.
lucidquiet 14y ago
Or they paid for it because the alternatives weren't any better. Visual Studio Debugger is very nice, I don't know of anything that's as good, and as mature. Attach To Process with a nice UI is a great tool compared to the command line debugger. VS 2008 and 2010 are worlds better than 2005 -- so if we count the last 10 years nearly half of that will be people using 2005, and yes that was awful. Two version later, is it worth asking for a good price for a full featured version? Probably.
- gouranga 14y ago
  DDD, Netbeans debugger and Eclipse's debugger are on equal standing. I've used all heavily. However, I tend to rarely use the debugger on my own code in any language since I started doing incremental TDD and using assertions galore all over the place to check inputs, outputs and assumptions. Prevention is better than cure (or debugging).

pnathan 14y ago

Absolutely agreed. As a rule of thumb, Windows devs are mentally locked into Visual Studio and GUIs. They do not want to touch the command line. Open source scares them because it's libre & free. It's like some freaky movie where the Alien Software got downloaded into human brains and started issuing commands. It's like some of these guys don't do computer programming any more. They program Visual Studio using C#. Of course, Visual Studio ain't bad, but the Visual Studio users are pretty rabid. They would fork over thousands for their addiction.

thwest 14y ago
That has not been my experience at all, even at primarily Windows targeting shops. Yes, Windows devs do love Visual Studio for intellisense and debugging. However, the few that I've met that weren't competent with gcc/cygwin/ssh/git/cmake/&c were more embarrassed about it than anything else.
martijn_himself 14y ago
I disagree. Your points are not substantiated and are attacking fellow programmers. I know many programmers (myself included) who have programmed and are reasonably competent in different languages using different text editors and IDE's on different operating systems and have made a conscious decision to use Visual Studio because, well, it is the tool that allows them to be the most productive. Companies choose Visual Studio because it allows their teams to be most productive. I find myself using VS more and more for personal projects, as I haven't found anything that can beat the combination of F# and C# when used from VS. The .NET framework and languages have seen the introduction of some really exciting stuff such as LINQ, Reactive Extensions etc. etc. which are all supported by VS and offer more than enough for developers to keep interested in the platform.
josephcooney 14y ago
This is a terrible rule of thumb. You sound very out of touch.
Total_Meltdown 14y ago
Your "rule of thumb" is a pretty rash generalization. I use Visual Studio because I have a Windows machine, and on this platform it's the best tool for the job I'm doing. I am primarily a C++ developer, both at my day job and on my own projects. I got started using vim, gcc and make. I am perfectly comfortable on a Unix terminal, but I avoid terminals on Windows because - and maybe you've noticed - Windows terminals are dreadful. Here's a rule of thumb for you: Good developers use the best tool for the job without getting religious about platforms.

teyc 14y ago

Maybe this is more of an internal fight between DevDiv and Windows. DevDiv's team had been stripped, their projects like WPF and Silverlight end-of-lifed, while the Windows team has made a fourth version of XAML. The only for DevDiv to regain its honour is by reminding Windows Divisino that the oxygen Windows lives on is in DevDiv creating new developers. Given that VS11 Express is only a toy, and requires a presumed $99 annual subscription to deploy, it is going to be difficult for any students to justify. This civil war is going to maim the Windows ecosystem at a time when it is especially weak.

georgieporgie 14y ago
This is a very insightful theory and I really, really hope you're wrong. Regarding students, though, Microsoft has DreamSpark, which looks like BizSpark for students (all the way down to high school students, apparently). They can get free access to VS and at least some subset of operating systems.