Microsoft Offers Beta of Visual Studio 2005

nanodude writes "According to DimensionXC, Microsoft is offering a free beta version of Visual C++ Express 2005 among other programs in the Visual Studio 2005 Express Suite. Seems like a good deal to me!"

Comments

Nice Journalistic Integrity, there.

[It's People!]

First of all, that beta's been free for a really long time. I've had it for months.

Second, the website that "reported" it is a new forum that has only 1-2 posts. This is a blatant attempt at spamming the site to get more members.

Nice work, editors.

Re:Nice Journalistic Integrity, there.

[nanodude]

As the author of this story I would like to first off say that I do personally know the operator of the website (www.platinumcheats.com) however I did not contact him before submitting this story to /.. While browsing his website I notice the post concerning Visual Studio and, after searching /. for a similar article I realized that no one had posted about this before. I did not in anyway intend to advertise or publisize his website or spam /. but merely to post information that I came across and felt that others would benefit from. I did not look into the date of the beta release before posting. I appologize for any misunderstanding.

Lisp

[brilinux]

I am still waiting for Microsoft to release Visual Lisp++ so that I can take full advantage of lisp in Windows.

Where's the Form editor?

[SamNmaX]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but why, oh why, does Visual C++ still not have a form editor like Visual Basic or Visual C#? Sure, it has the dialog editor, but does that's not even close to the same thing. This is something Borland supported quite a while ago with Borland C++ Builder, and was fairly nice.

C++ is a popular enough language to justify the cost for Microsoft, however I get the impression that they don't truly care about C++ and would like to replace both it and VB with C#.

Horray for progress.

Re:Where's the Form editor?

[Javagator]

Microsoft has adapted C++ to .Net with the same skill and elegance that they used when they adapted C++ to COM. In other words, it's a mess. I have programmed in both C# and managed C++ and its easier for an experienced C++ programmer to learn C# than managed C++. Even Microsoft realizes their mistakes and are correcting some of them in C++ 2005 (the beta is essentially 2005). The main advantage of C++ .Net is that it will be easier to port over existing C++ applications. New development should be in C#.

Re:Where's the Form editor?

[atlasheavy]

VC++ most certainly *does* have a Winforms designer. You have to create a Managed C++ Winforms project in order to take advantage of it, though. Otherwise it just ain't gonna work for you ;-). If you create a native app you can still use the old-school RC file editor, although my take on it is that it's just easier to hack RC files by hand (I've spent the past two weeks doing nothing but hand-editing RC files at work).

Might eventually be completely free

[mnmn]

Microsoft is very slowly finding its direction. The success of any OS platform depends in a large part on its developer community.

With the development tools free, a developer and application base forms naturally, that can better sustain any given company. After all Linux started with gcc.

The cost of VisualC has been obscene, with Microsoft assuming win32 developers have no other option. Nowadays we've got wxwindows, QT, the bcc and intel compilers, all free (except QT) and of better quality, and ticked off developers can easily switch to OSX and Linux. Gates has acknowledged Microsoft made a mistake in not rallying a developer base around it.

Free VisualC... hmmm if they release such a thing it would be the culmination of the 'developers,developers,developers' we've been hearding of...

Re:Might eventually be completely free

[_undan]

Comparing Visual C++ to bcc is like comparing Kazaa to ftp.exe. It's more than just a compiler/linker - it's an entire IDE.

Microsoft does have a free C++ linker/compiler sans-IDE. You can get it here.

[knee-jerk linux freak subject]

[Zarf]

[insert microsoft bashing statement]

[something witty about linux]

[ressurect old joke for punchline]

Re:Not quite

[GregChant]

It's free if you happen to be running 10.3. Unless you've bought a computer from them in the last year the price is $129 for the OS upgrade (which I purchased specifically for XCode).

You wasted $129. You can download XCode for free from ADC. Just need to register for an ADC Basic account, which is free as well.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

pre-emptive: If all you know about Microsoft dev tools comes from Visual C++ 6, then give these newer tools a try. You might be impressed.

And if not, hey, it was worth a shot.

Re:zerg

[BollocksToThis]

This is Slashdot... all we think we know about these tools comes from QuickBasic ;)

MS ABSOLUTELY DESPISES C++

[was_ms_now_linux]

MS Absolutely Despises C++ While I do believe the MS Visual C++ product is a very convenient form of C++, and I've been a daily user for the last ten years, it would be a simple case of cheerleading to believe that MS management has any desire to continue this product. If it were not for the ABSOLUTE DEMANDS of keepers of huge C++ source code bases such as ISV's (those who produce software for resale) and some of the more tech-savvy Fortune 500 customers (those wishing to preserve the option to vacate the MS platform in the event of some unforeseen future innovation - such as an equally suitable and maybe even free OS J ), MS management would have scrapped C++ as a product offering the day that Visual Basic 6 shipped. Bring in the MS consultants or top partners and they will tell you it will bankrupt your organization if you try to use it. Consider these facts: * Proprietary languages are key to ensuring customers don't skip upgrades from one version of Windows to another. MS will always concoct a plausible new marketing line to justify why unwitting customer companies should switch from one language to another - with the new version being completely incompatible with any viable competitive platform. * All MS products are written using C++. * Dropping external support for C++ and enforcing .Net as the only development environment for Windows lets MS move in on more and more new industry-specific markets- or at least choose the players who succeed - in vertically focused (sector or industry-focused) markets. * Proprietary development environments are CRITICAL to getting Platform/OS customers to pay for every version upgrade. Without Proprietary Development Environments, customers would leapfrog one or more version upgrades. * For a Real-World Example: If you wrote a data access layer/sub-system against the ODBC C-API ten years ago and it would compile today and still perform better than the most optimally designed .Net data access sub-system. I know this first-hand from experience. On the flip-side, if you chose the MS language du-jour, you would have been forced to re-write your data access layer at least four times - in the same time period. So, the moral of the story is: KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON CODING IN C++!!! STILL THE FASTEST, STILL THE MOST PORTABLE, AND STILL THE LOWEST COST - OVER A PERIOD OF THREE YEARS OR MORE!!!

Re:MS ABSOLUTELY DESPISES C++

[alexo]

Oh, yea!
They despise so much that they hired Herb Sutter to work on it.

Re:Wonder why...

[rjshields]

the code generation sucks

That's not really the most important part of an IDE for most people. Things like code refactoring, auto-completion and hints, integration with documentation and source control and general text editing capabilities are probably higher on people's IDE wish list. Besides, the compiler is a part that can be changed if required.

One More Key Fact About C++ and VB and C#...

[was_ms_now_linux]

...is that unmanaged C++ is still the only access route to the scalable aspects of most of the underlying platform services such as TCP/IP stacks, Web Server etc. Support for TCP/IP within .Net is very limited - confined to client-app mechanisms but nothing for scalable server-side development. Same story for anything but plain-vanilla web development. The second I had to use a x.509 certificate from a bank for a program I was writing, had to go to the WinHTTP SDK, which is denominated in C. VB.Net and C# are great for the fill-in-the-blanks style coding that some simpler tasks necessitate, but C++ is still an absolute requirement for the vast majority of enterprise endeavors. MS still achieves all its benchmarks using VC++ - they don't even use their own .Net languages when they need respectable numbers. Doug Hettinger (dh_75032@yahoo.com)