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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??
This is really stupid. I mean, I understand the (stupid) reasoning behind it, given the direction they want to go... but it's just shooting themselves in the foot.
At least VS2010 Express will still be available, but still... this is going to burn a LOT of good-will (such as it is) with Windows developers.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
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
When I read Forbes naming Ballmer one of the 5 worst CEO, I had some doubt
After reading TFA, the doubt is gone
Indeed, Ballmer is utterly clueless on how to run Microsoft !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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".
There isnt a week where I dont come upon a story like this and laugh out loud. Its a shame too as Win 8 has nice features.
It was just Metro and now the lack of media player outside ultimate, no gui with aero in desktop mode, and now this?! What the hell are they going to fuck uo next?
There are work arounds like win7start and the intel compilers and eclipse (sucks to use phenom), but buying a machine with win 7 instead is a lot less hassle.
XP was bashed here on slashdot for years and then came Vista. Now these same users who bashed it think XP is the next coming of christ and perfection at its core and refuse to leave the 11 year old platform. Now we are being transformed into cutting enthusiasts to luddites we cant stand. Amazing what a bad OS can do.
I never would have have quit Linux due to its tavlet UI in March 2011 if I knew what was in store for Win 8.
http://saveie6.com/
There is no reason you have to release your code under the GPL if you use the Qt libraries. Qt is licensed under the LGPL.
My blog, if you're interested: http://www.purp
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?
The Qt SDK has an option to be used with LGPL v 2.1 which will allow developers to release proprietary executables without being required to release their source code. Source release is only required if the developers make changes to the Qt SDK itself, which usually shouldn't be an issue. There's also a commercial license available if even this is too onerous.
Qt for Windows builds with mingw, so YES it is possible to build Windows desktop apps for free.
You are forced to release your software as GPL if you use the QT sdk tough.
No you aren't. Get your facts straight.
Why not write in Qt for Windows? It's certainly pleasant to work with, and you get Linux and OSX ports basically for free.
Get Lost, Get Lost, Get Lost.
Enuff said. The desktop is the only saving grace for Microsoft, let alone Windows. Talk about killing the golden goose.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
...to laugh silently and sombrely at this comment from only three weeks ago, which is now tragically and frustratingly wrong.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
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.
A lot of people still use laptops and desktops. Microsoft is throwing away that market to be in also ran far behind iPhone and Android. Microsoft should focus on doing what they do best. Instead they are scaring Windows customers and Windows developers into leaving the PC platform. Poorly played, Microsoft.
Even if older versions of Visual Studio can be used, they are notorious for breaking under new OSs. VS2003 won't work on Vista or Windows 7. VS2005/2008 is slower, and VS2010 doesn't support global directories so you must enter your search paths manually into every single library, making porting time consuming and tedious. What Microsoft are doing here is saying if you don't want to develop METRO apps, then it's time to leave the Windows platform.
Just download the MS SDK. It's been free for years and includes the compiler et al. It's only the pretty IDEs that are a problem.
Not anymore:
"The Windows SDK no longer ships with a complete command-line build environment. The Windows SDK now requires a compiler and build environment to be installed separately."
In addition, the desktop is likely to be the high profit margin market in the future. CAD/CAE, publishing, software development graphic design, etc, and most office work will still need large screens. The mobile market could easily turn into a race to the bottom. I'm surprised that MS wants to be there.
For C++ development, ease of use, portability and tools, Qt Creator is both a lightweight and feature packed IDE. It has about the same feature set as Visual Studio and similar usage, plus it's much easier to use and configure for custom build systems. It can be used with both MSVC compiler and Mingw. It's well mantained and has some killer features such as the locator. As a plus, it works identically everywhere, so I can get my favorite development environment no matter if i'm at work (Windows), at home (Linux) or on my laptop (OSX).
In my view, the biggest problem it has is it's name, "Qt-Creator", which i wish developers would change. Even if Qt is hands down the best library and toolit i've ever used for mobile and desktop development, it works perfectly fine for non Qt related development too, so plenty of developers writing non-Qt are missing the best opensource C++ IDE.
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/
But a lot of them do target XP, which is no longer supported in either version.
but that's 99% lazy, lazy programmers using the built in MS-SQL (which will bite them hard in the ass in a few years when in high cost of maintaining SQL DBs running over TCP/IP vs el-cheapo access DBs on network shares becomes apparent).
...I can think of all sorts of arguments for not using MS SQL that you could adopt for valid reasons, but I would have never dreamed I would hear someone advocating shitty access dbs on network shares as a replacement for a proper db.
You sir, are a goon.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I don't think it was an accident that XBox was good and cheap. Design decisions: commodity PC like hardware: oddles of people that already know how to code games for something like that, the hardware's commodity use in other areas give you volume effects you are unlikely to get with some odd "emotion engine" architecture etc. For XBox 360: HDDVD: bad guess, at the time no one knew which would win I don't think this is the reason why XBox 360 was cheaper, it was cheaper because it used relatively more mainstream hardware rather than some oddball CPU that was being produced in small volume.Kinect: something pretty awesome from what I've seen of it online (I live in a bubble with my 55" screen and PS3 so no XBox for me but consider it comparable) and the next logical step from the Wii mote. Might add for example a whole lot of touch like gestures to tablets and desktops without the need for a touch screen and the mess of having someone touching your screen all the time.
Vista->Win 7 agreed. Email: I'm thinking more servers with Exchange. Not sure what the MS tech from the 90's was but most people I knew were using sendmail or something similar back then part of the reason why people were going nuts for Sun hardware and geeks in robes praying to the UNIX gods was still cool because it let you do something useful on your win 95 box windows didn't really have anything comparable for internet and email.
Free is not about the price, but about the freedom. And there are other compilers than the microsoft one.
See, as they make very clear when you download Microsoft Visual Studio 11 for Windows 8, Microsoft controls the publishing rights of all Metro applications. Which, pretty much makes building them pointless. Why, as a developer, should I put my time, hard work, and money on the line, only to give Microsoft the option of never allowing my app to see the light of day? It just doesn't make sense. I would say the same thing of Apple, also, before you point out that they also have a walled garden. In the case of Microsoft, I don't think it can work because it's the opposite strategy of the one that made them successful in the first place. And if they want the opposite of success, they can have it. As a developer, I find the mobile platforms more compelling anyway.
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Wait, who says we'd need to be bound by Miocrosoft's implementation
Microsoft does. Windows RT doesn't run anything but IE.
most people outside of work are primarily content consumers not content creators
The distinction between a "consumer" and a "creator", as opposed to a participant in culture, is the whole problem that locked-down tablets perpetuate.
The reason MS Home Server no longer exists is frankly nobody bought it and it didn't do Citrix style remote desktops anyway. Also you seem to think that the network can replace the PC when in most places, hell even a lot of colleges, the amount of bandwidth that would require would cost more than the machines to roll out.
But if you don't need the cycles the nice thing about X86 is that you can save money while still having a full desktop. I paid about $350 for my EEE PC AMD with 8Gb of RAM, it only uses 18w under load and gets 6+ hours on a charge. if you want similar on the desktop it is even easier as several make both kit and fully built E350 that are cheap and again low powered. I have actually done what you are suggesting, in that I replaced the majority of full size P4 hogging power towers at the local print shop with E350s that are about the size of a VCR and just pop under the monitor. For the workers there editing HD graphics naturally they required bigger units but there is no reason for the basic office workers or a school for that matter to need all that power.
So there really isn't a need to switch to a client server model when you can buy a unit that'll run a full blown OS and applications with low power and heat. sun tried what you are suggesting with the Sun Ray and last i looked those can be bought for $10 a pop simply because so few used them. By going with client server you'd need a pretty damned big server that would be blowing through power 24/7/365 whereas when not in use the desktops can go to sleep and only draw a couple of watts.
Finally you are forgetting a big chunk of the cost in client server which is licenses. Like it or not most places simply can't use linux as they have too much Windows software that is required to run and MSFT really sticks it to you if you are using terminal services. I have looked into your idea with some SMBs and frankly for less than several hundred seats it ends up costing more for the licenses than it does just to give everyone a bog standard desktop. Again there is always ways to save power and electricity on a desktop but any savings you'd have by going client server would be quickly eaten by the licenses so you'd end up losing money on the deal. Better to just stick with the way we do things now and simply use less powerful machines friend.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You have a point, as long as PCs' prices don't rise too much. I still have a few things to say:
they will always need to have a way for developers to create for iOS. For this reason, if no other (and I do believe there are many other reasons), Macs will always be around
Apple could phase out the MacBook Air in favor of some sort of maxiPad or iBook or something running iOS. The rumored TV with a built-in Apple TV might replace the iMac. Eventually, all iOS application developers would have to buy a Mac Pro, just as all developers for video game consoles have to buy a specific device.
But why? Why would Apple phase out proper Macs (except for the Mac Pro) in the near term? People are buying them in record numbers. The only reason Apple would replace them with iOS "Macs" would be if they think even more people would buy those instead.
At this point, it's not going to happen. Those that want iOS "PCs" can buy iPads, and far too many people still want and need proper PCs for Apple to phase out their PCs. It makes no sense today, on in the near future, for Apple to turn into the console model of selling only appliance-level consumer computers and dev kits. Once the Mac's popularity begins to significantly wane, only *then* would that make sense, and if it makes sense it won't be something to worry about, because, by definition, people aren't buying them anymore.
And even if Apple totally screws this up, and prematurely discontinues the Mac, you will always be able to buy a Windows or Linux PC, and even (in your scenario) a Mac Pro.
for as long as the PC in general is around, which I don't see disappearing altogether any time soon
The smallest laptops are already starting to disappear; Dell discontinued its 10" model.
What you mean to say is that they are phasing out their shittiest PCs, the netbook and the nettop. And now they are trying again with the "ultrabook" (read: MacBook Air clone). But PCs themselves are not disappearing, only changing. As they have been since the 70s. How many computers do you see today that are built into the keyboard? Not many. But even though they have been phased out, that didn't lead to PCs themselves disappearing.