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Free Desktop Software Development Dead In Windows 8
benfrog writes "Microsoft has decided to restrict Visual Studio 11 Express, the free-to-use version of its integrated development environment, to producing only Metro-style applications. Those who would like to produce conventional desktop applications or command line -based applications are stuck with Visual Studio 2010 or buying the full version. Microsoft announced the Visual Studio 11 lineup last week."
So if you are crying about this, what about coming up with those open source IDE's?? I understand that they have never matched Visual Studio, but seriously. I even buy good web development IDE's to my OS X, like Coda 2. Stop being a cheap-ass winer and pay for quality tools.
You know what this story actually tells? That even FOSS users don't like their IDE's. They want to use Visual Studio from Microsoft because frankly, it is much better than the open source alternatives.
Visual Studio 11 is an improvement in many ways over Visual Studio 2010. Its C++ compiler, for example, is a great deal more standards-compliant, especially with the new C++ 11 specification. It has powerful new optimization features, such as the ability to automatically use CPU features like SSE2 to accelerate mathematically intensive programs, and new language features to allow programs to be executed on the GPU. The new version of the C# language makes it easier to write programs that do their work on background threads and avoid making user interfaces unresponsive. The .NET Framework, updated to version 4.5, includes new capabilities for desktop applications, such as a ribbon control for Microsoft's WPF GUI framework.
Taken together, there are many new features in Visual Studio 11 that are relevant, interesting, and useful for desktop developers. Indeed, things like the new WPF capabilities are only useful for desktop developers.
If Microsoft is so bad then why the hell there isn't better open source versions of these things??
It's worth noting that there's enough toolchains that are perfectly capable of producing desktop applications in that are Free (in both senses) that're capable of producing quality results.
Quite simply, if they're willing to cut their own throats in this space this way...let 'em.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
No matter how you read this, the headline is completely misleading. There are other compilers/IDEs for Windows that cost $0. And the term "free" can mean two things on Slashdot; this headline makes it sound like Microsoft is trying to kill FOSS.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
MS quipped. "you're free not to use it".
Give them time to react to developer response. Who knows, maybe they'll end up following the Windows Phone model and pay people to develop on the platform.
It seems like with this move and generally the Metro and Windows 8 walled garden stuff, Microsoft is going more and more "the Apple way". Is it really in their best interest? Is it just me, or hasn't the open-ish (compared to Apple) Intel + Microsoft Windows ecosystem served a desktop market niche that is different from the Apple universe? Does Microsoft have an exit strategy in case they fail in closer competition with Apple at Apple's game?
Microsoft is so consumed with "Apple envy" that they seem to have forgotten what their bread and butter is: the business desktop. They are so obsessed with being a competitor in the tablet market that they are making a product that actively hurts their core demographic.
Why do people use Windows? Legacy support is a BIG reason – and yet Microsoft under Ballmer seems dedicated to trying to kill it as quickly as possible. Guess what? If legacy support goes away, so does a large part of the reason for people not switching to another OS! After all, if they have to rewrite everything anyway... Ballmer once understood that "developers, developers, developers" were what made Microsoft's platform dominate; now he seems to be going for tablet/smartphone-using hipsters and tweens, and giving developers the middle finger.
Not a fan of his personality but since Gates has left: XBox, .Net, Windows server ~3X gain in market share, dido database solutions. Dominant in most large corporations for email as well. They've done some good things, they've done some bad things like all companies. In pure business sense they are doing pretty good: http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/earning_yield#series=type:company,id:MSFT,calc:earning_yield&zoom=&startDate=6/30/2002&endDate=5/25/2012&format=real&recessions=false earnings yield went from ~1.75% to ~10% since 2002 (couldn't get a chart out to 2000 when Gates left) while they traded ~flat since the dot com boom. So MS today has the earnings to back up the valuation versus MS of Gates day. They might have boggled the phone, screwed the pouch with Vista etc but they earn money, at least now. Consumer software isn't the only source of revenue.
I think CEOs that need to be crapped on are the ones that gave them selves bonuses when they were getting government bailouts and losing money. Or the second they got out of government ownership decide to reward themselves with 10's of millions as deferred payment for all those hard years of ~1M/yr salaries.
The problem here is the TV problem. Visual Studio 11 is free to use, but not free to produce. You're not the customer, you're the product that Microsoft is buying. And Microsoft wants you to produce metro applications, that drive demand for their new products (and phones/tablets), not drag users back to their previous products that people have already bought.
It's as simple as that.
Don't like being used ? Pay for what you need. It'll be a whole other story, even with the very same Microsoft products.
Btw: as a developer I thought I'd add that Visual Studio is a fast, usable and well-integrated IDE, it's also a very, very industrial one. It is much less elegant than most of the alternatives.
It's not just Ballmer's repeated foot-shootings, you need to look at the broader context of the PC industry. HP and Dell are posting massive losses, Best Buy's retail channel is dead, CompUSA is gone, third-rate Chinese ODMs aren't gaining any traction, and the corporate segment is still languishing on Windows XP and IE6. In the big picture, it is obvious, PCs are dying.
Soon PCs will be parked in the corner for legacy application use and relegated to server rooms. Sure, bearded hobbyists will continue to build Linux-powered frankenclones out of their surplus turbo-button cases, but the average person will stay far away. Meanwhile, Apple is ascending to be the dominant force in client-connectivity and will soon enter the IT segment in a big way.
iPad is your future.
iPad is your future.
As a developer and, more important to me, as somebody who truly enjoys hacking all I can say is please have mercy and let the end be quick. If that's how it's going to be then just slit my wrists or better yet my throat.
or build your apps on HTML5 and to hell with it all.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm sorry AC but you are full of shit. NOBODY is gonna want to do serious work like photoshop or quickbooks or a bazillion other jobs on no damned iPad. what you and all those that worship the Cult of Steve seem to be missing is the big picture which i will now give to you..
The VAST majority of the PCs that were made in the last 5 to 7 years are not only "good enough" for the jobs people have, for most they are INSANELY over powered. The reason why all the OEMs like HP and Dell are shitting on themselves is frankly they got waaaay too fucking spoiled and thought the MHz wars were just gonna last forever, but those of us in the trenches could have told you when the first dual cores starting hitting mainstream that the gravy train was over. there just isn't any real "killer apps" that require the insane power of a hexa or octocore PC, most people with duals aren't even really stressing the system. I gave my GF a triple core Athlon for Xmas to replace her aging P4. Now this is probably considered dog slow by this group but after a month I checked her stats and you know what? The thing hadn't even hit 45% load. the kind of tasks that she and most consumers have simply aren't stressing the systems they have, so why buy a new one when they won't feel a difference?
So I'm sorry but for a few jobs iPads work, for the rest they are but a toy. Apple sells on brand like Prada and Nike, just ask those people standing in line for a new one "does the one you have not work? Is there something wrong with it?" and the answer is no, its just COOLER to have the newest one. its a status thing, nothing more.
The reason MSFT and the OEMs can't do this is frankly nobody gives a rat's ass about Windows or these OEMs as a brand, the ONLY thing they want a Windows PC for is to run their third party apps....which frankly aren't even stressing what they have. I have built e350 units for office workers, that is probably the weakest chip made that is out of order. do they complain? Is it slowing them down? Nope because for basic office jobs frankly ANY dual core gives them cycles to spare.
so ultimately X86 is simply a victim of its own success. they made chips so damned powerful that honestly nobody bothers to replace one until it dies and with just a tiny bit of care even that netbook or laptop can last 5 years or more. the OEMs thought they could just follow the same path and keep cashing the checks, they were wrong. ARM is currently undergoing its own MHz war but when that peters out i have NO doubt you'll see the exact same thing you see now in X86, incredibly overpowered devices that aren't replaced until the previous one fails. Except for Apple of course, because owning last year's iPad is like wearing last year's designer fashions, its just not hip.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Because none of the applications that I use daily run on Linux? No Adobe Lightroom, no Photoshop, no QuickBooks, no MS Office. And no, F-Stop, Gimp, gnuCash and OpenOffice are not viable alternatives.
You keep using your free OS. I'll keep making shit loads of money using my relatively inexpensive one.
"Not a fan of his personality but since Gates has left: XBox, .Net, Windows server ~3X gain in market share, dido database solutions."
This isn't because of some magical action, but because Ballmer left them alone to go down the path Gates had already set them on. Effectively all Ballmer had to do was recognise these segments were growing and leave the teams the fuck alone to keep growing them - even a CEO as shit as him can manage that.
The key issue is that under Ballmer no new product lines have arisen and been succesful. Just about every succesful product line Microsoft has now, stems from the Gates era. There have been a number of new high growth markets - portable media players, tablets, cell phones, and in every case, Ballmer has failed to grasp them and form a cohesive and succesful strategy around them. Even the web he's struggled with, I've never heard of anyone using Office 365, but I know plenty of people that use Google Apps for example. Their closest thing to success there has been Bing which basically just had an absolute fuckton of money thrown at it in terms of getting it as a default browser, and shit loads of advertising until it actually got to a slightly better than negligible market share.
I don't disagree that Microsoft is still doing well as a business, but the point is it's basically on cruise control and that only works until you run out of gas. The world of computing is changing, it's become, and becoming more and more web and mobile based, but Microsoft isn't managing to follow - it's profits still come almost entirely from the desktop and server markets.
This is why Ballmer is an abysmal failure of a CEO, because all he's achieved at Microsoft is to keep it on the same path it's been for the last 10 years, which sure, means that it's growing whilst that path remains viable, but what about when that path stops being viable? what if something comes along and eats into that path? What if say, Apple decides it is willing to start shipping and supporting Mac OS X for PCs and an office suite now that they have more than enough money to pursue that kind of venture? We know Jobs wouldn't have allowed it, but the new Apple, where Cook gives shareholders more of a say? What then for Microsoft? Their bottom line is under threat and they have nowhere else to run to.
The fact is that Gates built a company so big, strong, and powerful that even the worst CEO in the world would take a few decades to really kill it off. You only have to look at Sony for another example of this - it's only just now really beginning to start having to explain it's failings, despite having been run fairly incompetently for at least a decade, getting on for two. Sony's looking right now like it may well end up fading into the history books with it's continued decline, but it's taken along time, and it'll probably take at least another decade yet to truly falter, that's assuming they don't get their act together and bring in competent management in the meantime.
All of which might be a reasonable strategy, except that the typical uses for a Windows desktop PC are totally different to the typical uses for a tablet or similar mobile device. One is for power and content creation, the other is for easy content consumption. They just happen to overlap in that both can involve a web browser some of the time.
If MS sticks to its guns and tries to force Metro on everyone, I think it really will be the end of them, at least in their current monolithic form. I don't think they can afford another Vista or another poor assault on the mobile space, and Windows 8 has the potential to be both at the same time.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.