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Microsoft Releases Browser-Based IDE, Visual Studio Online

Posted by samzenpus on from the check-it-out dept.

rjmarvin writes "Microsoft today announced a web-based development environment for app creation to complement Visual Studio 2013, called Visual Studio Online. Microsoft Senior V.P. S. Somasegar says the new web-based IDE is designed for quick tasks related to building Windows Azure websites and services. Microsoft will be releasing the Visual Studio Online Application Insights service in a limited preview to show developers how to deploy and perform in conjunction with Visual Studio 2013's new features."

89 comments

  1. What is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Windows Azure?

    1. Re:What is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Windows Azure?

      Windows Azure

    2. Re:What is... by c0lo · · Score: 1

      What is... Windows Azure?

      Potatoes, you know? (Boil e'm, mash them, stick them in a stew)

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    3. Re:What is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do we have summaries at all? Or even links? Instead you could just throw some keywords, and let the readers search for the articles themselves.

    4. Re:What is... by mwvdlee · · Score: 2

      What is lmgtfy.com?

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    5. Re:What is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do we have summaries at all? Or even links?

      What's the point of running a monoculture IDE as a cloud service?

      The world is full of unsolved mysteries.

    6. Re: What is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let me get that for you.

    7. Re:What is... by QilessQi · · Score: 5, Funny

      http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=cache:lmgtfy.com&l=1

      Warning: if you follow that recursive link you'll crash the googles and all our internets will stop.

      --
      Koans and fables for the software engineer
    8. Re:What is... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's kind of a dumb question; but 'Azure' is actually a fairly slippery beast.

      First it was going to be a totally new and revolutionary Windows, man, that, like, totally redefined what it meant to be 'Windows' and freed your mind from the constraints of a single 'Windows system' as you just ran your win32 applications totally in the cloud.

      Since that time, it has moved more in the direction of an EC2-like "just a lot of VMs that you can spool up programmatically without calling your sales rep" structure, with the gradual addition of various more abstracted services (eg. 'MS SQL-compatible database, no need to look at the system underneath it', 'IIS instance of given capacity, no need to look underneath', etc.)

      My impression is that the original Grand Architectural Vision of The Future didn't entirely pan out; but they've been fairly fast and aggressive about retooling the parts that did work into a mixture of rental VMs, and abstractions of services that abstract more cleanly than 'arbitrary win32 application' does.

    9. Re:What is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lol - that's good mr samwise

    10. Re:What is... by NatasRevol · · Score: 2

      Is that a bad thing?

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    11. Re:What is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That right there is why "Funny" posts deserve karma.

    12. Re:What is... by ketomax · · Score: 1

      Boil e'm, mash them, stick them in a stew

      Given it's price in our state (WB, India), I would rather store it in a locker as investment.

    13. Re:What is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I think that you have it backwards. I always understood that Azure was the general branding of Microsoft's cloud services, and that it started as a framework to run applications in the cloud with BLOB storage. Then as time went on, they added to the menu of available services, including Azure VMs, Azure Active Directory, Azure Kitchen Sink, etc. Basically, Microsoft is moving towards having a cloud version of the majority of it's business offerings, and most of them will be under the Azure brand. It's only the few that were previously launched as Office 365 (Exchange/Sharepoint/Lync/MS Office) that aren't under the Azure branding.

    14. Re:What is... by c0lo · · Score: 1

      Boil e'm, mash them, stick them in a stew

      Given it's price in our state (WB, India), I would rather store it in a locker as investment.

      Try using some soil. With a bit of care, you may finish with a good return of investment YoY.

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    15. Re:What is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only on a Tuesday.

  2. All your sources... by c0lo · · Score: 5, Funny

    VS Online: "All your sources are belong to us"

    --
    Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    1. Re:All your sources... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Why is this a Troll???

      Wasn't Microsoft in the 80's and 90's stealing everyone's else ideas in the embrace, extend, and extinguish?

      Now that they have your source code too, they skip the embrace, go straight to the extend with little problem and then extinguish what ever website you were planning on launching.

      Remember that Microsoft is notorious for stealing other people's ideas. Don't make it easier for them.

    2. Re:All your sources... by c0lo · · Score: 1

      Awww... another chance to get a +5 troll just gone.

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    3. Re:All your sources... by DickBreath · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > Wasn't Microsoft in the 80's and 90's stealing everyone's else ideas in the embrace, extend, and extinguish?

      Not just ideas. Actual code. Remember back to MS-DOS 6.0 and Stack Electronics? You can Google it. You may not remember, and I think the Wikipedia article is too kind in omitting some details.

      And this is just part of the long history of Microsoft being evil. I find it amusing when youngsters don't understand why people who've been in the computer industry for a long time don't like Microsoft. They just don't know the company's history.

      Extra credit: research Internet Explorer and Spyglass. (Short story: Microsoft wakes up and smells the Internet, OMG! it's not just a 'fad' and it's not going away. Mac and Unix already have mature browsers, and third parties have browsers on Windows. Do something! Find a company making an internet browser on Windows. Enter Spyglass which makes the Spyglass browser. Spyglass wants some money. Microsoft negotiates with them to buy it for $100,000 up front, with a royalty percent of all sales. Guess how many copies of Internet Explorer that Microsoft 'sells' ? What does a royalty rate multiplied by zero work out to?)

      Or look up Sendo phones. Before the ink is dry on the contract, Microsoft proceeds to start putting Sendo out of business so that Microsoft can exercise a contractual term giving Microsoft all of Sendo's intellectual propety if Sendo goes out of business.

      Or Microsoft backstabbing their partner IBM?

      But this is but a few examples. There are plenty more.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    4. Re:All your sources... by DickBreath · · Score: 1

      Sorry to reply to my own post, but to keep it on topic, let me add. . . . and so I am supposed to trust Microsoft with my source code in a cloud based visual studio? I would say "no thanks" if I were a user of VS.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    5. Re:All your sources... by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      Actually it's just Team Foundation Service re-badged.

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    6. Re:All your sources... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2

      Don't then, you don't have to.

      It's not as if this is anything new, you can already deploy to Azure using Git et al, so people are already pushing source code up.

    7. Re:All your sources... by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

      Funny how MS is evil (non ethical). All businesses are evil because they do whatever it takes to stay on top. Google was smart as they delivered a complete solution quickly that could not be overturned overnight due to the nature of it's business. If you are the first to make a blue pen and everybody sees your success, everybody else will make a blue pen and steal some or all of your business. This trend is fairly common at the retail level.

      In the end the big guy often eats the small guy. Innovation combined with the right delivery to market is the only way to break through. It's not fair but it's capitalism and that's how things have been for a long time.

    8. Re:All your sources... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't then, you don't have to.

      Yeah he wasn't going to, but it's good to know that he has your blessing.

    9. Re:All your sources... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      Not just ideas. Actual code. Remember back to MS-DOS 6.0 and Stack Electronics? You can Google it. You may not remember, and I think the Wikipedia article is too kind in omitting some details.

      Wikipedia actually says something very different from what you claim:

      "Microsoft had originally sought to license the technology from Stac Electronics, which had a similar product called Stacker, but these negotiations had failed. Microsoft was later successfully sued for patent infringement by Stac Electronics for violating some of its compression patents. During the court case Stac Electronics claimed that Microsoft had refused to pay any money when it attempted to license Stacker, offering only the possibility of Stac Electronics to develop enhancement products."

      If it was improper source code reuse, it would have been a copyright violation, not a patent infringement.

    10. Re:All your sources... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      Now that they have your source code too, they skip the embrace, go straight to the extend with little problem and then extinguish what ever website you were planning on launching.

      I can't believe this idiocy is modded up as insightful.

      What, exactly, makes VS Online any different from GitHub in this context? You're basically saying that no-one should make anything FLOSS, because otherwise teh evil Microsoft will come and "embrace-extend-extinguish".

    11. Re:All your sources... by SillyHamster · · Score: 1

      Extra credit: research Internet Explorer and Spyglass. (Short story: Microsoft wakes up and smells the Internet, OMG! it's not just a 'fad' and it's not going away. Mac and Unix already have mature browsers, and third parties have browsers on Windows. Do something! Find a company making an internet browser on Windows. Enter Spyglass which makes the Spyglass browser. Spyglass wants some money. Microsoft negotiates with them to buy it for $100,000 up front, with a royalty percent of all sales. Guess how many copies of Internet Explorer that Microsoft 'sells' ? What does a royalty rate multiplied by zero work out to?)

      A bad business decision by Spyglass does not make MS evil. MS paid them the money mutually agreed upon. The contract did not demand MS price the browser, nor did it provide provisions to handle bundling the browser for free.

      You also seem to be mis-remembering some details. Per wiki, the browser was not purchased, but licensed with quarterly fees + royalties (with the royalties ending up at 0). That tells you they had an ongoing licensing contract that could be re-negotiated if Spyglass was unsatisfied with the contract. (though with no guarantee of a better result)

      Or Microsoft backstabbing their partner IBM?

      IBM was the Evil Empire back when MS was still a startup launched from a garage. So the claim that IBM was backstabbed doesn't seem likely. Care to elaborate?

      Now the examples you cite are excellent examples to be very careful when doing business with MS, but that's a different level than "evil". MS hasn't sacrificed any babies or murdered anyone that I know of; and while some of their products have been horribly bad, the use of their products is still voluntary.

    12. Re:All your sources... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Difference, smartass, being that people generally don't push to github with an expectation of privacy in their code. Not always the case with azure.

  3. IDE or Azure control panel? by mounthood · · Score: 2

    I don't see an editor in the linked stories. In the setup instructions http://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/connect-to-vs#connectvs it says "5. Now you're ready to check in source, queue builds, and manage work." which sounds like a control panel, not an IDE. This also requires VS2013 which doesn't exactly make it "Browser-Based".

    --
    tomorrow who's gonna fuss
    1. Re:IDE or Azure control panel? by Xest · · Score: 1

      Well VS2013 gives you the option of signing up to an account when you first load it so I'm guessing you're probably right, it's probably just integration.

    2. Re:IDE or Azure control panel? by RTFA · · Score: 1

      According to this: http://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-online-overview-vs "Visual Studio Online, formerly Team Foundation Service, is the home for your project data in the cloud.". So No, it is NOT an IDE.

      --
      This comment was written using 100% reused electrons.
    3. Re:IDE or Azure control panel? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um, that sounds like Team Foundation Server...

  4. plus ça change by TechNeilogy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All this cloud application talk reminds me of my first computer job. I worked on PCs, but most of the rest of the people in the company still used 3270-era terminals. Usually I would sit surrounded in auditory haze of clicky typing. Sometimes, it would gradually slow down, then dwindle off to a few isolated clicks. Finally somebody would yell “Are you on the clock?” (referring to the mainframe busy icon on the terminal's status bar). Then everybody would get up for a while and chat and have coffee until somebody yelled “It's back on!”

    --
    "The wisdom of the Patriarchs was that they *knew* they were fools." --Master Foo
  5. Oh? They announced it today? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because I'm pretty sure I heard this exact same story twelve hours ago on Ars and InfoWorld...

    1. Re:Oh? They announced it today? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, then you should have submitted it here as soon as possible.

  6. It *is* an IDE by seizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As usual, poor article submission is confusing everyone!

    There is a real IDE, with proper syntax highlighting, code completion, etc, that runs in any browser. It's called Visual Studio Monaco. It's only available for Azure users right now.

    See here for a few videos of the thing in action.

    1. Re:It *is* an IDE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh but the submitter was friends with a Slashdot editor, so although others submitted this in much a much cleaner, clearer form, theirs was rejected.

      And this is why Slashdot sucks.

  7. Sounds fantastic! by Weaselmancer · · Score: 5, Funny

    All the stability of Internet Explorer for a developer sandbox, and all the speed of your local internet connection! No more pesky waiting for your SATA drive! Now you can access your code through the blazing speed of your cable modem! MUCH faster. And add to that the security of not actually hosting your files locally. The cloud is always a better solution! For anything! I feel much better knowing that some faceless someone at Microsoft will be in charge of my backups. I certainly can't be trusted to do them.

    Win-win I say. This sounds golden.

    --
    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
    1. Re:Sounds fantastic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what could possibly go wrong?

    2. Re:Sounds fantastic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You made my day.

    3. Re:Sounds fantastic! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      The one use case that I could see (not that something akin to this hasn't been bodged into place at many large projects already), would be having the authoritative instance of the version control system living on a proper server, with backups and uptime and stuff(this doesn't imply 'cloud'; but if your particular shop isn't capable of it, the cloud salesmen might get you), and having a mechanism to make it easy to kick off compilation of the latest revision, on a machine or machines with a lot more punch than your laptop, and then make the results or horrible errors available to whoever needs to see them. (Again, 'cloud' not required; but may be a sell in some instances.)

      Moving a glorified text editor with better highlighting and autocomplete into 'the cloud', when we have never had faster client machines, seems absurd; but I've never encountered a single-disk system secure enough to store something worth more than a pack of post-it notes on, and I don't think anybody has ever sighed contentedly and remarked that "Y'know, I'm genuinely satisfied at how quickly my large projects compile on my laptop!"

    4. Re:Sounds fantastic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Win-win I say. This sounds golden.

      That's how Microsoft would want it.

    5. Re:Sounds fantastic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think MS has discovered a worse way to write code than using notepad! Bravo!

    6. Re:Sounds fantastic! by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      I'm on DSL, you insensitive clod!

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    7. Re:Sounds fantastic! by DickBreath · · Score: 1

      What could possibly go wrong with trusting Microsoft with critical servers, and backing up your data?

      See this: T-Mobile Sidekick Disaster: Danger's Servers Crashed, And They Don't Have A Backup

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    8. Re:Sounds fantastic! by DickBreath · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > I think MS has discovered a worse way to write code than using notepad! Bravo!

      Um, sir, I think you have forgotten about Edlin.

      --

      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
    9. Re:Sounds fantastic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Win-win I say.

      I see what you did there. :)

    10. Re:Sounds fantastic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well maybe this can be seen more as an "enforced mandatory check-in policy". Haven't you ever worked with a guy that just NEVER checked in his code? You never know if he's as far along as he claims he is, and any time you ask for a check-in, it's "ok, just let me clean it up a bit, there's a few errors that I don't want to check in"

      With cloud based dev tools, maybe it's easier to see where your team is at, code-wise, at a moments notice.

      "Well, if the guy isn't doing the work just fire him!" but that guy always finished the code, and at the last minute checked it in. Maybe a little buggy, maybe not. You never really knew whether he was telling the truth or snowing you, but in the end he completed the minimum requirements. However, you might have lost an opportunity to mentor him on a tough problem or you might have been able to head off a misunderstanding that causes real delays, or or or or.. ad infinitum.

      Maybe there is a use for this, that's all I'm saying.

    11. Re:Sounds fantastic! by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

      You don't really know yet. These kinds of projects usually stem from customer demand. I'm no fan of this concept but depending how it's implemented I can see the potential for web development. Currently if I want to work from home I can either work remotely via RDC or I can reproduce the environment locally. Both solution are slow because we can't afford bigger bandwidth and the local solution requires more maintenance. God forbid I get a call about an issue with the live DB where I have to connect directly to the DB.

    12. Re:Sounds fantastic! by turgid · · Score: 1

      At least edlin doesn't insert a redundant and erroneous byte order mark at the beginning of your nice, clean text fle...

      --
      Stick Men
  8. Nice example of Microsoft code by Aethedor · · Score: 0

    Nice example of insecure code at their login screen (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=309297&clcid=0x409&slcid=0x409): What if InsertOrUpdate() or Save() fails? Lesson number one in secure programming: ALWAYS check return codes of functions.

    --
    It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
    1. Re:Nice example of Microsoft code by tgd · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      Nice example of insecure code at their login screen (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=309297&clcid=0x409&slcid=0x409):

      What if InsertOrUpdate() or Save() fails? Lesson number one in secure programming: ALWAYS check return codes of functions.

      Yes, you're smarter than the people who wrote and reviewed it.

    2. Re:Nice example of Microsoft code by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably an exception is thrown. There's no reason to believe that it doesn't return void.

    3. Re:Nice example of Microsoft code by Noughmad · · Score: 1

      This is Microsoft. Their software never fails.

      --
      PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
    4. Re:Nice example of Microsoft code by tgd · · Score: 1

      Okay since I got modded Flamebait -- and it wasn't intended as a flame, it was intended to be a specific sarcastic response suggesting the OP was an idiot -- I'll follow up.

      Lesson number one in secure programming is to know where your threat boundaries are. A statement about checking return codes all the time, and its association with security, is just plain moronic because there may not be a threat at that point in the code. In this case, you're authenticating via services that need valid credentials to generate a token, and you need that valid token going forward in order to access any subsequent services... so who cares, other than for user feedback, if something like that fails? You're not bypassing security, you're just blowing up the UI.

      Consider the hundreds of millions of lines of code at Microsoft, and the *constant* attack they're under. Now consider how relatively infrequent there are actual real security incidents -- especially in hosted services. (Its hard to be truly secure on a local machine because most users run in ways that make the administrative barrier not a barrier... and once you're an admin, you can access kernel memory and all bets are off.) Note how infrequent real remote code exploits are... most exploits are user mode, and only a risk to the current user.

      That suggests that -- no flame intended -- the OP is, in fact, an idiot and the people who wrote the code he was looking at actually ARE smarter than him and actually understand the process it takes to write secure software. And nothing makes software more insecure than moronic statements like "always check return codes" trumping a real understanding of the threat model of the system.

    5. Re:Nice example of Microsoft code by Aethedor · · Score: 1

      Right, it's clear you haven't done much code reviewing. Not checking for return values is where things go wrong very often.

      --
      It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
    6. Re:Nice example of Microsoft code by Xest · · Score: 1

      Yes, very often.

      Which implies, not always.

      Which is kind of the GP's point.

    7. Re:Nice example of Microsoft code by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ever heard of exceptions, dumbass?

    8. Re:Nice example of Microsoft code by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are no return values, you idiot. Those functions will throw exceptions.

    9. Re:Nice example of Microsoft code by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Return codes? It's not 1980 anymore. There's this thing called 'exception handling' that's all the rage with the kids these days.

    10. Re:Nice example of Microsoft code by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, these old timers crack me up. I bet this same asshole will whine that real men don't use IDEs. I mean who wants to use tools that make your job easier. Change is bad!

    11. Re:Nice example of Microsoft code by Aethedor · · Score: 1

      And you're one of those teenagers that clicks code instead of writing it. Amateur...

      --
      It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
    12. Re:Nice example of Microsoft code by benjymouse · · Score: 1

      Nice example of insecure code at their login screen (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=309297&clcid=0x409&slcid=0x409):

      What if InsertOrUpdate() or Save() fails? Lesson number one in secure programming: ALWAYS check return codes of functions.

      I'm curious, in which lesson do we learn about security boundaries and contexts?

      If you are such a security expert, please tell us why would you expect to find security assertions in client-side JavaScript code?

      I can tell you that security decisions should never be performed client-side, and you expectation to find such code is utterly revealing.

      --
      Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
  9. [Serious] Who's Using Azure And For What by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Who here is using Azure?

    What, exactly, are you using it for?

    Why did you choose it over self hosted?

    Why did you choose it over AWS or Google?

    1. Re: [Serious] Who's Using Azure And For What by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The people using it aren't sitting on Slashdot.

    2. Re:[Serious] Who's Using Azure And For What by tgd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Who here is using Azure?

      What, exactly, are you using it for?

      Why did you choose it over self hosted?

      Why did you choose it over AWS or Google?

      That's a long answer, but a few bullets:

      - We do, 50-100 servers depending on what the elastic scaling is doing. Even mix between Linux VMs and .NET services, distributed across three Azure data centers
      - We also make good use of TFService (now Visual Studio Online) -- 80% of the code in it being Java code not .NET code. Integration with Eclipse is really fantastic. The task and bug tracking tools are great. Price was really great when free, but is still very competitive for other hosted services now that its a paid service.

      The question of why Azure vs AWS/Google? That's a tougher one ... but briefly:
      - The tooling is just better. AWS and Google just seems to take more time to do the same task. YMMV
      - Ancillary services. The Service Bus, Azure ActiveDirectory, the easy integration between enterprise systems and the Azure services, ease of monitoring via centralized performance counters and logs, etc ... basically its the whole package rather than bits and pieces.

      I have extensively used Amazon's various services four or five years ago and liked them, but they tended to be more simplistic on the service side and heavier weight on the compute side (having to maintain my own VMs, etc).

      Cost is another factor -- particularly when you get up into high usage and can commit to that usage, the prices really start to drop quickly.

      Lastly, the support is, bar none, better than anything you can get from Google or Amazon. It may cost me some money -- or a lot of money -- but I can get someone from MS on the phone who will work through an issue, or something we simply want to do in a different way, until it gets done. There's a point in a business that support like that becomes the most important thing, because its cheaper than putting a dev or two on some puzzle and have them experiment their way through it.

      Anyway, that's my experience. YMMV.

    3. Re:[Serious] Who's Using Azure And For What by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lastly, the support is, bar none, better than anything you can get from Google or Amazon. It may cost me some money -- or a lot of money -- but I can get someone from MS on the phone who will work through an issue, or something we simply want to do in a different way, until it gets done.

      Compared to which AWS support tier? I've never had a problem with their Enterprise support.

    4. Re:[Serious] Who's Using Azure And For What by tgd · · Score: 1

      Lastly, the support is, bar none, better than anything you can get from Google or Amazon. It may cost me some money -- or a lot of money -- but I can get someone from MS on the phone who will work through an issue, or something we simply want to do in a different way, until it gets done.

      Compared to which AWS support tier? I've never had a problem with their Enterprise support.

      As I mentioned, its been a while, so I don't recall... and it may be less of a differentiator now, so that may have been a bit stronger of a statement than it should've been. I'm comfortable saying its, at worst, equal... but that'd be a BIG compliment to Amazon/Google. (And, Google support has been a trainwreck every time I've tried to interact with them, so... I would be SHOCKED if its gotten any better.)

  10. Do they offer free CPU time for compiling? by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This could be a good thing if they have a HUGE parallel farm for compiling. Let my app compile in 2.4 seconds on their supercomputer farm instead of taking 20 minutes here on my laptop would be a huge thing.

    microsoft might be on to something if they eliminate the #1 time waster, waiting for a compile.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:Do they offer free CPU time for compiling? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But then when would I read /.?

    2. Re:Do they offer free CPU time for compiling? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Or swordfight? (You knew this link would be posted. Don't lie to me.)

    3. Re:Do they offer free CPU time for compiling? by tech.kyle · · Score: 1

      Damn. You beat me to it.

      --
      If we colonize Mars, it won't be the World Wide Web anymore. UWW?
    4. Re:Do they offer free CPU time for compiling? by ausekilis · · Score: 1

      This could be a good thing if they have a HUGE parallel farm for compiling. Let my app compile in 2.4 seconds on their supercomputer farm instead of taking 20 minutes here on my laptop would be a huge thing.

      microsoft might be on to something if they eliminate the #1 time waster, waiting for a compile.

      Oh come now, compiling can't really be your #1 time waster. There's a whole bunch of other good ones out there, like Software Load times (MS Office, Visual Studio), Solitaire, and Slashdot.

    5. Re:Do they offer free CPU time for compiling? by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      Nope all that happens while I compile... Granted I compile after every line of code I add.....

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    6. Re:Do they offer free CPU time for compiling? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      From the blog post:

      "Every Visual Studio Online account provides 60 minutes of free build time per month, making it friction free to get started with hosted build. "

      So some free time, but probably not enough for project of any reasonable size. Basically more like a free trial.

  11. Funnily Enough by Greyfox · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I was helping a friend debug an assembly language function the other day. Now I haven't touched assembly in a couple of decades and in the course of helping him I remembered why, but that's another story. Anywhoo I took his function, googled on the gcc calling convention, added a few lines to pull parameters off the stack from a C call and wrote a C program to set the memory up and call it. After seeing that it segfaulted, I dropped the application into gdb and quickly found a couple of conditions he hadn't taken into account in a loop. This was causing memory pointers to go all over the place and subsequently be written to. I sent him back my notes on where his function was going wrong and the output of the C program. His response was something to the effect of "How did you do that?!"

    This probably saved him a few hours of work. After I was done, I was reflecting on the quality of the tools at my disposal. Calling the assembly language function from C was significantly easier than it was on the last platform I tried it on, and even though gdb isn't particularly friendly it is an extremely useful debugging tool once you know your way around it. His IDE had crapped about 50 files into his project structure and had turned out to be a significantly less capable tool for all its vaunted "user friendliness." It probably took me less time to set up make with targets for the .c, .asm, executable and clean than it did for him to set the project up originally in his IDE, and I had no additional clutter in my project directory.

    Programmers and marketroids these days are far too enamored of shiny geegaws that don't add anything useful to their application. I have on several occasions witnessed a team throwing framework after framework at their application in the hopes that doing so would fix their program. It never seemed to occur to them to just sit down and actually understand the problem they were trying to solve. Occasionally I'll hear an excuse like "Waah, writing an SQL join is TOO HARD!" To which my response is, "It's still the most efficient way to do this, and IT'S YOUR FUCKING JOB!" If you don't think about the structure of your data, you're going to have a bad time. Nothing is a suitable replacement for knowing your tools, knowing your data and knowing the business process you're trying to automate with your program. Pff, kids these days.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    1. Re:Funnily Enough by Sez+Zero · · Score: 4, Funny

      You forgot something... "And get off my lawn!"

  12. Thank you. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thank you for your response. You are exactly the type of user I wanted to hear from.

    If I may ask, what do your servers do? Enterprise services, web application, customer facing, ecommerce?

    1. Re:Thank you. by tgd · · Score: 1

      Thank you for your response. You are exactly the type of user I wanted to hear from.

      If I may ask, what do your servers do? Enterprise services, web application, customer facing, ecommerce?

      Bit of all of that -- a web application, public and internal services supporting it, some enterprise integration (WAAD/ACS federation, etc), and a couple corporate websites running WordPress.

  13. Re:What? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

    I'm kinda hoping someone takes Eclipse and makes an Online version I can run from my server at home while on my Tablet at the customer site. Some customers enjoy getting free software without paying for it.

  14. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hmmm. First, VS is a terrible IDE. Next, all IDEs are terrible. After that, back to VS is a terrible IDE and will never be used by serious programmers. But serious programmers don't use IDEs.

    Damn man, your comment sucks.

  15. dice rollings, can compare to gambas3.5.90 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    compare to gambas3.5.90
    SCREW THEM.

    WE ARE OFF IN LINUX-VILLE NOW, EVERY STUPID VB6 NOW IS RE-CREATED WITH (The way you want it (TM))

    Windows is toast, they ought to fix XP!! lol.

  16. Re:What? by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    So lets take a horrible desktop IDE and make it available online! Visual Studio is a laughing stock of IDE's, it's overly complex, over bloated, expensive, complicated to use and just an amature attempt at an IDE.

    I'm a Visual Studio fanboy and mostly like the IDE for what it provides, but I agree with you that it's too bloated. The startup time and many of the operations are ridiculously slow. Goes to same bin with Ubuntu's Unity desktop in terms of performance.

  17. antitrust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Has everyone forgotten Antitrust?