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Microsoft Launches Visual Studio Express, VS 2005 Beta
An anonymous reader writes "At the TechEd Europe keynote today, Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1. With it, they also released a set of five 'Express Editions' of Visual Studio. These currently free applications offer a student and hobbyist-oriented version of Visual Studio, and are available in C#, C++, VB, Web Developer, and SQL flavors. Each download weighs in at right around 50MB and features tools, documentation, and starter kits. There's been multiple posts and more information on this announcement over at MSDN Blogs, too." Update: 06/29 13:57 GMT by S : A clarification from the Express FAQ: Although the Beta Express products are currently free to download: "We have not announced pricing and licensing and will not do so until next calendar year."
RTFFAQ
Heaven forbid that somebody reads before they submit to Slashdot... from the Express Edition FAQ:
Q: "Are the Express Edition products free?"
A: "We have not announced pricing and licensing and will not do so until next calendar year. For the time being, we can tell you that the Express Editions will be low-cost and will continue to be easy to acquire."
[)amien
As an added bonus, both are cross-platform. ;-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Quote: "When you open a Visual Studio
So here starts the next layer of conversion hell!
Actually its not free at all M$ says they will release prices next calendar year and they will be "low-cost"
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I would have loved to at least give it a try, but it requires you to log in using Microsoft Passport! Bad idea! I think many people are not willing to sign up for Passport - even for goodies like this...
Homepage
***FROM THE FAQ***
# Are the Express Edition products free?
We have not announced pricing and licensing and will not do so until next calendar year. For the time being, we can tell you that the Express Editions will be low-cost and will continue to be easy to acquire.
# When will the Express products, and the rest of the Visual Studio 2005 product line, be officially released?
The Visual Studio 2005 family of products will likely be released in the first half of 2005. Microsoft will continue to release Community Technology Previews (CTPs) and beta releases of the Visual Studio 2005 family of products until then.
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
I totally agree... as I am into java-web-coding I was always a bit of jealous on that gui drawing system. I'm glad Sun had a good look to it while building Java Studio Creator (http://wwws.sun.com/software/products/jscreator/)
where you can use the java server faces (JSF)framework to nicely draw your work.
...that they have made only the beta versions of the Express products free. There's no mention of whether the final version's pricing. Personally, I expect them to replace the 'Standard' editions of the languages as they stand currently.
Interesting to see SQL Server Express 2005. As it's based on the Yukon engine, that it something I'll be downloading and playing with. I have no idea what edition of SQL Server this would replace, possibly Developer in the long run? It's mentioned that it's installed in a full VS 2005 install...
It's not free in any sense of the word.
a. It's BETA, meaning not done and unsupported, not free
b. "We have not announced pricing and licensing and will not do so until next calendar year. For the time being, we can tell you that the Express Editions will be low-cost and will continue to be easy to acquire."
c. as previously stated, there is no permission for distributing apps built with it
Each download caters to a specific language, one of the coolest features is to have comprehensive support for multiple language projects in a single workspace. Seems to be editor, debugger, GUI designer. Enough to get you started. None of the nice toys like analyser, test center, visio etc come with them. Nice to see they have included refactoring though, a huge ommission from previous versions.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Yes, it's very, very common. Think embedded systems. Think PDAs. Think mainframes.
And Borland certainly have more interest in cross-platform development than M$.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
... the "Standard" editions of VS.NET 2003? You can currently buy these cut-down versions of Visual Studio that only support C#, VB.NET, "J#" (whatever nightmare spawn of Java that is), or C++ for about $100 each. I imagine that when these "Express" products leave beta we'll see them priced at about the same level.
Read my blog.
No, the licensing doesn't let you make applications and the Web Dev specifically says that you can't put it into production and that a license (I am speculating that you have to pay for) will be available after Beta 2 comes out to be able to put things into production. You're not even supposed to use this version with IIS, only with the internal, local-host only webserver
I'm assuming the Visual Studio Express suite comprises IDEs for .NET, since that's the direction Microsoft is going, big time.
.NET IDEs out there at moment (with caveats, of course): SharpDevelop (GPL, with GUI builder) and Borland's C# Builder Personal Editioin NON-Commercial (you can only make non-commercial apps with this).
There are actually two free
They have a decent UI for the mingw C++ compiler. You can package it together with allegro and some nice game apis.
.net c# (I heard this being called C-Pound in the states) ide, that is fairly damn good!
Also try sharp-develop at www.icsharpcode.net/ , a free
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
To write/compile and run any of the .NET languages you really do not need VS.net. Visual studio is nothing more then a nice (_REALY_NICE_) development environment and debugger. You can write your C#/VB.net/ASP.net code in notepad and compile with the command line. The compilers and documentation is part of the SDK that you can download from MS at no charge ;) as well as distribute your compiled code w/o any royalties (I think).... They really do not advertise this as they want every one to spend $$ on the VS.net but that is completely unnecessary.
My philosophy with MS development has always been, the development environment is great, the libraries suck.
.Net - the dev environment is a vast improvement, and the libraries don't suck as much. (Actually I think that they don't suck at all, but I'm sure that as with any product, there are problems that I haven't encountered yet.)
All the more reason to check out
Say what you will about MS, they know how to cater to developers - to lure them over to the "Dark Side."
I once used *twiches* VB and Microsoft Studio and Microsoft Office, Access et al, to write programs for companies.
Summary of my experiences:
If 99% of tasks required are 1 day jobs, then yes, you can comlete those tasks in VB, in a cost effective and managemable way.
If the tasks are more technically involved, or require more advanced security, then you should forget it!
In terms of the GUI, yes you can indeed make it clean, but perhaps many people muddy good model/view seperation with the way they program in VB (I know I did!)
Sorry to cite Java, but it is possible to develop a Java [windowed] GUI in as much time as a VB GUI, and the number of excellent and mature packages to solve almost any development task, and the simple and powerful network transparency make it a developers dream.
When you apply the concerns of distributed applications or server side development, you can only increase the advantages of the J2EE platform.
Now that doesn't say that VB cannot be used for all problems, but I believe there is a cut off point where a tool like VB no longers becomes effective, and this probably is difficult to define.
I would also like to point out, that a tool is only as good as the person who wields it!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
One difference that I'm really annoyed about is that the Express versions don't have support for 64-bit processors. Shouldn't this be a pull-down list on the projects settings menu at this point?
-=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
From the FAQ Can I build and deploy applications using the Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition Beta 1? No. During the Beta 1 timeframe we want customers to experiment, evaluate and learn with the tool, but sites cannot be used for any public or production purposes. At Beta 2 Microsoft will likely provide a "Go-live license" that will enable developers to put sites into production.
Haven't been to a University with a Microsoft Campus agreement? They get almost all the Microsoft Software for free.
Need the Windows 98 disc, goto the Library and check it out for a day. Need Visual Studio 6, bring 2 CD-Rs to class, by the next class they will burn you a copy.
Heck the University I went to handed out Office 2000 (actual Microsoft discs with unique CD keys) during orientation.
Have you used VB! Sure you can create an app with few textboxes and a couple of button quickly. But if it actually has do something it quickly becomes bloated and you our showing and hiding forms and knee deep into win32 api calls and ... gah! the horror!
Sorry VB flashbacks.
From the installation notes for the Express web development package
Considering the problems Microsoft are having with Windows security this just screams bad planning to me. Yes I know I can get this installed without having a problem due to having a hardware firewall but it's not going to be much help to Joe Home-User who doesn't know what he's doing 100% and blindly follows Microsoft's instructions.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
...try SharpDevelop, a .NET IDE for Windows (only) that's GPL.
Finding God in a Dog
I'd love to use namespaces as they were intended, but because of the debugger problem I just use static members of a struct to emulate a namespace.
VC actually has pretty decent namespace support, they added (working) support for the 'non-.h' std-c-lib headers existing in the std namespace before anyone else.
C++ is a big language with lots of runtime requirements, I don't think any compiler or library vendor could be said to have the whole thing correct (and working with all support tools) according to the latest standard yet.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Damnit...sorry about the lack of hyperlinks
l
s vcomp/empower/default.aspx
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.htm
http://members.microsoft.com/partner/competency/i
This offer is for companies only however...so my original reply is probably not valid as I doubt you could register one company twice in this program.
I have to agree. If all you are doing is talking to an Access or SQL database and building forms, VB is perfect. Anything outside this regime, and you spend more time reinventing the wheel. And if you don't have a database backing you up, you spend a LOT of time reimplementing basic data structures, like multi-dimensional arrays, hashmaps, lists, etc.
I like it because ADO and VbScript (ASP) allow me to create business applications quickly and reliably. But I hate it because I spend a lot of time reimplementing things, or working around a broken include system.
AFAIK, VS 2005 should run on XP 64 in compat mode, and will *compile* for AMD64 and IA-64.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
Wrong. I'm currently (as in I've alt-tabbed over from it to post this) using it to develop for PS2, using the SN Systems gcc-based toolchain and makefiles. It is trivial to use plug-in compilers, debuggers etc. with VS6 and VS.Net. May not be trivial to write them or interface them, but I didn't get the impression that that was what you meant...
Game dev and music blog
I'm glad I'm not the only one annoyed by this feature of the MSDN library! I explicitly didn't install the Windows CE related stuff... all it does now is prompt for the installation disk to load those pages. Grrr. Filtering isn't as easy as it used to be either.
I just looked into this program ("Empower ISV"). In order to qualify you need to:
1) Look like a software company when they check you out
2) Ship a product and have it certified for some version of Windows (anyone know what this costs?)
3) Get an employee MCP certified.
So, it's not for everyone.
As for the high price of the "Universal" package, I think MS feel they need to price it in the same range as BEA and IBM's enterprise development packages (which list for $10 grand or so). However, if you are small shop and give them a ring, they arent cutting you any deals.
You can also get the a C# or C++ only version for about $100 each -- not much more than this "Express" version and probably sufficient for many folks.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
For example the ability to [...] rename a class and all references to it throughout a file.
Taken care of in VS2005 - and it'll actually rename throughout an entire project. There are a lot of features along these lines that have been added in, which I've been grateful for these past couple months when I've been using it.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I started programming way before Windows and used to do only basic. When Visual Basic came, it was awesome. I ended up doing even some pretty big projects with VB3. You didn't even notice that it was "only" made with basic as I knew how to write fast code. Learned all the ugly tricks and invented a few more while I was at it.
Problems started when Microsoft released VB4. The changes were so big (vbx->ocx, 16bit->32bit) that I realy couldn't compile my software any more. One of our employees went through the trouble with a smaller project but mine was pretty close to impossible. So I thought I'd rewrite and make a new and better version at the same time. I guess I chose VB5 or 6 at that point.
To speed up VB6, I decided to write DLLs with C. That's a lot more efficient when handling strings. What I noticed was that VB stores strings as 16 bit unicode. However, when the string is passed to a DLL, VB converts it to 8 bit Ansi. When an array is passed, the whole array is converted. It was awfully slow. Worse was that there was no way to change that. After one week of frustrations I decided to give Delphi a try.
Now I have done almost only Delphi for 4 years. Delphi is pretty much as easy as VB but it produces way faster code. The best part is that you can go as deep as you want when you want it. You can write your own controls, the object model is beautiful, and everything just works and makes perfect sense. The difference is really monumental.
When I look back, I can't imagine how stupid I was for using VB earlier.
It's very common, AFAIK. I usually develop on Mac and deploy on Windows, or deploy on Solaris, or deploy on Linux. Sometimes develop on Linux to deploy on Linux. I also have developed on Windows to deploy on Windows. I have developed on Linux to deploy on Windows. Lately I have done all this with Java and .NET but before that I did it with C and Objective-C.
Cross-platform has always been common and it's becoming even more common because of Java and .NET; you can even build the app on a platform and just run it on another one (no need to do a final compile on the deployment platform).
Go hug some trees.
particularly the GUI-drawing system
/.- seem to be stuck in the past, coding all of their GUIs manually. I know that the development setup is generally some years behind for most Linux developers compared to your average coder on Windows or Mac OS X, and that there are fewer good and polished tools on Linux. But still- there are free GUI designers for GTK+, FLTK, Qt and Motif. And for just about any other toolkit and language. Do people not use these?
...and others. But those are some that embody the feeling of a RAD IDE like VB. That is, they do more than just add a GUI designer.
From my experience, this is the most commonly sited perk of VB. It's something that you've been able to do for darn near any language for a long time- GUI designers really aren't new, and VB doesn't even have the best one available.
The frequency that I see people cite the GUI designer as the major benefit to VB makes me think that most folks- especially the types of people on
That said, tools like VB and RealBasic (with which I've more experience than VB) are RADs for more than just a GUI designer. Using Glade for a C/GTK+ app won't make you as productive as a seasoned VB coder for simple app development, but it will shave off some time spent coding the GUI programatically.
But there are options, and some darn good ones on, for Linux:
Prima: a new GUI toolkit for perl- including a really nice RAD GUI builder- for Linux, OS/2 and Windows.
Squeak Smalltalk: Runs on just about every platform. Uses a seperate GUI toolkit, but affords a huge amount of power and ease of development.
RealBasic: A cross-platform VB clone for Mac OS Classic/X, Windows and Linux. *Really* nice. Costs money, but it's worth it.
RunTime Revolution: Has a HyperTalk-like language and runs almost anywhere.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
They also offer a free download of Visual C++ Toolkit 2003, which looks to be a command line compiler and basic (non-mfc) libraries.
I would assume that your smalltalk ide couldn't handle every case of edit-and-continue.
It can, and I do mean every case. The whole Smalltalk environment is a continuous series of executing processes, of which your 'application' is just one.
You guys need to give up looking down your noses at anyone who uses anything but (LISP/Smalltalk/insert other escoteric language here.)
I don't look down at other languages - in fact, I don't do Smalltalk development these days.
There is a reason all those languages have not been popular. They really don't address real world development issues.
Actually, Smalltalk was widely used at the end of the 80s, and still is used for real world development. For a time, it was touch-and-go whether Smalltalk or C++ would be the primary OO development language. Its a highly practical language for many situations, and is certainly not elitist. Unfortunately, the Smalltalk industry seemed to decide that high-pricing, awkward licencing, and forking the language was more important than widespread use, so it almost died out. Its better today, with good free implementations, like Squeak.
People use Microsoft development environments for a reason. It is because the complete package is there: an excellent dev environment, excellent help and online support, an installation system, top notch compilers and wide industry use.
Yes, I agree, these are good features of it, but I still feel strongly that people who don't have experience of something 'elitist' like Smalltalk at its best are not in a position to judge what is missing from something like Visual Studio. They think what they have is first-rate. Its good, but not that good.
Things are getting better, in terms of IDEs - IBMs VisualAge range was superb (after all, it was written in Smalltalk!), and Eclipse with its ability to execute and debug arbitrary code fragments is looking good, but they still aren't up to what many of us used years ago in terms of power and flexibility. At least, that's what I feel.
Channel 9 is hosting a coding contest making use of these new Express editions. Six winners get an Xbox, a one-year subscription to Xbox Live, and a copy of Halo 2 (once it's released of course...)
-- Cyrus (http://blogs.msdn.com/cyrusn)
The Express versions appear to be .NET pimping tools with anything that anyone else would need stripped out.