4 ms·

I've been using VS 2013 Community (which is free) since it got released and I don't miss any of the "premium" features.

by deevus 11y ago

StevePerkins 11y ago
For personal tinkering, that's great (as long as you don't mind running on Windows, which is no longer the case with most web developers these days). However, if you work for any reasonably established company, then it is illegal for you to use that Community Edition for company work. Your company must purchase a license for you, and that starts at $600 for the licensed equivalent of Community. Perhaps that's perfectly fair. However, it's a huge bit of friction for a developer trying to introduce C# into their shop for the first time. In the past, I've been able to lobby Java-based employers to let me write some internal apps in Scala. I've been successful in introducing a Golang web service. In both situations, I was asking a manager to take a chance on some unfamiliar tech, and on the risk that it would be hard to maintain if I left the company. However, and this is key... I was NOT asking them to approve any budget. So I won! If I have to convince a manager to take some risks, AND to approve budget for $600 per seat, then forget it. I'll just wait a couple of years and see if Visual Studio Code gets open-sourced and turns into a sufficient VS replacement. If it doesn't, then .NET will continue to be something I tinker with in my personal time for hobby projects only (at most). The bottom line is that pricing for .NET developer tools is ABSURDLY out of line with typical pricing for other dominant platforms today (i.e. Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc). Shops that are all-in on Microsoft across the board are just used to that, but it makes .NET completely non-competitive for potential new users outside that bubble. It's the 21st-century now. You make your money in production (i.e. cloud platforms, proprietary app servers, support services, etc). Trying to make a buck off developer tools is daft. Developers have too many options to choose from these days, you'll just bleed mindshare like that.
- wluu 11y ago
  What parts of VS Code do you want open sourced? VS Code utilises[1] OmniSharp-Roslyn[2] (which is an open source project not started by MS) to provide intellisense and refactoring for C#. If you want to use something that is fully open-sourced (since day 1) and also utilises OmniSharp Roslyn, then check out OmniSharp Atom [3], which is an Atom plugin written mostly in TypeScript. OmniSharp Atom and OmniSharp Roslyn are both very welcoming of contributions. So if there's something that you see that's missing, feel free to send a PR :) [1] https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages#_c35 https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages#_c35 [2] https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-roslyn https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-roslyn [3] https://atom.io/packages/omnisharp-atom https://atom.io/packages/omnisharp-atom
  - StevePerkins 11y ago
    That's a fair point. I tend to overlook Atom in general because its startup time is slow as molasses compared to VS Code (and especially Vim or Notepad++). However, it's still in early days too, and hopefully will improve over time. Still, VS Code is working toward debugger support and a general "IDE feel" that I'm not sure is in Atom's future. We'll see. To be honest, as long as VS Code is free-as-in-beer, has a plugin-in system that's flexible enough for the community to go nuts with, and can adequately serve as the primary development environment for an ASP.NET app... then I'm delighted. However, perceptions mean a lot, and in the long-run I just don't see it getting uptake from the Python/Ruby/Node.js crowd without being open source. More of a marketing issue than anything else (although there's also the concern that MS could abandon it someday).
    - wluu 11y ago
      If it's been a little while since you last looked at Atom, then consider trying it again, they've spent some effort on optimising it lately. I mean, it's still not the speediest around, but it's improved leaps and bounds from even a few months ago. It is obviously not the only editor with an OmniSharp plugin. There are many others. [1] I believe that debugging support on VS Code is currently limited to Node and Mono (and that's only on OS X/Linux) [2]. The team(s) behind OmniSharp (that is the various editor plugins) do desire bringing debugging support to one or more editors. [1] http://www.omnisharp.net/#integrations http://www.omnisharp.net/#integrations [2] https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/debugging#_common-questions https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/debugging#_common-questio...
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > However, if you work for any reasonably established company, then it is illegal for you to use that Community Edition for company work. Not if your "reasonably sized company" develops open source software, it isn't.

I've been using VS 2013 Community (which is free) since it got released and I don't miss any of the "premium" features.

by deevus 11y ago

I've been using VS 2013 Community (which is free) since it got released and I don't miss any of the "premium" features.

For personal tinkering, that's great (as long as you don't mind running on Windows, which is no longer the case with most web developers these days). However, if you work for any reasonably established company, then it is illegal for you to use that Community Edition for company work. Your company must purchase a license for you, and that starts at $600 for the licensed equivalent of Community. Perhaps that's perfectly fair. However, it's a huge bit of friction for a developer trying to introduce C# into their shop for the first time. In the past, I've been able to lobby Java-based employers to let me write some internal apps in Scala. I've been successful in introducing a Golang web service. In both situations, I was asking a manager to take a chance on some unfamiliar tech, and on the risk that it would be hard to maintain if I left the company. However, and this is key... I was NOT asking them to approve any budget. So I won! If I have to convince a manager to take some risks, AND to approve budget for $600 per seat, then forget it. I'll just wait a couple of years and see if Visual Studio Code gets open-sourced and turns into a sufficient VS replacement. If it doesn't, then .NET will continue to be something I tinker with in my personal time for hobby projects only (at most). The bottom line is that pricing for .NET developer tools is ABSURDLY out of line with typical pricing for other dominant platforms today (i.e. Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc). Shops that are all-in on Microsoft across the board are just used to that, but it makes .NET completely non-competitive for potential new users outside that bubble. It's the 21st-century now. You make your money in production (i.e. cloud platforms, proprietary app servers, support services, etc). Trying to make a buck off developer tools is daft. Developers have too many options to choose from these days, you'll just bleed mindshare like that.

wluu 11y ago
What parts of VS Code do you want open sourced? VS Code utilises[1] OmniSharp-Roslyn[2] (which is an open source project not started by MS) to provide intellisense and refactoring for C#. If you want to use something that is fully open-sourced (since day 1) and also utilises OmniSharp Roslyn, then check out OmniSharp Atom [3], which is an Atom plugin written mostly in TypeScript. OmniSharp Atom and OmniSharp Roslyn are both very welcoming of contributions. So if there's something that you see that's missing, feel free to send a PR :) [1] https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages#_c35 https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages#_c35 [2] https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-roslyn https://github.com/OmniSharp/omnisharp-roslyn [3] https://atom.io/packages/omnisharp-atom https://atom.io/packages/omnisharp-atom
- StevePerkins 11y ago
  That's a fair point. I tend to overlook Atom in general because its startup time is slow as molasses compared to VS Code (and especially Vim or Notepad++). However, it's still in early days too, and hopefully will improve over time. Still, VS Code is working toward debugger support and a general "IDE feel" that I'm not sure is in Atom's future. We'll see. To be honest, as long as VS Code is free-as-in-beer, has a plugin-in system that's flexible enough for the community to go nuts with, and can adequately serve as the primary development environment for an ASP.NET app... then I'm delighted. However, perceptions mean a lot, and in the long-run I just don't see it getting uptake from the Python/Ruby/Node.js crowd without being open source. More of a marketing issue than anything else (although there's also the concern that MS could abandon it someday).
  - wluu 11y ago
    If it's been a little while since you last looked at Atom, then consider trying it again, they've spent some effort on optimising it lately. I mean, it's still not the speediest around, but it's improved leaps and bounds from even a few months ago. It is obviously not the only editor with an OmniSharp plugin. There are many others. [1] I believe that debugging support on VS Code is currently limited to Node and Mono (and that's only on OS X/Linux) [2]. The team(s) behind OmniSharp (that is the various editor plugins) do desire bringing debugging support to one or more editors. [1] http://www.omnisharp.net/#integrations http://www.omnisharp.net/#integrations [2] https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/debugging#_common-questions https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/debugging#_common-questio...
dragonwriter 11y ago
> However, if you work for any reasonably established company, then it is illegal for you to use that Community Edition for company work. Not if your "reasonably sized company" develops open source software, it isn't.