Visual Studio 2015 Supports CLANG and Android (Emulator Included)

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Visual Studio 2015 Supports CLANG and Android (Emulator Included)

Posted by timothy on Saturday November 15, 2014 @01:43PM from the exigent-realities dept.

Billly Gates (198444) writes "What would be unthinkable a decade ago is Visual Studio supporting W3C HTML and CSS and now apps on other platforms. Visual Studio 2015 preview is available for download which includes support for LLVM/Clang, Android development, and even Linux development with Mono using Xamarin. A little more detail is here. A tester also found support for Java, ANT, SQL LITE, and WebSocket4web. We see IE improving in terms of more standards and Visual Studio Online even supports IOS and MacOSX development. Is this a new Microsoft emerging? In any case it is nice to have an alternative to Google tools for Android development."

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Download Here by jamesl · 2014-11-15 13:48 · Score: 5, Informative

Visual Studio 2015 Preview Downloads
http://www.visualstudio.com/en...
1. Re: Download Here by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 16:14 · Score: 0
  
  Someone forgot to take his pills again...
2. Re: Download Here by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 18:17 · Score: 1
  
  Not technically a virus, just crapware.
3. Re: Download Here by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 09:27 · Score: 0
  
  Like their is any other dev environment that's any better or comes anywhere close to the number of features in VS. /., not technically a virus, just full of crappy comments.
Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 13:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

Anyone notice an old strategy revived??
1. Re:Embrace has started by Billly+Gates · 2014-11-15 14:42 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Or I am thinking perhaps they realized they lost?
  I submitted the story but I realize back in the 1980's the same was said of IBM. They gave up when they lost to Microsoft. Today they are fairly open about their standards. DB2 is still proprietary but they have opened a lot of stuff and they charge a ton for consulting and enterprise level stuff.
  MS is going the same route is my guess.
  Folks I think Google is who we should fear next. Chrome has a lot of -webkit and -blink specific stuff in CSS not in HTML 5. I am not a pro MS troll at all but use to be an anti MS zealot many moons ago but changed.
  Either way MS makes lots of software some bad but some really good. Visual Studio is a good one. Windows and IE which are the worst are improving. Office is ok with Excel being great and Outlook being crappy. No different than any other large software company.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
2. Re:Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 15:29 · Score: 0
  
  They already figured they've lost. They've been doing things like adding SVN to CodePlex back then, or including jQuery with VS. The IE team has been playing catch up, Skype moved to WebRTC, VS added git support recently, Office is now edit-for-free on mobile devices, .NET is all going open source, and C# is becoming cross platform, we're getting an android simulator, it's supporting open source compilers... You name it!
  Then again, DevDiv has always turned out some nice stuff while causing little trouble. It's WinDiv that keeps ruining things (Vista? RT? Metro?)
3. Re:Embrace has started by ATMAvatar · 2014-11-15 15:51 · Score: 2
  
  .NET is all going open source
  Several of the ancillary libraries and other projects (Entity Framework, F#, etc.) have been open source for some time, and now .NET core is on GitHub. So far, it's only a handful of the core libraries, but the plan is to flesh out the entire framework.
  
  --
  "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
4. Re: Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 16:26 · Score: 0
  
  Actually no, it isn't. Only the server side portion of the framework is going cross platform, Microsoft has explicitly stated that they have no plans to open up any of the client side code. Check out the ZDnet article on the release if you're interested, but no, they're not opening up the entire framework by any means. That's being either mistaken or misleading.
  Kind of a bizarre concept anyway, people who want to do C# web apps in LInux are already doing it with Mono. Granted Xamarin won't have to play catch up on the server side stuff any more, but that was never really the hard part. Playing catch up on the desktop app end is the big problem. People don't just want to write websites with C#, a lot of people would like a write once, run everywhere desktop experience too. I think that's the only reason Java is still even relevant really, if Microsoft would stop jacking around and actually open up the ENTIRE framework? I'd drop Java like a hot rock, personally speaking.
  Interesting to note as well that although they are claiming a "patent covenant," nobody seems to be discussing the possibilities of the Oracle debacle. Should the courts decide that the API of a language can be copyrighted...well, how long do you think Microsoft would wait before turning on projects like Wine and Mono? Shake them down for money or just litigate the projects out of existence.
  Yeah, it's unlikely to happen. Impossible? Not so sure.
5. Re:Embrace has started by morgauxo · 2014-11-15 16:50 · Score: 1
  
  "use to be an anti MS zealot many moons ago but changed."
  I think the real question is WHO changed, us or Microsoft.
6. Re:Embrace has started by iwasacoward · 2014-11-15 17:03 · Score: 0
  
  Hopefully we both have.
7. Re:Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 18:26 · Score: 0
  
  The elephant in the room is that Microsoft finally sees that they lost the mobile device platform, and nearly destroyed their desktop platform.
  Microsoft can "get back" some of what they lost by producing tools so developers can develop Android and iOS software on Windows using Visual Studio, and then just recompile for Windows. And that's great, because that means I don't need to decide between Xcode and Visual Studio and have to redo projects just so they compile on the other OS.
  ProTip: Both Mono/Xarmarin and CLang have been available for quite a while for Visual Studio, only it was a bit convoluted to get them to install, and there was no promise that they would produce working binaries on Windows.
8. Re:Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 19:57 · Score: 0
  
  I am not a pro MS troll at all but use to be an anti MS zealot many moons ago but changed.
  Followed by
  
  Windows and IE which are the worst are improving.
  Apparently, you can't even fool yourself.
9. Re: Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 20:03 · Score: 0
  
  Wine? Possible. Mono? Considering they're working together now, it's unlikely Microsoft would sue.
10. Re: Embrace has started by Cyberax · 2014-11-15 20:07 · Score: 1
  
  Client-side code (WPF) in .NET is utterly dependent on DirectX and porting it to OpenGL is non-trivial and probably futile in the end as it'll be unusable on Android and iOS anyway. We already have QT on Linux, so why bother?
11. Re: Embrace has started by maccodemonkey · 2014-11-15 20:23 · Score: 1
  
  The iOS support I've seen so far requires you rewrite any API facing code in the Cocoa APIs. You'll get to do it in C# instead of Swift or Obj-C, but you do have to rewrite.
  Not that I'm complaining. I'd hate to see all the Java style train wrecks that would come to the platform from developers blindly hitting recompile buttons.
12. Re: Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 22:14 · Score: 0
  
  I switched to GNU/Linux the day my Windows XP crashed the 15th time in a single afternoon.
  I came back to Windows 7 the day it hit 30 day uptime without a hitch.
  You can say Windows has not improven. I say it has.
13. Re: Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 23:06 · Score: 0
  
  Separable verb. Imgeproviert.
14. Re: Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 23:13 · Score: 0
  
  Also the server side is dependent on several Windows technologies, for instance the distributed transactions, EnterpriseServices, OleDB,... with a line of code it's possible to join several transactions in a distributed one, will this be possile on Linux or Mac? I doubt it. Windows is a better system than people think in the server side.
15. Re: Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 00:12 · Score: 0
  
  Considering they're working together now, it's unlikely Microsoft would sue.
  Tell that to Stack Electronics.
16. Re:Embrace has started by serviscope_minor · 2014-11-16 00:18 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Folks I think Google is who we should fear next. Chrome has a lot of -webkit and -blink specific stuff in CSS not in HTML 5. I am not a pro MS troll at all but use to be an anti MS zealot many moons ago but changed.
  MS may be down but they're not out for the count. They somehow managed to get their awful, but heavily patented exFAT filesystem baked into the SDC standard to the extent that some compliant controllers won't even let you format the card as anything else.
  It's appaling behaviour and shows the old microsoft is still up to their old tricks.
  The thing is there was already an ISO standard filesystem supporting modern features supported read and write by every single major operating system (XP and can read but not write without extra drivers) and a host of minor ones at all.
  I format my USB devices UDF now because they work r/w on Windows, Mac and Linux and supports large files and so on.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
17. Re:Embrace has started by ShanghaiBill · 2014-11-16 02:14 · Score: 2
  
  Anyone notice an old strategy revived??
  EEE (embrace-extend-extinguish) only works if
  1. You have a dominant market position
  2. Your customers are stupid
  Microsoft, arguably, still meets the second condition. But for mobile app development, they are not even close to meeting the first. If you go to a mobile app hack-a-thon you will see mostly Macs, and more Linux than Windows. Microsoft is a bit player in this market. They are a follower, not a leader.
18. Re:Embrace has started by gbjbaanb · 2014-11-16 02:41 · Score: 1
  
  quite the opposite - Windiv used to keep things rolling along, devdiv kept on trying to break the "Windows experience" with all kinds of crap under the pretence that developers were the most important thing to keep happy (ie fuck users).
  Now the strategy ha changed for Microsoft, they've embraced the concept that they do not sell Window desktops, now they sell Azure services and a little bit of some mobile platform that's not doing so well.
  So, the new direction is to get everyone working with their cloud offerings instead of trying to keep the dead duck of Windows desktop going (though, note you'll still need a Windows desktop to run Visual Studio....) and I think they feel that if the developer gets used to Windows for development, they'll want the same kind of experience when deploying their programs - even if the client is a html5-based webapp that runs on an iPad or
  some Android device.
  They have got this embrace thing down pat.
19. Re: Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 02:55 · Score: 0
  
  iOS and Android also support OpenGL.
  (Of course, it is OpenGL ES but they share a subset with desktop that would make it possible to write port the framework just once.)
  
  But I agree, it would be a huge task.
20. Re: Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 03:01 · Score: 0
  
  Modern Windows crashing 99% is due to bad drivers done by cheap companies.
  My Windows PC has an average uptime of months, ocasionally only restarted due to system updates.
  
  I also do lots of work in OSX and I can say that it crashes at least once per week. However this is partly due to crappy ports of some apps I have to use.
  
  Never had stability problems with Linux but it is not really usable for me due to lack of good software in my professional area.
21. Re: Embrace has started by Maury+Markowitz · 2014-11-16 03:23 · Score: 1
  
  > That's being either mistaken or misleading.
  Really? Huh. You see, I'm on the Mono dev list, and they're all saying the exact opposite. "They" including Miguel de Icaza, of course. I think I'll take his word over yours, AC.
  > People don't just want to write websites with C#
  That's a weird statement. Who cares what they "want"? I know lots and lots of people doing C# websites whether they want to or not.
22. Re: Embrace has started by Maury+Markowitz · 2014-11-16 03:25 · Score: 1
  
  > Client-side code (WPF) in .NET is utterly dependent on DirectX
  Which is why they...
  1) allow you to use the platform's native UI, and...
  2) developed the new "modern" UI that has no (or few) such dependancies
23. Re: Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 04:19 · Score: 0
  
  Considering they're working together now, it's unlikely Microsoft would sue.
  Tell that to Stack Electronics.
  Bad analogy. The company you're thinking of is Stac (no k). They were always a competitor -- Microsoft never "worked together" with them. IMHO, the lawsuit was bullshit and billg should have been charged with perjury, but that's a separate issue.
24. Re:Embrace has started by Billly+Gates · 2014-11-16 05:05 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Both
  I hated MS and created this ANTI MS ID because DOS and Windows were truly horrible in the 1990s. Why use an OS that limits itself with 640k of ram when my 486 has 8 megs and do hacks like memmaker with extended vs expanded ram to make up for deficiencies of an OS that was called quick and dirty 15 freaking years ealier??
  Windows added more fragility to the mix on top of that core. I was scared IE which was great was a ploy to stop innovation once Netscaoe couldn't compete and it would turn into an old crappy proprietary browser.
  I read my posts from 2002 where I threaten to leave computers since DOJ sided with Microsoft!!
  Fastforward today
  I use IE now typing this (hell would have froze if I caught myself reading this post back in 2001). It is standards compliant and I have no fear of a monopoly. MS makes free stuff for starving artists and is progressive with price structure as you make more income.
  MS Windows is really good and I dare say less buggy than Android. Windows 7 is rock solid and just works. Visual studio supports standards.
  I myself am older and pragmatic and realize no one gives a shit about desktop computers or ideals! They want a job done and will I do it and get paid or will they hire someone else? Sadly Linux is part of this unless you run some specific apps on a server. The business need is more important and I like getting paid more than I did back then so it is a win win. Also being in the enterprise and seeing the tears and pain of migrating from XP to Windows 7 (who would have thought people would use a freaking 11 year old OS back in 2001??) I see why MS had to not make Windows great. It's annoying business customers will go elsewhere if they made Windows good as their apps would break. It was them and not MS who held the platform back in those days.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
25. Re:Embrace has started by Rob+Y. · 2014-11-16 05:53 · Score: 1
  
  Mostly right. The thing is, the Windows desktop isn't going anywhere. It'll continue to be a cash cow for at least another generation - if only because of all the proprietary 3rd party stuff that's Windows only. Office document compatibility is only the tip of that iceberg - and one of the easiest to replace.
  But for sure, the windows desktop is no longer a growth opportunity for the company. And in Capitalism, 21st century style, growth is all that matters. Most of the computer growth these days is in mobile - and Microsoft would love to be there. But they know they've mostly missed that boat. They still have a chance to the extent that the residual monopoly effect will translate continuing Win8 desktop sales into a healty app store for Metro apps - but that's gonna take time. So for now, they're concentrating on the cloud - where you don't have to win offer millions of customers, and if you provide nice dev tools, you can win over the audience that matters. And that happens to be an audience they were on the verge of losing outright.
  So the new regime over there is smart, and it's a new game. Past behavior (and the lingering desktop monopoly) tell me I still don't want them to win it.
  
  --
  Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
26. Re: Embrace has started by ConceptJunkie · 2014-11-16 09:25 · Score: 1
  
  I very rarely saw XP crash in a way that wasn't obviously attributable to a hardware/driver issue. Vista blue-screened on me a couple times, but I stopped using after about 2 months because it was such a turd. Windows 7 was better, and Windows 8 is too, once you do what you can to eliminate all the "Metro" stuff. Both of them are still slower than XP in my experience, especially when copying across a network to a Samba share, which I do a lot. But blue-screens are almost a thing of the past in my experience.
  
  --
  You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
27. Re:Embrace has started by exomondo · 2014-11-16 10:06 · Score: 1
  
  Anyone notice an old strategy revived??
  You mean the strategy stated internally 20 years ago that never worked? It was specifically stated to target Java, and it didn't work, then people claimed it was being used to target web applications and again, it didn't work. How exactly do you think it would work here?
28. Re:Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 12:40 · Score: 0
  
  Apple ,is by far the worse offender.
  One thing I give credit to Apple though. Their marketing and form factor departments.. Visually their products look nice but usually come at 20-40 percent premium over similar performing Windows and/or Android products.The company behaves like the bad end of their anti-IBM commercial 1984 but successfully projects the image of consumer and competition friendly. In practice Jobs used lame excuses to keep competing VMs off Ios. (Flash, Java). Unlike Android, Ios makes it next to impossible for a laymen to transfer files on it with excessive DRM. Apple milks the developers in App store. They make money off abused workers at Foxconn factory in China, evade paying billions in taxes with shady offshore dealings.... yet market themselves as practically a human rights organizations. Apparently commercials showing hipsters, with guitars and flowers in the background is all that's needed to shut down reasoning centers of many consumers brains.
  I have nothing against corporations making money but it's a bit disturbing when consumers start treating any company like some sort of cult. Hey lets line up outside Apple store for next 2 days to be first to buy an overpriced item run by a company with shady business practices based purely on its product name.. Apple. Apple Apple. Ohmmmmmm.
  (NSFW)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg
29. Re: Embrace has started by AK+Marc · 2014-11-16 12:42 · Score: 1
  
  The company you're thinking of is Stac (no k). They were always a competitor -- Microsoft never "worked together" with them.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_lawsuit
  
  Indicates that Microsoft and Stac Electronics worked together, until Microsoft took the code and ran, using it without permission of license. Given my recollection at the time (I used Stacker before the feature was available in DOS), the Wiki article agrees with my recollection.
  
  --
  Learn to love Alaska
30. Re: Embrace has started by AK+Marc · 2014-11-16 12:47 · Score: 1
  
  Metro is not that bad. It's mostly ignorable. Single key to get to the "regular" desktop, and Metro just becomes a really fancy search screen/badly laid out start menu. Desktop and the ability to pin any application to the taskbar removes most of the need for a start menu.
  
  --
  Learn to love Alaska
31. Re: Embrace has started by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-17 03:46 · Score: 0
  
  Metro is not that bad. It's mostly ignorable. Single key to get to the "regular" desktop, and Metro just becomes a really fancy search screen/badly laid out start menu. Desktop and the ability to pin any application to the taskbar removes most of the need for a start menu.
  The biggest problem with Metro is that it is the search. Like office, Microsoft seems to want to hide what you're working on completely while you do some standard operating system task. Go to save a document in Word 2013 and you can't see your document while you type your name. Need to search for a somewhat obscure OS exe that's in a website you're reading that's helping you solve an issue you don't normally deal with? Sorry, can't read the website and type the instructions at the same time. It's a horrible design choice (as are many of the design choices at MS lately). I couldn't use Windows 8 on a regular basis without Start 8 or some other start menu replacement.
32. Re:Embrace has started by Moondevil · 2014-11-17 06:53 · Score: 1
  
  Same here. Even had an email signature with a statement from Stallman.
  Nowadays GNU/Linux is confined to VMs and a travel netbook.
  My work and main private laptop run Windows 7. I just bought Windows 8.1 and do consulting work on Java, .NET and C++.
33. Re: Embrace has started by AK+Marc · 2014-11-17 07:06 · Score: 1
  
  I don't get the problems you mention. Perhaps you are using it wrong. I'm using office 2010, and can see my document while saving without a problem. If you can't do that in 2013, that's not Metro, that's Word. And I can configure Metro to split screen, or just arrange the applications the way I always did, with one on the side, to see two windows at once.
  
  Sounds like you deliberately mis-use it to have something to complain about.
  
  --
  Learn to love Alaska
The only way MS gets more apps in their store by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 13:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

The only way MS gets more apps in their store is by getting developers to write apps for Windows and Android at the same time.
1. Re: The only way MS gets more apps in their store by tom229 · 2014-11-15 15:09 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Also, hopefully MS has realized - like Google does - that the future isn't in software licensing. The future is in electronic distribution, and software services that collect information. It's not a great future, but it has been created by a population that is willing to trade their privacy for free stuff. It is what it is. I wouldn't be surprised to see them start to give Windows away in the future.
  
  --
  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
2. Re: The only way MS gets more apps in their store by Eponymous+Coward · 2014-11-15 16:41 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  That's not Apple's model and Apple is making lots of money too. There's room for more than one model I think.
3. Re: The only way MS gets more apps in their store by Spy+Handler · 2014-11-15 17:40 · Score: 1
  
  Apple makes most of its money from iphone and ipad sales. Software sales is a tiny percentage of their revenue.
4. Re: The only way MS gets more apps in their store by NickFortune · 2014-11-16 01:02 · Score: 1
  
  The future is in electronic distribution, and software services that collect information. It's not a great future, but it has been created by a population that is willing to trade their privacy for free stuff.
  
  A population that is currently willing to make that trade. I think it's only a matter of time before we see a popular backlash against all this pervasive snooping.
  Still, I agree that software licensing is unlikely to continue to yield Microsoft scale money into the future. There's so much good, free software out there that it's getting harder and harder for MS to justify the margins they traditionally charge
  
  wouldn't be surprised to see them start to give Windows away in the future.
  
  Hmm... makes sense for the home market, where most users get their OS "free" with the computer and if they do upgrade, it's generally from a friend of a friend who "has a disk".
  PC manufacturers do pay, of course, and with desktop sales shrinking, the risk here is probably minimal. In fact if the MS tax is eliminated it could do a lot to stem the rise of Android. Or at least ensure MS' place as a player in the mobile arena.
  The problem though is going to be corporate customers. The ones with thousands of desktop systems that do pay. Big corps tend to be conservative about IT upgrades, and by giving Windows away MS would be sacrificing that revenue stream. They're probably reluctant to do that.
  Of course, they could just drop the price of the Home Edition (or whatever they're calling it today) to zero and charge for the Pro one. But then they need to make the home edition good enough to be useful, but not so good that business would be happy using it. That's not compromise that's worked well for them in the past.
  Maybe we'll see it licenced as "free for personal use". That would be something! :)
  
  --
  Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
5. Re: The only way MS gets more apps in their store by Eponymous+Coward · 2014-11-16 01:03 · Score: 1
  
  Google makes all of their money selling ads, Microsoft makes their money selling software and services (mostly to businesses), and Apple makes their money selling a hardware/software ecosystem. Apple's cut on software sold in their app store is a multi-billion dollar business all by itself. That's what I was talking about when I said there's room for more than one business model.
  Hardware is not what distinguishes a high-margin iPhone from a low-margin but high end Android or Windows Phone. It's the software.
6. Re: The only way MS gets more apps in their store by JDG1980 · 2014-11-16 10:13 · Score: 1
  
  The problem though is going to be corporate customers. The ones with thousands of desktop systems that do pay. Big corps tend to be conservative about IT upgrades, and by giving Windows away MS would be sacrificing that revenue stream. They're probably reluctant to do that.
  Of course, they could just drop the price of the Home Edition (or whatever they're calling it today) to zero and charge for the Pro one. But then they need to make the home edition good enough to be useful, but not so good that business would be happy using it. That's not compromise that's worked well for them in the past.
  Actually, it's quite straightforward: the Pro edition can join domains, while the Home edition can't. This by itself will work quite well as a differentiator. Big businesses aren't going to give up Active Directory and Group Policy to save a few bucks on license fees, while home uisers (and some small businesses) won't give a damn.
7. Re: The only way MS gets more apps in their store by tom229 · 2014-11-20 04:04 · Score: 1
  
  I would say it partly is apple's model. Perhaps not in software services, but certainly in electronic distribution of software. The amount of money they make in their "app store" and iTunes has to be monumental. What they lack in data-mining software services they certainly make up for in convincing everyone that their products are "cool", "just work", and are worth spending an extra 30% on.
  
  --
  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Microsoft has targeted other platforms in the past by terbeaux · 2014-11-15 14:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

It didn't end well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
One word: Silverlight by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 14:04 · Score: 0

This is a welcome move from Microsoft. I just hope it doesn't get the Silverlight treatment after a bunch of developers bet on it.
1. Re:One word: Silverlight by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 14:12 · Score: 1
  
  This is a welcome move from Microsoft. I just hope it doesn't get the Silverlight treatment after a bunch of developers bet on it.
  What do you mean by that? Silverlight is doing perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with it.
2. Re:One word: Silverlight by ahabswhale · 2014-11-15 14:19 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  You mean other than the fact that they bailed on it?
  
  --
  Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
3. Re:One word: Silverlight by phantomfive · 2014-11-15 15:23 · Score: 1
  
  Because they open-sourced it, it doesn't matter so much if they do. You wouldn't be able to use Visual Studio, but that's not a huge deal anyway.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
4. Re:One word: Silverlight by UnknownSoldier · 2014-11-16 03:17 · Score: 2
  
  It is yet-another-tech Microsoft bailed on after it failed to get significant market from Flash and/or HTML5. It is on life support.
  > Microsoft announced the end of life of Silverlight 5 in 2021
  Reference:
  * http://support2.microsoft.com/...
  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
5. Re:One word: Silverlight by Rob+Y. · 2014-11-16 06:03 · Score: 2
  
  And it's the reason they bailed on it that's relevant here. Whether Silverlight was or was not great software doesn't matter. It's not cross-platform, so nobody wanted it. Microsoft sees that, and they're smart enough to not make that mistake again. And the marketplace isn't giving them many more chances to make that mistake again - so Metro's mostly a no-show too. That leaves servers and cloud services. Good move, Microsoft, but for you, not necessarily for us...
  
  --
  Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
6. Re:One word: Silverlight by terjeber · 2014-11-17 00:59 · Score: 1
  
  Microsoft announces the end of life of a lot of stuff all the time. Various Windows versions, for example. This doesn't mean the end of life of the technology, though SL5 hasn't seen a lot of talk lately. If (and that is a big if) there is a SL6, it will also have and EOL, some time in the decade after SL5.
We all dance in the streets by ssufficool · 2014-11-15 14:06 · Score: 5, Funny

Finally Microsoft was given me a reason to install Windows on all my machines to support their glorious Visual Studio 2015. I will lock all my projects up in Team Foundations installed on Windows Server.
I use Visual Studio 2012 and TFS currently. I don't know what it is, but it seems to suck all the fun out of programming. Maybe it's just not dangerous enough. The compiler catches most everything and I can't seem to throw segfaults or hide memory leaks. I get my jollies every so often by developing for PHP in C where I am able to churn out leaky crap right along with everyone else.
1. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 14:19 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed. I used to play around with CMake for my C++ projects for a long time, but then I realized how all that was a few mouse clicks away in VS. That includes library definitions, precompiled headers, project dependencies, linker and compiler options, custom build steps, and so on. The project files are in text format if you also want to modify them manually. And when your code does not compile, you just double-click the error and you jump right in that spot in your code. Nice.
2. Re:We all dance in the streets by omtinez · 2014-11-15 14:43 · Score: 1
  
  Have you ever heard of compiler warnings? VS will even warn you about stuff as little as when you use 10l instead of 10L because the lowercase L might be confused with the number 1. If you don't believe me, look at the amount of bugs that magically get fixed once you can compile your code with no warnings using the -w4 flag.
3. Re:We all dance in the streets by AqD · 2014-11-15 15:25 · Score: 1
  
  That's NOT enough.
  IntelliJ/Resharper/NetBeans/Eclipse do much more, though none of them are for C++. They actually check the logic/flow of data inside a function (not spanning across the boundary yet) and also guess/test nullability of local variables and method arguments.
  And they do that in real-time, while you're editing code. Eclipse utilizes their IDE-integrated incremental compiler while IntelliJ/Resharper has their own analyzer which can do relatively well even with broken syntax (missing/extra braces). Resharper's code validation is especially critical on XAML, without which you wouldn't have any idea whether your data-binding paths are wrongly-typed and targeted to wrong types, and there is no way to debug that.
4. Re:We all dance in the streets by Shados · 2014-11-15 15:34 · Score: 1
  
  Visual Studio is definitely farther along than IntelliJ was 10 years ago. With Resharper, for obvious reasons, its almost the same thing. Even without, its not too too far behind (most of Resharper's features at this point overlap....people just don't even realize it, having used the plugin for so long and not wanting to learn different keyboard shortcuts).
  Overall IntelliJ is still superior IMO (and cheaper, especially if you don't need all the languages, so you can use something more specific like WebStorm or Rubymine), but not by much.
5. Re:We all dance in the streets by Njorthbiatr · 2014-11-15 15:41 · Score: 2
  
  So your argument is that the IDE is... Too good?
6. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 16:20 · Score: 0
  
  or you could just learn to program properly in C or C++ and you won't need to have the user's cpu slog through all that extra exception checking.
7. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 16:26 · Score: 0
  
  Can't possibly be cheaper anymore considering the new VS edition: "Community" is free
8. Re:We all dance in the streets by phantomfive · 2014-11-15 16:30 · Score: 1
  
  Can't possibly be cheaper anymore considering the new VS edition: "Community" is free
  Free.....as long as your team is five people or less, which quite frankly is a rather serious limitation.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
9. Re:We all dance in the streets by Billly+Gates · 2014-11-15 16:30 · Score: 1
  
  Can't possibly be cheaper anymore considering the new VS edition: "Community" is free
  What is the difference between community edition and express editions?
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
10. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 16:42 · Score: 0
  
  People make worse mistakes in C. Brain power is expensive. CPU is cheap. Bring on the tools! Also, CLion gives C/C++ programmers no excuses for being arrogant about their "proper programming" and hiding behind shitty tools while their code leaks like the Titanic...
11. Re:We all dance in the streets by Eponymous+Coward · 2014-11-15 16:43 · Score: 1
  
  Do you have any recommendations for C++ tools?
  I've used PVS-Studio and was pretty happy with it.
12. Re:We all dance in the streets by Daltorak · 2014-11-15 16:58 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Finally Microsoft was given me a reason to install Windows on all my machines to support their glorious Visual Studio 2015. I will lock all my projects up in Team Foundations installed on Windows Server.
  I know this is is meant as a jokey comment, but it's worth noting that VS2015 has native Git support as well so Github etc. works without any plugins. (Even has Gravatar support if you turn it on) And it's not some half-assed in-house implementation, either: VS uses the OSS libgit2 library and MS developers are active contributors to that project.
13. Re:We all dance in the streets by Shados · 2014-11-15 17:04 · Score: 1
  
  Can't possibly be cheaper anymore considering the new VS edition: "Community" is free
  So's IntelliJ's community edition. But if you compare the roughly equivalent tiers above that, IntelliJ's about half the price, give or take.
14. Re:We all dance in the streets by phantomfive · 2014-11-15 17:05 · Score: 1
  
  What is the difference between community edition and express editions?
  The Express edition was gimped but free.
  The Community edition has most of the features of the Pro version, but you can only use it with teams of up to five.
  
  The Express edition is going away.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
15. Re:We all dance in the streets by Shados · 2014-11-15 17:06 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not sure what your comment has to do with development time static code analysis...Stuff that only runs on a developer's machine or build system never touch the end user's machine...
16. Re:We all dance in the streets by phantomfive · 2014-11-15 17:16 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Visual Studio + C# is fine as a development environment. Which is to say, it's not crappier than anything else.
  
  The worrying thing is that Microsoft hasn't changed (they're still a corporation trying to make money, let's be honest), and they'll regain the dominance they once had. If you can't remember why that's a problem, here is a refresher.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
17. Re:We all dance in the streets by phantomfive · 2014-11-15 17:22 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Oh yeah, and here is yet another reason why it would be a problem. Choice quotes:
  
  Microsoft thought that if people wrote lots and lots of VBA code, they would be locked in to Microsoft Office. They thought that no matter how hard their competitors tried (in those days, they were Borland, Lotus, and, to a far lesser extent, Claris), they would not be able to emulate the VBA programming environment and the gigantic Excel object model perfectly
  
  PS: in researching this article, I tried to open some of my notes which were written in an old version of Word for Windows. Word 2007 refused to open them for "security" reasons and pointed me on a wild-goose chase of knowledge base articles describing obscure registry settings I would have to set to open old files. It is extremely frustrating how much you have to run in place just to keep where you were before with Microsoft's products, where every recent release requires hacks, workarounds, and patches just to get to where you were before.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
18. Re:We all dance in the streets by NormalVisual · 2014-11-15 18:40 · Score: 2
  
  I know this is is meant as a jokey comment, but it's worth noting that VS2015 has native Git support as well so Github etc. works without any plugins.
  
  VS 2013 (including Community) has Git support out of the box and works just fine with GitHub as well.
  
  --
  Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
19. Re:We all dance in the streets by benjymouse · 2014-11-15 19:30 · Score: 1
  
  I know this is is meant as a jokey comment, but it's worth noting that VS2015 has native Git support as well so Github etc. works without any plugins.
  VS 2013 (including Community) has Git support out of the box and works just fine with GitHub as well.
  Ahem. It works. Sorta. It's slow, mildly confusing and it totally screws up if you use subrepositories. Looking forward to VS2015.
  
  --
  Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
20. Re:We all dance in the streets by Billly+Gates · 2014-11-15 20:04 · Score: 1
  
  I just imaged my computer and installed express before reading this. Sigh ...
  If it is anything like previous versions it means another re-image as I remember I couldn't fully uninstall the learning editions or express of products as they leave .dlls everywhere unless things change.
  I will stick with the express editions until I see a reason to change as my weekend is half over. I do web stuff so I do not need anything advanced unless the web edition has more features in the pro? It seams express just has gimped c++ profiling and team support which I do not use.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
21. Re:We all dance in the streets by Cyberax · 2014-11-15 20:08 · Score: 1
  
  IntelliJ CLion is a new C++ IDE. It's too rough right now, but it's getting usable.
22. Re: We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 20:10 · Score: 0
  
  VS does all that too for C# and some of it for C++.
23. Re:We all dance in the streets by Billly+Gates · 2014-11-15 20:15 · Score: 1
  
  I just installed it for the first time and I see no .PHP or .HTML or HTML5 support in the base nor plugins with the community edition? I am not a troll but I do not see how IntelliJ is better unless you are a android or java user.
  I have the express editions of VS which have some javascript support but the lack of .php is annoying.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
24. Re:We all dance in the streets by lordholm · 2014-11-15 21:09 · Score: 2
  
  CMake is a build system (ok, technically a meta build-system) like make i.e. it can build everything given the right rules and configuration. Most IDEs makes it painful beyond belief to build multi-language projects and especially projects where code is generated by custom tools.
  It is not possible to compare CMake with VS, since the usecases are completely different.
  CMake/autotools/make/etc is used when:
  - you care about portability
  - you have multiple languages in your application
  - you have a sufficiently complicated setup with lots of autogenerated source files
  - you want to have a debuggable build setup
  VS/Xcode/Eclipse/Netbeans is usable when:
  - you don't care about portability
  - you don't care about being able to debug the build
  - you don't have complex dependencies in the project
  For larger projects, you likely will grow out of even CMake et.al. in that case you can write your own build system using tools like shake.
  
  --
  "Civis Europaeus sum!"
25. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 21:13 · Score: 0
  
  Resharper is little more than training wheels for crappy developers. Feature overlap, screwing with default keybindings, saying "do this" and "do that" without regard for clarity or standards, and a godawful number of UI changes that make Visual Studio slow as a dog.
  Friends don't let friends use Resharper.
26. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 21:47 · Score: 0
  
  I just installed the community edition and then uninstalled the desktop and web express editions. Wasn't expecting that to work, but I haven't hit any problems. The ability to use VisualSVN's extension like I do for work was worth it for me.
27. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 22:08 · Score: 0
  
  Well, obviously you know nothing about Visual Studio, its project files or build system.
28. Re: We all dance in the streets by AqD · 2014-11-15 22:32 · Score: 1
  
  No they don't, not for C#. It's nearly exclusively provided by plugins such as resharper.
  VS actually has some of analysis for C++ now as evident by inclusion of semantic highlighting recently, ahead of their C# support. Perhaps C# isn't their #1 language anymore. But C#/VB.NET with Resharper still beats everything else - they even marked nullability/non-nullability of most parts of .NET Framework API, something that Java guys could have done years ago but never did, and thanks to (lack of) that, their nullability analysis although implemented well is practically useless.
  Analysis for C++ code must be much more difficult, however, due to massive use of and the infinite flexibility of C macros. I didn't expect that kind of tool even coming to C/C++.
29. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 22:59 · Score: 0
  
  I just stick with iWorks it open all that documents thank you. It would be probably easier if you had installed LibreOffice than jumping through all those hops.
30. Re:We all dance in the streets by Hognoxious · 2014-11-15 23:10 · Score: 1
  
  Sheesh, your mom's basement is big!
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
31. Re:We all dance in the streets by ciantic · 2014-11-15 23:14 · Score: 1
  
  The Community 2013 is way more stable than any of the Express versions, because it is the Visual Studio 2013 Pro, with different licensing. I uninstalled Express few days ago, and I don't think it left a lot of DLLs anywhere, only thing I can find is registry key: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\WDExpress (with Visual Studio it's named HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio)
  Also the Community version supports TypeScript out of the box if it's your cup of tea. I tried to get TypeScript working on Express builds only to find out it was really buggy.
  You probably should look at TypeScript in any case if you do web stuff. Because it's the future of JavaScript now that Google has also adopted it with same syntax (and some few ideas on top of it) just with the name "AtScript" by the Angular team. The momentum is pretty high on it. Even though typing would be not in the official specs everything else is ES6.
32. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 23:31 · Score: 0
  
  Brain power is expensive. CPU is cheap. Bring on the tools!
  Why do I get the feeling the last time you touched anything but Java slop was an intro class in school.
33. Re: We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 23:39 · Score: 0
  
  What I get is this.
  It's easy to do that stuff in Java. And considering, must be done. It's also easy to do that stuff in C#. Trying to do the same in C++ is a ratfuck nightmare because of the language design. For instance you can't actually look at a snippet of code sans the header files with their class definitions, preprocessor macro's and templates and know what the code really means.
  Probably the LLVM compiler project will help somewhat.
34. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 02:07 · Score: 0
  
  Wait, what?
  Probably the single biggest reason for using an IDE such as Visual Studio is the outstanding debugger, so your reasoning seems quite weird.
35. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 02:12 · Score: 0
  
  VS2013 Community supports extensions, and the user-created Git provider extension uses Git for Windows/TortoiseGit, working perfectly:
  https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/63a7e40d-4d71-4fbb-a23b-d262124b8f4c
  Ditch the Microsoft-provided Git support in favor of this little bugger, and you're good to go.
36. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 02:19 · Score: 0
  
  What is visual studio's IDE going to do for you when your Android project FTBFS on Eclipse?
  For commercial projects where you have a defined team with equipment and software dictated by the company, nobody cares. For everyone else, good luck.
37. Re: We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 02:24 · Score: 0
  
  Debugging the build, not the built product.
38. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 02:39 · Score: 0
  
  Basically, you're a dimwit and you have no idea what you're saying. Got it.
39. Re:We all dance in the streets by gbjbaanb · 2014-11-16 02:48 · Score: 1
  
  1. It worked - where are Borland, Lotus, Claris (ro Workperfect) now?
  2. It worked - he upgraded so many times you forgot what your old documents were like.
  See, in both cases he handed money to Microsoft, both for Office and again for more Office. It may suck to be him, but Ballmer has been wiping his butt on his dollar bills for some time now.
  Ps. I doubt the gigantic VBA object model was intended to destroy the competition, it sure looks more like bloated incompetence from the part of all the people working on it.
40. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 02:55 · Score: 0
  
  You can dance all you want. I am glad for you, that you are happy, but I have a lot of hate invested in Microsoft. I will be dammed before I give it up so easily.
41. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 03:21 · Score: 0
  
  I wonder what they are calling the three big E's these days in internal communications. Just funny how soon so many forget. I wonder what companies will be the Spyglass and Borlands of this generation - it will be fun to watch Microsoft crush them.
42. Re:We all dance in the streets by phantomfive · 2014-11-16 04:48 · Score: 1
  
  Ps. I doubt the gigantic VBA object model was intended to destroy the competition, it sure looks more like bloated incompetence from the part of all the people working on it.
  The author of that article was the guy who designed VBA, so he would know as well as anyone. It is well known that Microsoft strategically used APIs to destroy competition (Dr. Dos, for example).
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
43. Re:We all dance in the streets by Billly+Gates · 2014-11-16 05:10 · Score: 1
  
  Unfortunately it is a no go if IE 8 doesn't support it. Sigh
  Yes my business idea is to cater to business customers and it is the new IE 6 of this decade.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
44. Re:We all dance in the streets by AmiMoJo · 2014-11-16 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  The worrying thing is that Microsoft hasn't changed
  That clearly isn't true. Back when they were really evil it was Gates running things. Balmer was an idiot but less malicious, and now they have some other guy who seems to be making a genuine effort to be less of a dick. It makes sense from a business perspective because many of the companies that are doing well in Microsoft's traditional spaces already do that. Google's Android is now the most popular OS in the world, and it's open source. It's no wonder Microsoft now offers Windows 8.1 for free on small screen devices. Even Internet Explorer is mostly standards compliant now.
  Obviously the usual corporate tendencies are there, but I don't think anyone can really argue that Microsoft is the same company it was back in the Netscape or Java war days.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
45. Re: We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 07:40 · Score: 0
  
  Visual Studio uses MSBuild. (Comparable to Ant). Using the IDE has no impact on your ability to debug the build.
46. Re: We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 09:13 · Score: 0
  
  And netbeans use makefiles (generated by netbeans). I have seen several issues that while easy to fix in the makefiles was almost impossible to address in netbeans.
  Vs is arguably better than netbeans, but do not assume that issues like this will not show up in any sufficiently large and complex project. For a million line system, relying on gui-managed build systems is just plain crazy and way too risky.
47. Re:We all dance in the streets by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 12:06 · Score: 0
  
  VS does that.
  It is strongly typed and checks the nullability of all variables ever used. It ensures the types of variables used match an overload.
  It checks if a variable has been given a value before use.
  It can't handle broken syntax though. But it does tell you the syntax is broken (at least).
48. Re:We all dance in the streets by phantomfive · 2014-11-17 04:23 · Score: 1
  
  So, the point is, Microsoft has changed because they are no longer dominant. It's not because they suddenly got nice or friendly.
  
  The question is, if they regain their dominance, will they go back to their evil ways or not? I don't think you can answer that.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
49. Re:We all dance in the streets by phantomfive · 2014-11-17 04:41 · Score: 1
  
  I think the big feature of the pro edition is Re-sharper support (and other plugins, like Nuget). If you don't care about that, the express edition is fine IMO
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why? by AqD · 2014-11-15 14:12 · Score: 1

Are they now offering frameworks on top of Android and iOS?
1. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 14:41 · Score: 1
  
  Doubtful. It's more likely that they just don't like the fact that the Android SDK/NDK is a free download. If people are going to write Android apps, Microsoft wants them to be writing them via Visual Studio, in Windows. Just like they want everything _else_ to be written that way. It's kind of in their best interest.
  Probably the only sign that Sadya Nutella has a fraction of a clue, he's bringing the company back to its "embrace, extend, extinguish" roots. Microsoft has no lost love for Linux and it certainly hasn't found any love for it now. They just realize that they're risking becoming irrelevant from the amount of failures they've had over the past 5 or so years, they're sitting on top of probably half a billion worth of unsold Surface and Windows Phone garbage. Then there's Windows 8 of course. An OS so fucking terrible that Valve actually ported all their stuff to Linux rather than risk being locked into the massive pile of shit that was Games for Windows Live.
2. Re:Why? by Threni · 2014-11-15 15:25 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  Visual Studio is a great IDE, and Google's Android emulator is so slow you'd think it was a joke. So even without a additional framework it's great that you can dump the laugable Eclipse IDE (which has "Open Source shit designed by a deranged committee of fuckwits" all over it), and put the excellent but still not quite as polished Android Studio to one side, and develop for Android that way.
3. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 18:15 · Score: 1
  
  Please at least write a proper counterargument instead of a lame shill comment like that.
4. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 18:53 · Score: 0
  
  I'm amazed you could type that legibly with both hands and your mouth wrapped around Nadella's dick.
  
  Well, he did have quite a bit of free time while waiting for the aforementioned Android emulator to boot.
5. Re:Why? by behrooz0az · 2014-11-15 20:29 · Score: 1, Flamebait
  
  It's not slow, you have to enable kvm
  And this is exactly why I hate windows developers, They have no fucking clue how stuff works in their own OS and blame others for it.
  If you can't enable vt-x in your platform fuck off.
  
  --
  Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
Gee, all this after Ballmer leaves? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 14:41 · Score: 0

Former CEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C-e96m4730
Monkey jumping around:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE
IT'S A TRAP !! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 14:42 · Score: 0

Do I HAVE to tell you that EACH TIME or are you just going to KEEP FALLING FOR IT !!
Interesting licensing terms by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 15:03 · Score: 0

I wonder if you can skirt the non-enterprise clause by saying that your development groups are small.
1. Re:Interesting licensing terms by NormalVisual · 2014-11-15 18:56 · Score: 2
  
  In enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or > $1M in annual revenue) no use is permitted beyond the open source, academic research and classroom learning environment scenarios described above.
  
  --
  Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
2. Re:Interesting licensing terms by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 23:17 · Score: 0
  
  Great answer. Pity it's nothing to do with the question that was asked.
3. Re:Interesting licensing terms by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 23:49 · Score: 0
  
  It does answer the question. The answer is "no", because whether you count as an enterprise organisation has nothing to do with the size of your development groups.
Eclipse is doomed! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 15:11 · Score: 0

Not!
When a manufacturer makes a device, e.g. Samsung and Bada or Google and Android, they grab Eclipse, add some bits, make a developer bundle with it and thus they control the IDE for their device and that becomes the development platform for that device.
Now we could develop using Visual Studio, but that would only add a bunch of Microsoft 'quirks', and based on Microsofts history some of those quirks are designed to crash and otherwise degrade the non-Windows target platforms. So nobody will waste time with that IDE for none-Windows platforms.
1. Re:Eclipse is doomed! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 15:18 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  I've been trying to compare Visual Studio and Eclipse for a few weeks now. Sadly, I'm still waiting for Eclipse to actually start up.
2. Re:Eclipse is doomed! by donaldm · 2014-11-15 15:53 · Score: 2
  
  Err lets see. Time is 14:27:55, types "yum install eclipse" - finishes at 14:34:32, that is 6:37 to do the download with all dependencies, install and checks. Total cost $0.00. Use "app-get" if you are on a Debian based distribution or if you don't like the command line use the GUI installer which works on pretty much all Linux distributions..
  
  Now either run Eclipse from the command line or GUI and wait about 10 seconds then spend 20 seconds configuring. Ok it works for me.
  
  Oh wait I can't run Visual Studio so I can't do a fair comparison.
  
  --
  There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
3. Re:Eclipse is doomed! by Shados · 2014-11-15 16:02 · Score: 1
  
  Even if you're on a Mac or Linux, you have so many better options than Eclipse. Don't throw away your sanity AND self respect...
4. Re:Eclipse is doomed! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 16:18 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  So I've determined several things based on your comment:
  1. You use some Fedora-derived Linux distribution. That's kinda dumb, since they all pretty much suck.
  2. Your "app-get" mistake shows you've never used a Debian-based distro. It should be "apt-get", obviously.
  3. The operating system you're using is crippled, since it can't run Visual Studio. Windows can run both Visual Studio and Eclipse, so it's clearly your operating system that's lacking in this case.
  4. Your attempt at being cocky has backfired on you, and has actually made you look like somewhat of a dickhead.
5. Re: Eclipse is doomed! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 17:06 · Score: 0
  
  You're also using a Red hat derived distribution judging by your yum install prowess and your "app-get" incompetence. That's pretty much enough to diagnose you as functionally retarded.
6. Re:Eclipse is doomed! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 18:31 · Score: 0
  
  Oh wait I can't run Visual Studio so I can't do a fair comparison.
  Then shut up.
7. Re:Eclipse is doomed! by blackpaw · 2014-11-15 19:54 · Score: 1
  
  It is not recommened to run eclipse form the repos, that way lies endless grief, hassle and wierd plugin incompatibilities.
  Best to download the official binaries.
8. Re:Eclipse is doomed! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 00:38 · Score: 0
  
  It is not recommened to run eclipse form the repos, that way lies endless grief, hassle and wierd plugin incompatibilities.
  Best to download the official binaries.
  That way, you'll only get official endless grief, official hassle, and official weird plugin incompatibilities.
9. Re:Eclipse is doomed! by blackpaw · 2014-11-16 00:59 · Score: 1
  
  Unfortunately true. Gimmie NetBeans for Java Dev any day.
10. Re:Eclipse is doomed! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 04:58 · Score: 0
  
  The user id's on these three comments are all within 200 of each other. Multiple accounts, same person?
11. Re: Eclipse is doomed! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 05:55 · Score: 1
  
  Wake me up when *ANY* Debian-based distro gets delta binary updates, or something that mimics the yum fastestmirror plugin.
What is DB2 like? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 15:15 · Score: 0

I've only ever worked with Oracle on Solaris. So tell me, what is DB2 on AIX like? Describe it for me, in all its glorious detail.
1. Re:What is DB2 like? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 16:56 · Score: 1
  
  It's pretty much an intermediate stage between DB1 and DB3.
2. Re: What is DB2 like? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 02:58 · Score: 0
  
  DB2 on AIX (or Windows or Linux or Z), is actually quite awesome. I've written software products where we support both Oracle and DB2 backends. We had a standing order that the performance testing we did was to be primarily focused on Oracle, because the same queries that screamed on DB2 would run like complete crap on Oracle.
3. Re:What is DB2 like? by wwphx · 2014-11-17 01:14 · Score: 1
  
  IMO, DB2 is pretty sweet. It's much closer to the ISO SQL standard like Microsoft's T-SQL rather than Oracle's PL/SQL. I bought a developer edition a while back and the management console was very familiar to any DBA with Microsoft SQL Server experience. There were a lot of additional stuff that was a little familiar to me from my exposure to mainframes, but I was able to get in and create a database and tables right away without digging in to the documentation, the way Real DBAs do. ;-)
  
  I never worked with trying to get an app written to talk to it, so I don't know anything about their drivers outside of ODBC. I just wish our AS/400 had had the full developer loadout rather than just the runtime tools, it would have made sucking it dry before we retired it so much easier. That 400 was ancient, over 15 years old, but an absolute beast when it came to reliability. It was definitely the most solid box in our server room.
  
  --
  When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Does it have a "strict compliance" compiler flag? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2014-11-15 15:16 · Score: 2

It is all right and great for Microsoft to support all these additional devices. But does it have a "strict compliance" mode where it supports the features exactly to spec, and no "new, exciting and enhanced features" in it.
In Windows world, they could add non standard features to the software and support it in the OS making a mockery of standard compliance, lock the developers into their platforms, and force the cost of working with/around the "de factor" standard. It would not be as easy to do in Android and Linux, since they are not under Microsoft's control. But since Android and Linux are open source, they might try to pull a fast one and come up with "extended" linux/android, and probably try to pay other vendors to use it. But I don't think it would as easy to kill the standards as it used to be.

--
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 15:18 · Score: 0

The ONLY thing they "extinguish" by terminating support for Android and other platforms is the chance that their tools will be relevant in the coming years.
I suspect that what we're seeing here is a fundamental change in Microsoft, moving to "Embrace, Extend, Continue Supporting" as a model for cross-platform support.
They've released or announced Android, iOS, Mac and Linux supporting variants of Office, Visual Studio, .NET... many of the .NET things they announced are being written on Github under Apache and MIT licenses, along with publicly declared covenants not to sue on their relevant patents. It's awful fucking hard to "extinguish" something when you've relinquished that much control.
How do you imagine they can make every Apache or MIT-licensed version of their code disappear?
Re:Does it have a "strict compliance" compiler fla by Shados · 2014-11-15 15:29 · Score: 2

Since they don't control Android (open source maybe, but the version that ends up on phones is vetoed by Google and fairly tightly controlled), the most they could do is submit patches to it, that could be accepted or declined. They could also bundle extra libraries...like every other Android app toolkit/framework does.
Not much evil to do there. This isn't exactly the first time Microsoft includes support for open source stuff (ie: when they started supporting jquery). They go through the same channels anyone else would.
Re:Microsoft has targeted other platforms in the p by Shados · 2014-11-15 15:36 · Score: 0

Making what is basically a fork of a platform isn't exactly the same as targeting a platform they don't control.
You'd have a point if they forked Android, tacked the Windows Phone UI on it, and added support for THAT in Visual Studio...but thats not what they're doing.
If you can't beat them... by Sla$hPot · 2014-11-15 15:43 · Score: 0

... join them

Apple is still an island though
But for how long?
Windows Phone developement by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 15:58 · Score: 2, Interesting

You can install VS2013 for Windows Phone developement only if you have Windows 8 or above installed on your desktop. It doesn't install on a Windows 7 desktop.
75% of Windows Desktop users are on Windows 7 desktop. So this means that a programmer whose isn't currently developing for Windows Phone but wants to casually try it out is most probably not going to be able to. OTOH, you can develop for Android on Windows 7 - i.e. anyone can try out Android Programming casually.
Great work, Microsoft. This is not Bill Gates' Microsoft anymore (for a long time now). A bunch of jokers are running the company. They have locked out a majority of their programmers from developing for Windows Phone.
1. Re:Windows Phone developement by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 00:39 · Score: 0
  
  Can't you see that this is a ploy to get all those developers to upgrade?
2. Re:Windows Phone developement by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 02:43 · Score: 0
  
  I dunno why this is modded up. I have VS2013 installed on two Win7 boxes and it works fine. Not that I'll ever develop for Windows Phone.
3. Re:Windows Phone developement by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 12:18 · Score: 0
  
  You could get the free windows 10 Preview edition :)
Admiral Ackbar Said It Best by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 16:06 · Score: 0

"Never Download Visual Studio"
Google Tools? by Lawrence_Bird · 2014-11-15 17:00 · Score: 2

Last I looked neither Eclipse or Intellij Idea were owned by Google. "Android Studio" is for all intents a repacked IDEA
IDE war - it is like browser war by postmortem · 2014-11-15 17:33 · Score: 1, Informative

.. and MS loses again. MS was left in dust by Netbeans and Eclipse. They do much more, and all for free. Both have strong open source community that shells out useful plugins that extend the many languages that are supported. So finally MS decided to play catch-up game.
And there are some that still believe Visual Studio is the best. In reality VS is same as IE vs rest: IE is slowest, least compliant, least open, least extensible.
1. Re:IDE war - it is like browser war by Billly+Gates · 2014-11-15 20:00 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I was going to prove you wrong by opening a copy of Netbeans ... it is still loading hold on.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
2. Re:IDE war - it is like browser war by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 22:36 · Score: 0
  
  Be fair. I've launched and run both NetBeans and Eclipse at each new release. They run - they do run, just... slowly - and they work, so long as you massage them in the right way and don't expect things to be particularly consistent or, indeed, coherent. I then trash the clunking, bloated pieces of shit and go back to VS and put up with its weird white-screen have-I-crashed-or-have-I-not gamble that MS seem to have put in just to amuse themselves, and its own bloat, and the perpetual futile war between Intelli"sense" and Visual"Assist" simply because even with all of its many, many problems it's a hell of a lot less painful than NetBeans and Eclipse.
3. Re:IDE war - it is like browser war by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 22:44 · Score: 0
  
  Did you see really test VS? You can use for free their express editions. You can do pluggins, packages and libraries for VS, easily shared as Nugget packages. .NET is now full open source.
  I was pure Java/Eclipse developper and "forced" to move to VS/C#. It was easy and I will never come back as I can do same thing 100 times faster in term of development time (thanks to LinQ, and nugget libraries) and quality.
4. Re:IDE war - it is like browser war by Maury+Markowitz · 2014-11-16 03:09 · Score: 2
  
  > It was easy and I will never come back
  Here too. And when you see comments to the contrary, it's always got something to do with it being OSS. "It's slower, and not OSS". But it's not slower, and now it is OSS. It's like listing to people try to convince me that vaccinations are bad for you, you wonder how they can stare bald facts in the face and then say the opposite is true.
5. Re:IDE war - it is like browser war by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 05:21 · Score: 0
  
  Being given away free to individuals and small businesses with a new license , does not make it OSS.
  Opening the full source code to the public and licensing that for free too would make it OSS.
6. Re:IDE war - it is like browser war by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 06:38 · Score: 0
  
  Visual Studio isn't OSS. .NET is now, but VS is not.
7. Re:IDE war - it is like browser war by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 09:32 · Score: 0
  
  VS doesn't crash as often as Eclipse, nor is it as slow as Netbeans, but I'm sure MS is working on improving their product in these areas.
Clang support in VS2012 by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 17:43 · Score: 0

Visual Studio has been "supporting" LLVM/Clang for a while now - PS4 builds are compiled using Clang and the build tools are integrated into Visual Studio from VS2012.
It's official: GCC is dead by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 17:47 · Score: 0

And GNU is also dead. RIP, OSS.
1. Re:It's official: GCC is dead by Billly+Gates · 2014-11-15 20:10 · Score: 2
  
  Last a I checked BSD licensed software is also OSS. Just not Stallmans version of it.
  
  --
  http://saveie6.com/
2. Re:It's official: GCC is dead by serviscope_minor · 2014-11-16 00:22 · Score: 2
  
  Just not Stallmans version of it.
  I'm sure if you asked Stallman he'd confirm that it is OSS. You'd also get a lecture on how OSS is not the same as Copyleft and why/how copyleft protects your freedoms.
  
  --
  SJW n. One who posts facts.
3. Re:It's official: GCC is dead by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 03:53 · Score: 0
  
  Protects your freedoms only if you're not a developer.
  GNU: Freedoms for the end user at the expense of all others
  BSD: Equal freedoms for for all
4. Re:It's official: GCC is dead by david_thornley · 2014-11-18 07:37 · Score: 1
  
  Stallman does not have a version of OSS. He believes in Free Software, which is functionally but not philosophically the same as Open Source Software. He also considers BSD-licensed software Free Software (Gnu GPL-compatible, non-copyleft to get into the details), although he only recommends such less restrictive licenses for short and simple programs.
  
  --
  "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Better support than they have for Web? by Tony+Isaac · 2014-11-15 18:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

Microsoft is better at creating IDEs than just about anybody else for desktop applications. But when it comes to Web development. It was only the last version or two when they finally stopped creating mismatched HTML tags, and the Web page designer is still so unusable that you have to hand-code HTML / JavaScript for anything non-trivial. Maybe these problems have to do with Microsoft not owning the Web platform.
I hope they do a better job with Android. I really want them to do better, because I really hate Eclipse and Java!
1. Re:Better support than they have for Web? by MouseTheLuckyDog · 2014-11-15 19:54 · Score: 1
  
  Not better then Borland was.
2. Re:Better support than they have for Web? by shutdown+-p+now · 2014-11-15 21:50 · Score: 1
  
  Have you seen ASP.NET MVC? It doesn't create mismatched tags because, well, it doesn't create tags for you at all.
3. Re:Better support than they have for Web? by Bill+Dog · 2014-11-15 23:29 · Score: 1
  
  Have you used ASP.NET MVC? Because if you're not using the HTML helpers (which among other things create tags for you), you're doing it wrong. Tags are matched, but you get some line breaks in weird places that make the generated HTML not as neat as I prefer. And the checkbox helper emits two controls instead of one, so that the model binding magic works.
  
  --
  Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
4. Re:Better support than they have for Web? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 01:46 · Score: 0
  
  More Borland than Borland.
5. Re:Better support than they have for Web? by pherthyl · 2014-11-16 04:09 · Score: 2
  
  C++ and Qt already works great on Android with a nice IDE as well.
  Bonus: your code will work on iOS and windows phone and blackberry and windows and Linux and Mac at the same time
6. Re:Better support than they have for Web? by Tony+Isaac · 2014-11-17 04:46 · Score: 1
  
  But Qt has NO Web support. And you either have to use an old version, or go full GPL, or pay.
Yay Xamarin by WinstonWolfIT · 2014-11-15 18:20 · Score: 2

I've been working with Xamarin's cross-platform support for some time now, and the shared logic between mobile and mobile web pretty much "just works" after you get used to sticking to Xamarin's toolset when targeting multi-platform. I'm keen to see how this all works built into VS.
1. Re:Yay Xamarin by Maury+Markowitz · 2014-11-16 03:04 · Score: 1
  
  > sticking to Xamarin's toolset
  Which, unfortunately, is a serious subset of Mono. I found that every program I tried to port used some code that wasn't supported, and most of our code simply does XML file handling.
  Actually, it's difficult to even tell what you have due to MS's totally bizarre naming practices. Why is System.IO.Packaging, which deals with ZIPped XML files, part of WindowsBase? It's practically impossible to go from a namespace to the assembly that contains it. This has always bugged me.
2. Re:Yay Xamarin by phantomfive · 2014-11-16 05:47 · Score: 1
  
  It's practically impossible to go from a namespace to the assembly that contains it. This has always bugged me.
  This is often a problem with production C# code as well......since C# doesn't force you to use a particular directory structure (and in some ways VS discourages it). As a result, a lot of production C# code has a structure that's a complete mess.
  
  Java, on the other hand, imposes structure, which keeps things somewhat more readable.
  
  --
  "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Microsoft has targeted other platforms in the p by Hognoxious · 2014-11-15 20:05 · Score: 1

I believe that comes in the next phase - "extend".

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Issues. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 20:25 · Score: 0

You have them.
Many, many many of them.
Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 20:27 · Score: 0

The ONLY thing they "extinguish" by terminating support for Android and other platforms is the chance that their tools will be relevant in the coming years.
If a large chunk of the Android market uses the Microsoft tools, there would be a frantic rush to rebuild them in native tools if Microsoft yanked the rug out from under them. That kind of booby trap could stall the Android market enough in the short term for Microsoft to retain some market share.
Problem is Visual Studio slow and non-portable by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 21:43 · Score: 0

Even the bloated Eclipse is faster than VC++ on Windows - at least if you run Eclipse on Linux. CLion also looks promising, if they can sort out some of the cmake integration issues. I'll never go back to using VC++, having spent 8 years doing C++ development on Linux, at least for a C++ development. Every time I have to test build on Windows, the stress really builds. Things only seem to get worse on that platform, with everything absolutely crawling, and VC++ looking positively archaic. Microsoft has really lost their way with human interface particularly, with settings that used to be easy to access, buried below layers of poorly designed, and unstructured panels. There are many really nice tools tools on Linux - CMake, ninja, valgrind, clang++,.... The entry barrier is a little higher, but once you get over that, assuming that you are not an too stupid to manage to put the pieces together, you will be a much more productive developer.
C++ development on Windows is like drowining in treacle in comparison.
The only strength that VC++ had was the debugger, but in my opinion, even the g++ front ends have a slight edge in many areas now.
1. Re:Problem is Visual Studio slow and non-portable by Maury+Markowitz · 2014-11-16 03:01 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  > Even the bloated Eclipse is faster than VC++ on Windows - at least if you run Eclipse on Linux
  I've run Eclipse on OS X, Windows and Linux. None of those are *remotely* as fast to work with as VS. The fact that Google is trashing Eclipse in favour of Android Studio is proof positive of the problems with Eclipse, and the compile-to-the-metal that both MS and Google are adopting is an indictment of the entire byte code regime, IMHO.
  I've also used Xcode and VS head-to-head, and VS is definitely the superior platform. Although Xcode offers many of the same features, and outright superior GIT integration (it's like two clicks and one url to get it working), the indexing system is completely broken so you can't even do things like "find all references". When running one of the CLR languages the superiority of VS is magnified through on-the-fly compiles and such. Xcode claims to offer this, but it's horribly broken, and the late-stage operations like code signing and packaging make it a moot point anyway.
  I don't know if you'll ever *really* be able to write iOS apps on VS, but if that day comes, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
Re: Microsoft has targeted other platforms in the by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 22:19 · Score: 0

Microsoft is already making quite a decent buck on Android as it is, they don't need to screw with it.
Not suprising by lapm · 2014-11-15 22:27 · Score: 1

This is just nothing more then Microsoft realizing they are loosing it. They lost supercomputers, they lost mobile markets, now Linux is taking over servers, next battle ground is desktop and Linux is starting to make inroads there also... What choice Microsoft has but try to adapt, if they wish to be in business still in 10 years from now?
1. Re:Not suprising by OhPlz · 2014-11-16 09:37 · Score: 1
  
  Linux has always been taking over servers, and {year + 1} is always the year Linux is going to take over the desktop.
  If anything, MS is tightening whatever it was that got loosed.
Eclipse is doomed! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-15 23:46 · Score: 0

Eclipse is not doomed. Not even close. it is however cancer.
Reason manufacturers are liking using Eclipse for developer bundles is they can add a bunch of frame work stuff which makes it easy to develop mid tier crap firmware and programs. And difficult or not economically possible to switch manufacturers (lock in)
.
FUD aside by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 01:05 · Score: 0

FUD only works if people haven't used the thing your trying to FUD. Android development is far more popular than Windows now, and so most developers haven't used Visual Studio and have used Android via Eclipse.
As it its startup time, lets see, I count 22 seconds on this laptop, mostly due to the slow disk. If that's the selling point, I'm not impressed.
Visual studio start time? Don't know, I stopped upgrading when I decided Windows was not the future. You may think differently, up to you, I don't care, and won't miss the small market share Windows tablets have.
Re:Microsoft has targeted other platforms in the p by NickFortune · 2014-11-16 01:09 · Score: 1

It doesn't always end badly either.
Remember when Apple owned the word processing market? MS go very standards-friendly and very much into cross-platform this and interoperable-that.
Of course, it only lasted for about as long as it took for Word to dominate the market and then goodbye RTF and "hey guys, how about we make a mockery of the ISO standards process?"
I think what we're seeing here is MS in defensive mode. They'll embrace open source, open standards open sesame, whatever it takes until they're where they want to be in the market. And then, same old same old.
That said, I'm willing to be proven wrong. Time will tell :)

--
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Visual Studio product licenses .. by lippydude · 2014-11-16 04:38 · Score: 1

"Visual Studio products are offered through a variety of retail and volume licensing sales channels. Except for direct purchases through MSDN Subscriptions or Microsoft Store, licence purchases are made through a software reseller." ref
What I used to create this does it all... apk by Anonymous Coward · 2014-11-16 05:37 · Score: 0

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o... & I used Object-Pascal via Delphi XE2 (& latest 7.x versions do Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and Android (probably more nowadays in later/upcoming models)).
APK
P.S.=> That's all a body needs, + easier portability for target platforms from 1 single codebase - I personally prefer it to Visual Studio actually... apk