Microsoft Releases Visual Studio 2017 (visualstudio.com)

Reader Anon E. Muss writes: Microsoft on Tuesday released Visual Studio 2017. The latest version of the venerable Integrated Development Environment supports a variety of languages (C/C++, C#, VB.net, F#, Javascript/Typescript, Python, etc.) and targets classic "Win32" desktop, Universal Windows Platform (UWP, also known as "Metro"), .NET, ASP, node.js, etc.). A "Community Edition" is available at no cost for individual developers and those working on open source software. "Professional" and "Enterprise" editions are available for corporate developers, at prices sure to shock whoever has to sign the check.

Comments

"UWP"

[Anonymous Coward]

otherwise known as Universally Worthless Programs.

Re: "UWP"

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it still not run opengl code?

64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft,

It's 2017 and Visual Studio is still 32-bit.

Sincerely,
Developers

Re:64-bit

[jfdavis668]

At least they dropped Foxpro support.

Re: 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

FoxPro. Lol

Re:64-bit

[scb147]

Microsoft,

It's 2017 and Visual Studio is still 32-bit.

Sincerely,
Developers

My MSDN account shows both 32-bit and 64-bit are available for Professional.

Re:64-bit

[lactose99]

I code all my apps in COBOL

Re:64-bit

[Ambassador Kosh]

The IDE is 32bit. The compile, debug, profile etc chain are 32bit and 64bit.

There is probably no reason for the IDE to be 64bit since it does not come even close to use enough memory to justify that. I have opened a few visual studio projects in 2017 and most of them don't use more than 200 MB. Resource usage so far is about half that of VS 2015.

Re:64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's true, I really would like to have your job. Not joking, dead serious. I love COBOL.

Captcha: "Insanity", is a sign or something?

Re:64-bit

[PhrostyMcByte]

It's 2017 and Visual Studio is still 32-bit.

Unless you have specific use cases 64-bit doesn't always mean better. Most apps don't need the extra address space, and jumping to 64-bit means doubling your pointer sizes, which increases memory usage, reduces locality, and puts a larger burden on cache.

In VS's case they did the math and 32-bit was better. They've said this for years now. It's not a bad thing.

Re:64-bit

[turp182]

I'm assuming you meant Visual Cobol...

https://www.microfocus.com/pro...

Re:64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

What? We have a minimum of 16 GB to run that bloatware because otherwise just editing text files is slow as hell due to swapping. VisualStudio needs at least 8 GB in order to edit text files. That requires more than 32 bit.

Same here. Trivial projects are fine with a 32-bit IDE. Running 2017, my devenv.exe right now is 1.4GB by itself and has ~50 child processes, which total another 2GB or so. If I open a XAML file, that usually doubles shortly thereafter.

Instead of making the IDE 64-bit to hold all the relevant data structures in a clean fashion, they wind up duplicating data and increasing CPU load by utilizing subprocesses. It reminds me of someone using segmentation to avoid migrating from 16-bit to 32-bit. Sad!

Re:64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I run multiple instances of VS of various versions (2008, 2010, 2012, 2015) at any given time. Each instance takes around 300MB, on average. One of the larger solutions (87 projects in that solution) takes close to 1GB.

All of them run fast enough unless there's something else weird going on (not uncommon, but not a daily occurrence).

You need 8GB just to run one instance and that instance runs slowly? Whatever you're doing, you're doing it wrong.

And, BTW, the devenv.exe binary is 32-bit and won't take more than 4GB of memory, so you're also technically incorrect. (The best kind of incorrect?)

Re:64-bit

[SirSlud]

You might as well just have posted, "I don't know anything about software development."

Re:64-bit

[ebyrob]

Try installing that "64-bit" version. Pretty sure devenv.exe is still going in "Program Files(x86)".

See: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...
About **still** using msvsmon.exe to debug 64-bit in 32-bit VS...

Re:64-bit

[ebyrob]

Ya, cause windows on windows is such a great idea for core applications.

Re:64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I get paid a small fortune to maintain, and write new programs, in COBOL.

There's a LOT of well paid work dealing with old, established code bases.

COBOL is still truly excellent for some purposes.

Re:64-bit

[DrXym]

I've run out of memory in large projects on other IDEs. I don't think it would be of the question that you could burn through 3.5GB if you had a workspace with lots of projects in different configs and targets with runtimes in memory all at the same time.

Given that Windows has more or less become defacto 64-bit with just a few 32-bit outliers on tablets, it doesn't make much sense to remain 32-bit any more.

Re:64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual set of developers that would benefit from 64 bit IDE are miniscule, less than a fraction of a fraction of a percent. It just isn't worth their investment. If you have lots of different projects and configs then simply open a second IDE, you are not restricted to only having one running.

Re: 64-bit

[sucko]

FoxPro developers where the angriest buch ever. They got all the object oriented features, and no one cared. Visual Basic was the RAD tool of the day, and it made the FoxPro guys insane.

Re: 64-bit

[judoguy]

VFP was for serous database programmers. VB was for looks.

I used to get hired to create VFP layers to bridge SQL Server, AS400 and other databases to other apps because it just worked and worked well.

Wasn't a "real" Windows app in some UI ways, but when you needed to push/pull data to and from disparate back ends and integrate that data into COM based Outlook, Word, Excel and other Windows based applications, there was nothing better. We'd have C# guys come in and try to migrate VFP apps and they'd whine at the requirements to do things that are simple in VFP.

In 35 years of heavy relational database focused consulting on different platforms, nothing was as easy to use or as powerful as VFP.

So there!

Re:64-bit

[Ambassador Kosh]

With the HPC C++ project I am working on even with the Intel tools loaded and after using stuff like Vtune and a debugger I am getting about 200MB of usage with VS2017 and under VS2015 I end up with about 500MB of usage. I also do not see a bunch of children processes. At least from my experience VS2015 is faster and lower resource usage than Eclipse or PyCharm.

At least with C++ the resource usage seems pretty minimal.

Re: 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

That page is dated last year...so please refer to the 2017 version of the docs.

(Just becuase you link randomly, doesn't make it true).

Re:64-bit

[DaHat]

+1

I am jealous. The 26 project solution (~6500 *.cs files, ~500 *.ts) I've got open in 2015 has Task Manager reporting ~1.5gb of use... granted ReSharper adds to some of the CPU/memory usage as well.

One of these weeks/months/years we will break up this monolith... until then, much CPU/clock time is spent paging things to disk rather than allow the process to grow to a size it would use more of my local machines memory.

With any luck I'll be able to throw 2017 on the machine this evening & give it a look.

Re: 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. If that's the case, you're doing something wrong. I use it in a 4GB Windows 7 VM on my MBP and it's way faster than when I tried to VS.Net back in the day on one of those rare dual CPU desktops

Re:64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

They're called out on their bullshit for years now. They keep saying that but it doesn't become true.

Re:64-bit

[rl117]

I've read the pages where Microsoft attempt to justify this decision, e.g. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c.... I don't buy it. It's institutional laziness and resistance to change first and foremost. Choosing on a per-application basis whether to make it 32-bit or 64-bit is madness, especially in the situation here where you force every plugin and library being loaded to be 32-bit. You're developing a *system*, but it's really an agglomeration of different bits with little coherence or common direction. Linux distributions got this right. The whole installation is x86 or amd64. No confused mess of the two, x86 compat libs aside. We didn't agonise over minutiae, we did a complete conversion by treating them as two separate architctures, with biarch and multiarch for running legacy code. As is typical for Microsoft, they didn't have a transition plan, leaving much of their product line 32-bit only despite most developers and user having fully transitioned to x64 Windows over a decade or more back. Meanwhile on FreeBSD, Linux and MacOS X 32-bit is a distant memory on 64-bit platforms; the transition was done well over a decade back for many distributions as amd64 rebuilds were completed. What's tragic is they did the exact same thing with the 32-bit transition. Remember what a mess it was in the mid-90s to mid 2000s with a jumble of 16- and 32-bit code? It's exactly the same mess today with 32-bit and 64-bit code! They need some direction from the top to pull their fingers out and go 64-bit only, or do builds of both. If the BSD and Linux distros can build code for >10 architectures then I'm sure Microsoft can manage two, or three if we count their arm port (which is even more limited due to their x86 depenence, who would have expected that... Maybe build all your code on all architectures and x64 and arm could be first-class citizens.)

Re:64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that's just to avoid being broken by folder redirection. Same reason why our 64 bit app won't install to 64 bit program files.

Re: 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly never tried using Delphi. Even at 1.0, it was light years ahead of VB.

Re:64-bit

[Hussman32]

A relative works at a bank programming exclusively in COBOL, and does quite well. That language will be around for quite some time.

Re:64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure.

But can I debug code running in 64bit? If not then it still sucks balls.

Re: 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Captcha: Trump turns you on.

Re:64-bit

[hackwrench]

If they are child processes they run in their own 32-bit space and don't count against the memory uded by the parent process.

Re: 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I still maintain and support a handful of VFP apps which would be too painful to port to anything else. Dreading the day when a Windows version is released that doesn't run it -- bye-bye, money for almost nothing.

Re: 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

We too run vms with VisualStudio. The fact it runs faster on your Apple doesn't apply to those of us suffering under Windows. It usually takes over 20 minutes before VisualStudio becomes usable. IntelliSense takes a long time and a lot of memory before it starts working. The programmers under me waste about sixty hours a week waiting on VisualStudio/IntelliSense before it becomes usable. I know because we do pair programming, and I use my stopwatch. We pay about $60 per hour per dev with benefits, so Microsoft is wasting about $3,600 per week per developer for us. I don't see why anyone would even willingly use that slow garbage from Microsoft.

Re: 64-bit

[sr180]

Thats because tthe object oriented features were buggy as all hell. I have never worked with a program that was as buggy as Foxpro.
Ignore the object oriented stuff - and it was rock solid. Its as if all the code Microsoft bought was solid, and everything they added was swiss cheese.

Re:64-bit

[Bite The Pillow]

Your experience with other ides means Visual Studio should be 64 bit? Nope, sorry, try again. Everything else is 64 bit? Not a good justification.

Your scenario of lots of stuff doesn't make sense for VS. You would have a current config and target for each project, but that info is mostly for the build chain. The IDE loads some metadata, but you're more likely to run out of memory due to larger pointers than anything else.

There are good ones out there, but you haven't really made an effort here.

Re: 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

VFP was awesome, as long as you used a real database on the backend. Using DBF files was just asking for trouble because they'd always corrupt.

Still have some VFP stuff in production, reporting mostly. Replacing our ERP later this year, when that goes so will the VFP code. It's been fun, my first "real" IT job was developing in FoxPro for DOS 2.5 back in 1994. Good times. And yeah, it's annoying how much more difficult it is to do the same thing in C# or Java.

Re:64-bit

[spongman]

it's pretty easy to OOM Visual Studio with huge C# projects - the language service just brings it to its knees.

but for a file->new->todo-list product launch demo it works just fine. ship it!

Re: 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. For at least 12 years

Re: 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Been able to do that for *years* can even do edit and continue on 64 bit these days

Re:64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a solution with 60 c++ projects, all of them have between 10-1000 files, in total about 20000 files, VS takes about 600 megs on a good day and 1400 megs on a bad day, intellisense works very fast no matter which namespace I'm using at the time.

I'm not sure how 64bit will improve this situation, I have to say MS has done a great job on Visual Studio, I've yet to see ANY IDE I liked more.

and yes, the project cross compiles, its using the latest C++ stl, assembly files, integrated build scripts and when the solution finally compiles, it runs as fast as anyone can expect.

Incremental build is very fast, but in total, a rebuild takes about 20-30 minutes where C files compiles extremely fast and templated C++ compiles the slowest, one of the files can take more than 3 minutes to compile in certain situations.

I did hear that Visual Studio 2017 improved a great deal on compile time but I don't have any experience with it.

Now, please tell me your project is bigger than mine ;-)

Re: 64-bit

[dunkelfalke]

It is not just about memory. Twice as many registers, 64 bit integers, faster syscalls and so on.

Re:64-bit

[arglebargle_xiv]

I code all my apps in COBOL

I app all my apps in Intercal.

Re:64-bit

[arglebargle_xiv]

That seems to answer my question of "should I upgrade?". Actually I have a more general question, apart from 2017 allowing me to leverage the synergy of the cloud in more cromulent ways than before, is there any reason to move from 2015? Specifically, have they improved the compiler diagnostics or PREfast analysis in any significant way (2013 and 2015 were identical in that regard)? That's what I really want a compiler for, the rest is just window-dressing.

Re: 64-bit

[Richard_at_work]

I'm sure I read somewhere that the extra registers are part of the processor package and not limited to 64bit use - you just need a compiler which understands how to use them in 32bit mode...

Re:64-bit

[DrXym]

Actually my scenario does make a lot of sense and it is not hard to find examples of people who've run out of memory using Visual Studio in similar circumstances. And given the operating system and the typical development PC is capable of handling a 64-bit IDE, it makes very little sense to not provide one. Even if it's a choice presented during installation.

The only reason to stay 32-bit is legacy dependencies, native extensions and so on. Staying there because 3.5GB is good enough for most people (where have we heard that sort of argument before) isn't a good reason. Ironically Microsoft themselves recognize these limits themselves and have written blogs about how they've strived to reduce memory consumption that was hitting the limits. Even some of their scenario improvements still leave consumption in excess of 3GB.

Re: 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a compile-time thing, and if Microsoft was to use it, the people who need the 32-bit version wouldn't be able to run Visual Studio at all.

Re: 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because what x86_64 has more of (and nowhere near twice as many) is register NAMES.

Modern x86_64 architecture processors from both Intel and AMD have far more registers than the ISA has names, and perform register renaming (along with all the other fanciness like dispatching through multiple execution ports, microcode, etc)

Re:64-bit

[GuB-42]

I've run out of memory in large projects on other IDEs.

It means that your "other IDE" is a memory hog.
Visual Studio is quite light for the amount of features it offer, you won't get to 4GB that easily.

In fact, that limit pushes Microsoft to reduce their memory consumption. That alone is worth staying at 32 bits. Software eating up all your memory for no good reason is one of my pet peeves.

Re:64-bit

[DrXym]

I hope you realise the contradiction in what you're saying. If 4GB is not a problem then why are Microsoft "pushed" to reduce consumption? Why is it they seem more "pushed" of late than they have in the past? The reality is that Microsoft are "pushed" because they're hitting that limit. I linked to a blog post elsewhere as one example of that and it's not hard to find people hitting the wall for themselves. And besides, even if the software were available in 64-bit that does not stop Microsoft optimizing the product to use less memory.

And no it's not that other IDEs I use are memory hogs, and more a reflection that some software projects, such as the ones I develop in those IDEs are extremely large. Not just to develop against but when they're debugged and the IDE sags the weight of a large project with all its symbolic info, debug state and profiling that's going on. Indeed in some cases there might be multiple things being debugged at once.

we know what vs is - did anything change?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

crappy summary for the slashdot crowd. we know what visual studio is - what we want to know is what, if anything, changed

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[Anonymous Coward]

VS2017 Release Notes

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[epyT-R]

This is a technology site, not buzzfeed. The summary should be mostly change logs.

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[Anonymous Coward]

Buzzfeed articles are mostly sexchange logs.

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[chispito]

If you have to ask, the changes probably don't matter to you.

Fantastic point. All news is dumb because if it were important to us, we would already know it.

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[Philotomy]

VS is not my first choice when developing software (it's not terrible, but feels bloated and heavy), but I need to use it for some of my work development tasks (lots of Windows-focused .NET stuff). The things I'm most interested in, at the moment, are the improvements in support for ES2015, JSX, and node.js integration.

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[Joce640k]

I only need to know two things:

a) Does Intellisense work yet?

b) How long until SP1?

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[phantomfive]

Looks like the main new changes are about "Cloud Deployment", so it has pretty good Azure integration, I guess. I notice they finally added simple refactoring capabilities, like "Extract Function," so you know, they're making progress: soon they might catch up to Eclipse.

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

VS (Community - haven't needed anything more in years) is still my first choice if I have control over my Windows environment, but I've also started using "SharpDevelop" on machines where I want a portable ASP.NET or C# development environment (since you can run it without installing anything)

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[BradleyUffner]

a) yes, it always has.
b) probably about 6 months

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[SoCalChris]

I notice they finally added simple refactoring capabilities, like "Extract Function," so you know, they're making progress: soon they might catch up to Eclipse.

If you're just now noticing that, you're way behind the times. This has been built into Visual Studio since at least VS2005.

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[david_thornley]

a) yes, it always has.

Ask a C++ developer sometime about Intellisense. We're using VS 2013 (I'd love to be on 2015, but not all of our third-party library suppliers are there yet), and Intellisense mostly works, if you don't mind taking a ten-second break now and then.

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[david_thornley]

When various features were introduced, and how well they work, depends on whether you're using C++ or C#.

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[Anonymous Coward]

Intellisense "clogs up" and stops working. On my projects I find I have to restart VS2015 about 2-3 times per day to get it working again. Sometimes quite annoying, though when it's off I treat it like a fun game of memory: nice to squeeze the old grey matter once in a while.

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[Billly Gates]

Linux support for VC++ is mentioned seems pretty big.

Also a mac version is in preview and better Android and IOS development with Xamarin is included.

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[Anonymous Coward]

c) is it still a 32bit executable which crashes for out of memory with huge project files?
d) can one still customize the UI theme to have contrast and separation of elements, or did the UX department win?

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[Joce640k]

a) yes, it always has.

I can tell you don't write real programs.

Intellisense has never worked on any of my C++ projects. I've been using Visual Studio/Visual C++ since version 5.0 (mid 1990s, I believe).

At best it just means the code is full of red squiggles. At worst you'll be restarting Visual Studio several times per day to try and clear the intellisense cache.

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[Anonymous Coward]

>> At best it just means the code is full of red squiggles.

That's VS to me! (Compared with Eclipse, IntelliJ, and every other IDE I've used).

Re:we know what vs is - did anything change?

[Joce640k]

a) yes, it always has.

After a days testing I can report:

No, it still doesn't.

And it still has other bugs I've been reporting since Visual C++ 6.0. Bugs which have been marked as 'fixed', but aren't.

Is it that expensive?

[martiniturbide]

Or it is so cheap that will shock the one signing the check?

Re:Is it that expensive?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. $499 for professional is nothing to a corporation. As and Individual I would think it pricey. But working for projects in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. $499 is nothing compared to the overall cost of the project.

Re:Is it that expensive?

[spongman]

for individuals, startups, or open-source development, it's free.

The pricing is fair

[Anonymous Coward]

The pricing is really cheap in terms of an IDE for what get For just c++ builder alone was close to $1500

Microsoft is good once again

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that the fat ass Ballmer is gone the company is really turning itself around. .Net Core
Xamarin
Mac/Linux support (VSCode)

They are really showing improvement

Re:Microsoft is good once again

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio Code? You mean Visual Studio In Name Only. It's a useless JavaScript-based IDE that pretends it's Visual Studio but eats more RAM than Crysis.

Re:Microsoft is good once again

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

nuget

Re:Microsoft is good once again

[Njorthbiatr]

There's VS for Mac.

Re: Microsoft is good once again

[Anonymous Coward]

wasted cycles are wasted cycles.. sloppy javascript cruft is annoying.

Re:Microsoft is good once again

[Tablizer]

Now that the fat ass Ballmer is gone the company is really turning itself around

Only if you ignore their snoopware push.

Re:Microsoft is good once again

[nmb3000]

I don't see what people find interesting or exciting about .NET Core -- it's just a rebranding of the compact framework with some additional supported platforms. Honestly, the entire point of it seems to be to try and entice people to use Azure for hosted stuff and only use small parts of the framework for desktop apps (pushing them towards the "Universal" appy-store apps and away from full Win32 style desktop).

Re: Microsoft is good once again

[Anonymous Coward]

You represent everything that is wrong with software development today. "Who cares how crap the code is! We'll just throw more hardware at it!"

Re:Microsoft is good once again

[Kielistic]

it's just a rebranding of the compact framework with some additional supported platforms

When one of the supported platforms is now Linux it's a pretty big deal. The people that are interested in web applications but like to work in a programming language that doesn't suck no longer have to be shoehorned into Ruby or, heaven-forbid, JavaScript.

Re: Microsoft is good once again

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it? Or is it just a rebadged xamarin studio?

Re:Microsoft is good once again

[DrXym]

VS Code is actually quite good and cross platform. I've used it extensively on Linux and gdb plugin is pretty handy.

My main criticism of it is is that it's a pain in the ass to configure. Just like Atom, Brackets, Sublime etc., it does away with a proper settings dialog and configuration is by editing a JSON-esque file. Even if this makes sense for advanced configuration it really sucks just to configure some simple thing.

"Sign the check"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Errrm...most in industry just have MSDN subscriptions and get VS releases that way. Hell buying a VS Pro license is really just buying a MSDN subscription. Anyone who is shocked signing the check is buying their first license ever.

You want some real shock go have them pay for all the CALs necessary for a Citrix/TS setup.

Re:"Sign the check"?

[jimtheowl]

The people who have not shock whatsoever signing that check are usually not spending their own money.

$500 is Shocking???

[turp182]

The Professional version is $500 (license, not subscription):
https://www.visualstudio.com/v...

That seems very reasonable.

Enterprise is quite a bit more ($6K for new, $2.6K to renew), but it is part of the MSDN Enterprise (previously Ultimate I believe, that's what my license is called at this time), you get access to almost everything MS has ever made (want Windows 3.1 or DOS 6, it's there, want enterprise SQL Server, it's there).

Here's the link to the prices:
https://www.visualstudio.com/v...

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[dontbemad]

I think what is shocking to the vocally anti-Microsoft (and proprietary software in general, for that matter) crowd on slashdot is that people can get away with charging MONEY for SOFTWARE.

It never ceases to amaze me how, despite the fact that the majority of us on this website make our money in tech or software, the idea of charging money for those services is revolting to some.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It's not shocking. It's rather cheap, actually.

Compare with Keil ARM MDK-Plus €8K for a single user (which is not the expensier option).

It's really really cheap.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean I can get Visual Studio 2016 for a cheaper price now since it is considered old and obsolete?
what about VS 2015 or older? Cheaper is better.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[OzPeter]

Does this mean I can get Visual Studio 2016 for a cheaper price now since it is considered old and obsolete?
what about VS 2015 or older? Cheaper is better.

There is no VS2016. As for VS2015 I doubt you can even buy it now unless you get through an MSDN subscription.

But anyway for 100% of non-corporate usage the community editions handle everything you can throw at them and are free. The Pro only starts to make sense when you want to tie into a Team Foundation Server in a corporate environment.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Miamicoastguard]

Thank you sir, needed to be said.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[ThePawArmy]

Seems expensive compared to Xcode.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Kjella]

$500 is Shocking???

The submitter is probably measuring that in Ramen noodles while being a squatter on campus like his idol, because software wants to be like, free, man. And I'd show him our SQL Server Enterprise bill, but I fear he'd go into cardiac arrest. For us Visual Studio is just a rounding error for SSIS/SSAS/SSRS development.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

And if you think SQL Server licensing is bad for your health, do not under any circumstances look at licensing BizTalk.

But really, for your sanity as well, don't use BizTalk. ("Ha ha, ho ho, hee hee," I say with a crazy look in my eye...)

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean? Xcode costs a $2000 mac. Way more than $500.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[OzPeter]

This.

And if you think SQL Server licensing is bad for your health, do not under any circumstances look at licensing BizTalk.

But really, for your sanity as well, don't use BizTalk. ("Ha ha, ho ho, hee hee," I say with a crazy look in my eye...)

I'm petty sure all the SAP people are simply rolling their eyes right now.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[0100010001010011]

And this is just for desktop development. I can't imagine what most people here would say about automotive/aerospace, embedded toolchains. Nothing opensource comes close. The money is still cheaper than engineering time.

Simulink Embedded Coder, VXWorks, Green Hill INTEGRITY RTOS, ByteCraft eTPU compiler, Ashware eTPU compiler, Vector CANape, and on.

That doesn't even touch on the cost of development boards.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Anonymous Coward]

You may be conflating 2 different issues. Anti-Microsoft is not because they charge for software. It is because they used to do everything they can to maneuver their monopoly to the exclusion of others. The fact that you don't understand that is shocking.

Re: $500 is Shocking???

[Anonymous Coward]

More specifically (at least with 2015), the community edition is literally the same as the pro edition. Full feature parity. The only differences are legal; if you are a company that makes lots of money then you are required to buy pro.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[jimbolauski]

It was amusing to see them get burned by that mind set. VS2010 did not support the C99 standard, then suddenly 3 years later vs2013 supported the c11 standard.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[kronix1986]

You're making the assumption that these are professional people. The kind of Slashdot user who posts things like "Micro$haft sucks, most evil company ever" never makes it beyond the helpdesk or entry-level dev jobs in most companies. Their opinion is literally worthless to the company; they don't rise to become decision makers or budget holders, let alone C-level. So, while they seethe in their cubicles, their boss' boss' boss' boss' boss' boss signs an enterprise agreement with Microsoft and announces Visual Studio 2017 will be deployed to devs within the company.

People with a functioning brain don't expect software to be open source any more than they expect open-source cars, food, clothes, etc. Hell, pretty much all chip designs are closed source, as is pretty much all BIOS code - what's the point of being smug about a FOSS software stack if your hardware is proprietary?

FOSS' primary advantage is it incentivises companies to not act like buttholes - if the company's going off the rails, some random guy can fork the project and it gains traction. If they don't patch a security flaw, some guy forks it. It doesn't guarantee better quality code or better project management...indeed, some of the most poorly managed software projects of the last 10 years (Ubuntu, Firefox, Gnome, systemd) have been FOSS.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[phantomfive]

We had a contractor from a developing country on our team. He was really upset when he found out how much we were paying for Visual Studio Enterprise, because it was really close to his total salary.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Anonymous Coward]

It never ceases to amaze me how, despite the fact that the majority of us on this website make our money in tech or software, the idea of charging money for those services is revolting to some.

It's not that they charge money, but whether or not the money paid is worth what you get in return. In terms of the SaaS (Software as a Service) model, it can be perceived as rent-seeking. Especially if the changes are few and infrequent, or ascetic changes that have no impact on ability for the software to perform, but cause massive breakage in workflows. (See also the Office 2007 ribbon, or GNOME 3's launch debacles.) Add complete loss of functionality (DRM's a bitch.) to that if the subscription fails, along with potential data loss (vendor lock in with teeth.) and you can see why that service may not be as lucrative to some people.

It's the same way for one time purchases too. Too little feature improvement, or loss of features, is a big devaluation of the price demanded. Over emphasis on the subscription product (product is geared more towards the subscription) is also bad. As is charging for an "upgrade" that should be an "update". (Compatibility / security fix, bug fixes, etc.) Another devaluation is deliberate removal of core functionality for the sole purpose of selling it back to you at additional cost. (Think Day 0 DLC, from videogames where the content removed is central to (or even part of!) the main plot, and may even be on the disc already at launch.)

Microsoft in general is heading more towards SaaS, and that can be seen as a lack of vision by both the public and it's competitors. (I.e. That Microsoft, or indeed any company with an emphasis on SaaS for their primary revenue stream, is only interested in renting a product to you, and collecting the check. Instead of trying to improve their products or develop new ones.) That will also devalue their products. As they will be seen as cheap overpriced junk, by the public due to Microsoft's apparent laziness and lack of risk taking. (Regardless if that's true or not.)

Another issue is public perception as a whole. PCs are perceived by the public to have stopped improving for awhile now. Granted it's a multi-faceted issue, but what matters most is "bang for the buck." If you can't justify the cost spent, they will expect the price to go down, and it affects everyone in the industry not just one company. Smartphones and tablets are the fad right now because of their capability increases with each revision, but as we are starting to see, that has a limit too. Eventually those sales will slow down as well. SaaS makes that perception worse, due to the "lack of progress / happiness of where we are" sense it generates. Not to mention that software sales in general are not a stable market if the software and hardware becomes static. A.K. A. "Why buy something you already have?" After so many release cycles of little visible progress, people will start demanding price drops or stop purchases all together.

So no it's not "you can't make money on software ever." It's "justify the price that you demand." Lately, that cost's justification has been getting weaker.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Billly Gates]

You're making the assumption that these are professional people. The kind of Slashdot user who posts things like "Micro$haft sucks, most evil company ever" never makes it beyond the helpdesk or entry-level dev jobs in most companies. Their opinion is literally worthless to the company; they don't rise to become decision makers or budget holders, let alone C-level. So, while they seethe in their cubicles, their boss' boss' boss' boss' boss' boss signs an enterprise agreement with Microsoft and announces Visual Studio 2017 will be deployed to devs within the company.

People with a functioning brain don't expect software to be open source any more than they expect open-source cars, food, clothes, etc. Hell, pretty much all chip designs are closed source, as is pretty much all BIOS code - what's the point of being smug about a FOSS software stack if your hardware is proprietary?

FOSS' primary advantage is it incentivises companies to not act like buttholes - if the company's going off the rails, some random guy can fork the project and it gains traction. If they don't patch a security flaw, some guy forks it. It doesn't guarantee better quality code or better project management...indeed, some of the most poorly managed software projects of the last 10 years (Ubuntu, Firefox, Gnome, systemd) have been FOSS.

You know back in 2000 when Slashdot was young I was one of those guys who went into a job fair. I told one hiring IT manager that I only like free as it's the best and he rolled eyes and looked back. I said something similiar but less direct to the next hiring manager and he just smiled like I was retarded.

After that incident I questioned everything I read here and assumed corporate America didn't get it! Later on years later I realized it was ME who didn't get it! :-) A wife, bills, and tired of reinstalling everything because I made a mistake (though I have virtual machines now today) got me kind of sick of FOSS ONLY WINDOWS SUX way of things).

Oddly most slashdotters today are conservative now rather than freakish liberal like in the late 1990s and early 2000's but still think Windows = Windows 98 with the same problems as this was the last version they used at home. I have moved on myself. I have a FreeBSD VM and some Linux appliances for when I want to use something on another VM.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Anonymous Coward]

And for your typical slashdotter (individual or OSS developer), Visual Studio Community is available for a fairly reasonable $0 per year. (Same technical feature set as VS Pro; but it's only licensed for small companies, schools/education, OSS, or individuals.)

(Small companies: Five developers can use it; small company means = 250 PCs and = 1e6 USD revenue per year).

I'm not sure about the MSDN library -- I think you get MSDN library if you subscribe for 12 month blocks. (Enterprise has a bunch of features that are aimed at very large teams - mostly around 'architecture' tools and layers and similar. Frankly, unless you're architecturing very large pieces of software, not worth the money.)

Unfortunately, there's no page about what Enteprise has that Pro doesn't..

Re: $500 is Shocking???

[Anonymous Coward]

Subtract the cost of an equivalent PC from that price, because the software doesn't run without hardware

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[fisted]

People with a functioning brain don't expect software to be open source any more than they expect open-source cars, food, clothes, etc. Hell, pretty much all chip designs are closed source, as is pretty much all BIOS code - what's the point of being smug about a FOSS software stack if your hardware is proprietary?

Being able to change things you don't like, especially if you are a developer, duh. I've patched dozens of projects including my OS, userland and kernel. I wouldn't be able to do that on closed source software. I don't care about the philosophical bullshit your straw man is made of.

If, as a developer, it has never occured to you to modify your tooling, then there's something fundamentally wrong with you.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[idontusenumbers]

With an MSDN subscription, you get permission to TEST against all those apps, servers, and OSs, but you don't get permission to use those in production. If you get an MSDN subscription, you can download, install, and test SQL server, but you aren't allowed to use that copy of SQL Server in a production system. You have to pony up big bucks for a license to SQL Server.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Caesar Tjalbo]

I charge money for the software I make. I think that most Microsoft software just isn't worth the price.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Hussman32]

While I've seen it before, I do think your .sig explains Life, The Universe, and Everything.

Re: $500 is Shocking???

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of machinists never pull the motor out of their lathe and tear it down to put better bearings and a winding with a different gauge of wire on the armature.

Re: $500 is Shocking???

[Cmdln Daco]

The software will run on a consumer grade i5 Dell desktop that you can buy at Walmart for $499.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Dutch Gun]

Agreed. Submitter should think about it this way. How much per-year does a typical programmer earn? Does $500 or even $6K for a perpetual license software for a tool said developer will probably use every day for several years sound expensive? It's stupidly inexpensive, relatively speaking, to the total cost of that programmer's general overhead.

It's a decent chunk of money for an individual developer, but then again, they can simply use the Community Edition for free.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Interfacer]

I know the business guys use SAP here and no doubt it is expensive. Not sure how much though. I look after the process automation software in a pharmaceutical company, and the annual licensing of just our tech support is enough to buy a house. A big house. In a good neigborhood. And that is cheap compared to initial purchase of our software. Engineering licenses alone are something like 15K per seat.

Re: $500 is Shocking???

[fisted]

I'd assume that is because the cost to do so outweighs the gains. Rewiring a motor that's already performing as specified is both pointless and a major pain in the ass.

Adding a little hack to existing software? No problem at all.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what is shocking to the vocally anti-Microsoft (and proprietary software in general, for that matter) crowd on slashdot is that people can get away with charging MONEY for SOFTWARE.

More like people feel like you are paying per bug. The more expensive the software, the more often it needs to be restarted or flat out crashes, and the slower it is.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[AmiMoJo]

You can still buy the old versions, but they cost the same as the new version.

People buy additional licences when they have old projects that they need to work on and don't want to go through the hassle of upgrading them to the latest Visual Studio version. It's actually pretty common with all sorts of software - I have to maintain stuff that only builds on a virtual XP machine with ancient version of MPLAB and a HISOFT compiler.

CAD packages are the same, people keep old versions installed to open ancient files. Same with Windows, you can still buy Windows 7 licences if you are a business, and they cost the same as they always did.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[chrish]

Be sure to put "supports" in quotes; VisualStudio's C standard support is terrible. Our project is C99 and we have to use clang or gcc from MinGW for our Windows builds because Visual C can't handle the code. We're not even doing anything weird.

Re:$500 is Shocking???

[Anonymous Coward]

No windows 2000 though....

BS Studio

[immortalcrab]

More like BS Studio hehe, HEHEHEHE, HEHEEEEEHEHEEHE3HEHEHEEH

Anyone familiar with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a couple of questions.

The most important question I want to know is does it run GIMP?

Re:Anyone familiar with this?

[MightyMartian]

Don't be ridiculous. That's what we have EMACS for.

Sounds great.

[Gravis Zero]

Now if they would just make it standards compliant and add basic endian macros, it would be even greater!

Re:Sounds great.

[Jezral]

You're in luck: https://twitter.com/StephanTLa... - "We’re planning to ship most C++17 features in VS 2017 updates. No ETAs yet, but we’re working on them as a top priority."

Re:Sounds great.

[Gravis Zero]

Features are great but standard compliance is what I'm interested in. That means getting all the nitty-gritty details right so that standards compliant code works with their compiler instead of whining about errors that don't exist.

Re:Sounds great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Features are great but standard compliance is what I'm interested in. That means getting all the nitty-gritty details right so that standards compliant code works with their compiler instead of whining about errors that don't exist.

Presumably you are talking about C++. Times have changed. Nowadays MSVC is throwing was vast resources at standards compliance. Many of the people driving the C++ standard forward are Microsoft employees. (That's not to say Google, EDG, and a bunch of other companies are aren't doing their part, along with the miscellaneous crowd of individuals that make up the C++ committee.) It's no longer Jonathan Caves fighting a lone battle. Balmer is gone, and it is a new Microsoft.

Converting a stream compiler to recursive decent, without breaking much legacy code, has got to be one of the greatest feats of compiler engineering yet. Stay tuned.

--Tidemarsh

Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[CustomSolvers2]

I use and like VS quite a lot, but am not precisely an early adopter. At the moment, I am mostly using the 2012 version and, eventually (= when forced to do so), the 2015 one. Actually, I am not even sure why I stopped using VS 2010 because it was quite reliable. I have seen some problems with 2012, but have gradually got used to them. I haven't used 2015 much, but don't think that I like it: it consumes too many resources, even for my a-bit-old-but-quite-powerful desktop computer.

I am currently downloading the 2017 Community (clarification which is perhaps still required: fully-functional free version, which has nothing to do with the old VS Express) and everything looks OK so far. The downloading interface seems nicer than the previous ones. Microsoft promised this version to be much more modular and apparently they delivered. I am saying apparently because the options are there, although the size is still quite big anyway (over 7 GB after having chosen the most basic options).

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[xvan]

2012 brings c++11 support.

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[Anonymous Coward]

I use 2008 because I still have to do active development on a Windows Mobile 6.5 application. I also have some maintenance-mode SSRS reports in it that we started back when 2010 didn't have SSRS tooling yet.

I use 2010 because I wrote a shit-ton of code in that era, including web apps, command line/console tools, WinForms GUI tools (small ones, though *shudder*), some Windows services (also *shudder*), and a "datadude" database schema project or two. All in maintenance mode now.

I use 2012 because it was such a breath of fresh air after 2010 when SSRS started working in a modern (WPF-era) VS shell. Lots of .NetFX 4.5 stuff. A similar array of project types, but SSDT for database stuff instead of "datadude". Much of this is starting to migrate to 2015.

I use 2015 because we upgraded the SQL Server from 2008R2 to 2016 and VS2012's SSDT won't deploy to it. (It supports up through SS2014, but not 2016.)

I won't be bothering with 2017 unless (until?) I have a need to. Migrating projects is a massive PITA (mostly because other devs have to set up the new version on their local machine and not screw up the project files in TFS).

Because we have multiple instances of each of these versions open at most times, the dev team requires quad-core i7's and 16GB of RAM. (None of those i7xxxxU's that are the low-power dual-core parts, which means no Surface Pros for us.)

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[CustomSolvers2]

Every new .NET/Visual Studio version brings something new which some people might find relevant and others might not. In my case, I use VS mostly for C# & VB.NET and rarely with new .NET features. Over 99% of all the code which I write in VS might be done with VS 2010 (and .NET 3.5). Sometimes, I need newer versions and plainly rely on them. For example, while contributing to the open .NET project (CoreCLR and CoreFX), I had to use VS 2015.

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[AmiMoJo]

It's great that those of us who just want C and C# without all the web and SQL shit can get that now.

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[CustomSolvers2]

In theory, newer versions should support all what was done with older ones by eventually performing some minor modifications (quick migrations or changing the .NET version associated with the given project). But I guess that it is a matter of personal taste. I prefer to mostly use just one version and, when required, newer ones.

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[Tough Love]

I'm using C++14 right now, for free, using GCC.

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[CustomSolvers2]

Yes. Seeing the template tree so empty is kind of nice.

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[kronix1986]

Eh, your typical dev machine/laptop is going to feature at least a 250GB SSD - typically much larger. 7GB is a fair footprint when you consider all the different revisions of each language they have to support, with the accompanying libraries.

To put things into perspective, Visual Studio's install footprint is about the same as a typical Blu-ray MKV (7-15GB).

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[Anonymous Coward]

I use and like VS quite a lot, but am not precisely an early adopter. At the moment, I am mostly using the 2012 version and, eventually (= when forced to do so), the 2015 one. Actually, I am not even sure why I stopped using VS 2010 because it was quite reliable. I have seen some problems with 2012, but have gradually got used to them. I haven't used 2015 much, but don't think that I like it: it consumes too many resources, even for my a-bit-old-but-quite-powerful desktop computer.

One big, instant turn-off with VS 2012 was the SHOUTY ALL CAPS MENUS and the black-and-black color scheme, where icons were back to 2 colors.

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[CustomSolvers2]

I have worked enough with VS to know that 7 GB isn't much. But I found kind of curious a so big value after having chosen just some basic options. In any case, all what matters is the final performance and, as explained in the second part of my comment, its behaviour on this front seems quite good: starts much quicker than 2015, even quicker than 2012 (notably older, under-featured and lighter).

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[CustomSolvers2]

I don't care too much about interface aspects, other than what has a direct influence on my coding. But I do recall that the first time I saw VS 2012 was a bit of a downer. In fact, I have never got as comfortable with it as I did with 2010 or 2008.

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[david_thornley]

Last I looked, most of C++14 is in VS 2015. VC++ does lag annoyingly behind g++ and clang in standards conformance, but it catches up to the standard eventually.

Re:Step-by-step impressions (intro + downloading)

[Tough Love]

VC++ does lag annoyingly behind g++ and clang in standards conformance, but it catches up to the standard eventually.

Wow, that must suck. Meanwhile, I have two great compilers, gcc and clang, that both do a great job of tracking the standard and, by all appearances, are just generally better than VC++. For free.

How do I turn the telemetry off this time?

[Opportunist]

In the last VS I had to add a compiler option to stop you from sneaking your snooping crap into my code, what is it going to be this time?

Yours,

An Ex-VS user.

Re:How do I turn the telemetry off this time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this up, that's good info.

Re:How do I turn the telemetry off this time?

[Anonymous Coward]

VS2015 update 2 introduced it and update 3 removed it.

Re:How do I turn the telemetry off this time?

[Opportunist]

And it's just me who wonders why they add something like this, without any documentation of the calls whatsoever, and only admit it sheepishly when we basically find them with their hand in the cookie jar?

If you add calls me my binaries, I sure as FUCK expect you to tell me up front. If not, tell me one good reason why I should EVER trust your compiler again.

Re:How do I turn the telemetry off this time?

[C R Johnson]

We work on a network which is isolated from the internets. No telemetry.

Privacy policy

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Does anyone know if they've fixed the privacy concerns about the Community edition yet?

Last time I checked, there were multiple inter-related privacy policies that seemed to apply, but between those and the general terms it seemed clear that they could upload more-or-less anything (including, say, your code) through their telemetry processes. You also needed a Microsoft account to even continue using the IDE after a few days.

This sort of nonsense simply shouldn't be necessary in real world development tools.

Re:Privacy policy

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if they've fixed the privacy concerns about the Community edition yet?

Comrade! In this Community there are no secrets, no need for privacy!

Visual Studio?

[OneHundredAndTen]

The 20th century came to a close more than sixteen years ago.

Re:Visual Studio?

[iggymanz]

yes slashdot also showing ad for 21st development wares, MicroFocus Visual COBOL. Get it while it's hot!

The most important question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the installer still suck more shit than a vacuum in a Taco Bell bathroom?

FYI: No ISO download

[rastos1]

But you should be able to create an offline installer

Re:FYI: No ISO download

[Scarred Intellect]

The offline installer process has worked fine for me for the RC.

It actually seems to be working better with the officially released version.

Re:FYI: No ISO download

[PhrostyMcByte]

Thank you. Was looking for a way to download this for my team without re-downloading for every user.

Re:FYI: No ISO download

[MobyDisk]

Expect it to take a long time though: So far it has downloaded 10GB of files and has >3300 top-level folders. No progress indication. :-(

Re:FYI: No ISO download

[rastos1]

I just keep some windows VMs around. On Win2008 server it failed outright. On W10 it exhausted the disk space after a short while. So I started to look around how big the beast actually is. The HW requirements says - up to 40GB; based on selected features. The offline installer can be forced to download less if you restrict it only one language (who would want a localized IDE??), e.g. with "--lang en-US" - which trims it down to ~19GB ... I think I'll pass for now.

Re:FYI: No ISO download

[MobyDisk]

FYI: Final result, without using --lang, is ~16.3GB (17,595,078,265 bytes) and 4,606 files.

Step-by-step impressions (first use)

[CustomSolvers2]

After testing it for some minutes, I found two interesting issues:
- It loads pretty quickly. Right after restarting my computer, the fastest one is VS 2012, then 2017 and, finally, 2015. But, when executing them for a second time, 2017 becomes even faster than 2012.
- It has some new project types (.NET Core and .NET Standard), which are only present in C# (no more duplication of everything C#-VB.NET?!). And here I found a not so pleasant surprise: after creating a new .NET Standard project and the opening window including (sorry about the crappy indentation, but the editor forced me to use less 'junk' characters):

using System;

namespace ClassLibrary
{
public class Class1
{
}
}
... VS complained about not being able to find the System namespace!! and the class being wrong because of not finding System.Object!! I guess that this has to do with my initial selection of modules (perhaps VB.NET not supporting the new projects is another consequence), but come on!! How can the code generated by default be faulty?! This isn't a bug, this is pure terrorism! LOL.

I usually let new VS or .NET versions to be improved during some time (e.g., various years) before using them, to avoid "peculiarities" like the aforementioned one or simply because of being happy with my current version. But I will do a small exception this time: I have to develop a reasonably big C# code during the next weeks and do feel like trying VS 2017 (by assuming that it can keep up). So, I will write the third and final part of this post in some weeks, after having got a proper feeling about this new version.

Re: Step-by-step impressions (first use)

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking forward to your update.

Re:Step-by-step impressions (first use)

[CustomSolvers2]

I have realised that discussions are archived after around 15 days. This isn't enough time for completing the aforementioned whole code, but it should be more than enough to get a good idea about VS 2017.

Re: Step-by-step impressions (first use)

[CustomSolvers2]

I will not let you down, supportive (other) AC!

Fanboi here

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a MS fanboi but this is a joke. They still haven't fixed VS 2015. I attempted to install the 2015 community edition a couple months ago and I couldn't do it without doing a shit ton of research on how to fix broken shit. Fuck that.

Instead of going "yay VS 2017" I googled "Couldn't install Visual Studio 2017 community edition"

SHIT TON of hits. More than a million. Sad, just sad.

Re:Fanboi here

[LesFerg]

Instead of going "yay VS 2017" I googled "Couldn't install Visual Studio 2017 community edition"

SHIT TON of hits. More than a million. Sad, just sad.

Did you do a quick review of those reports to see how many of them were from Nov/Dec 2016, and referred to one of the release candidate versions?

You might want to note that release candidate installations are usually created for the purpose of discovering the problems which occur for different users with different environments etc, so they appear to have served their exact purpose, and enough people were enthusiastic about VS2017 to both participate as an early tester and post reports about their problems. Looks like an acceptable software rollout process to me.

Visual C++ for Linux!

[Billly Gates]

No I am not making this up either. Also a beta version of Visual Studio for Mac is available too as well as better Android and IOS support. VS since 2015 also comes with Java and Android emulators as well via Hyper-V.

MS is getting quite serious about being cross platform

Re:Visual C++ for Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, those don't come with IntelliSense, which is just about 3/4 the reason to use VS in the first place.

Re:Visual C++ for Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you stupid? That runs on windows and simply ssh'es into the linux box to freaking compile/run the app.

So without a fucking windows machine I CANNOT USE IT FROM LINUX.

What good is that?!

Re:Visual C++ for Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's Visual C++ for Linux via ssh ... I tried it out and the debugger doesn't work at all. It copies the project to the target machine (via ssh) and then builds it using gcc (or clang if you have it configured).

Windows development I'm considering using just MinGW64 under either Centos7 or Fedora because I've gotten that to work VERY well with both Qt and wxWidgets.

Re:Visual C++ for Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

No I am not making this up either. Also a beta version of Visual Studio for Mac is available too as well as better Android and IOS support.

It's "Visual C++ for Linux Development", not "Visual C++ for Linux". The IDE runs on Windows and uses ssh to remotely compile and debug. And not just on Linux, anything with gdb and an ssh server can be used.

It doesn't run on Linux. "Visual Studio for Mac" is not Visual Studio at all, but a new name for the product formerly known as "Xamarin Studio".

Re:Visual C++ for Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh Microsoft is 'quite serious' about being cross platform? Yeah read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

They're quite serious about infiltrating and taking over, that's what you mean. Maybe you're young and this is your first time seeing their behaviour in action.

Re:Coumminty edition is FREE! Not crippled

[Billly Gates]

The community edition is not the crippled express editions. You can even make professional software with it too. THe only difference is the MSDN subscription and corporate Team Foundation features for teams and groups.

THe Community Edition even comes with Git and Git tools to use for things like Github.

So why is everyone whining? Things are not free to make and like Redhat there is CentOS for those who do not need enterprise support but is there for those that do.

Re:Coumminty edition is FREE! Not crippled

[Billly Gates]

ANd yes replying to myself I also want to address the grand parent for things like SQL Server.

If you want the full thing go to www.technet.com and download it? It timebombs after 180 days but MS allows you to run it and Windows Server Enterprise editions free for non production or business use for IT professionals in virtual or stand alone machines. The Community Edition comes with SQL Server Express but I downloaded both the SQL Server for Linux 2016 and the regular win64 SQL Sever 2014 and Server 2012 R2 that I run in Hyper-V on my desktop.

New Bollywood twist on the old song ....

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Now Satya has to do the song and dance, "developers, developers, developers ...." . But this time the music will be arranged by AR Rahman, and the famed dance coach Puliyur Saroja who directed the dances of the Superstar Rajnikant will choreograph the performance.

Doesn't do C++x17

[ameline]

It says 2017, but that might be misleading -- it does not fully support C++x14 (release notes say "better" x14 support. I'd like to see "full x14 compliance & support"). And they're a ways from full x17 support.

You get spoiled using Clang/LLVM

Re:Doesn't do C++x17

[Carewolf]

It says 2017, but that might be misleading -- it does not fully support C++x14 (release notes say "better" x14 support. I'd like to see "full x14 compliance & support"). And they're a ways from full x17 support.

You get spoiled using Clang/LLVM

Apparently it has all the stuff added in C++14, what is missing is C++11 and C++98 support :D

See VS2017 Release Notes - C++

the compiler is complete for features added in the C++14 Standard. Note that the compiler still lacks a few features from the C++11 and C++98 Standards.

Re:Doesn't do C++x17

[Anonymous Coward]

C++17 spec isn't even ratified and approved. By definition, no compiler is C++17 compliant. But gcc and clang do have great support of the expected features.

Re:Doesn't do C++x17

[Jezral]

They are actively working on full C++ language support. But, 2017 doesn't mean C++17 - the release year has nothing to do with what it supports. The actual version is VS15 (VS 2015 was version 14).

MS is working on language support in two ways. First, they're trying to get two-phase lookup into their own frontend, but this has been very slow work because it doesn't even have an AST. Secondly, they're working on an Clang based frontend, which already has all the goodies. You can already install the Clang preview right from VS itself.

(And, what's with C++x17? You either say C++1z or C++17 - you do not say C++x17 - the letters are only for unofficial versions. The versions go: C++0x, C++11, C++1y, C++14, C++1z, C++17 ... C++2x, C++20)

Re:Comes with CLANG

[Billly Gates]

Go use Clang then? It is included in VS 2015 and VS 2017

Will the new Community Edition Be Uninstallable?

[Cmdln Daco]

I once installed the 2015 Community edition on a Windows 7 system to check it out, kick the tires, etc.

It shit all over the system, there was no integrated installer (of the type there is when you install Microsoft Office) and it created 'restore points' for every single package and component that it pulled down and installed. I wanted to maybe check out some Visual Basic and C++ and dabble with it a bit.

It installed the whole SQL tool chain, server, etc. There really weren't any options for installing just the components to run VS on a standalone machine, in the fashion that there was with Visual C++ 6.0 back in the day.

The VS installer basically shit all over my system, and uninstalling it would have involved manually uninstalling each component part using the Control Panel. The 'restore points' were totally consumed going way back in 'history' because it set a restore point for each and every fricking component.

Have they gotten any better with that? I am a little bit afraid to try installing it to find out.

More stupid stuff

[hackwrench]

What's really bad is that the QB64 that compiles an enhanced version of Microsoft's QuickBASIC has one code base that compiles a 32 bit and a 64 bit IDE. Granted there are limitations such as the 32 bit IDE only compiles 32 bit programs and the 64 bit IDE compiles only 64 bit programs, but it has that feature.

Re:Will the new Community Edition Be Uninstallable

[Dutch Gun]

VS2017 has a new installer that's supposed to be better at managing components, languages, etc. I haven't tried it myself though, so I can't give a recommendation either way.

Installation time

[Anonymous Coward]

How long does it take to install? 2015 community edition took over 5 hours!

vim 8

[stridebird]

Meanwhile, in other news, Bram Moolenaar releases vim 8

VC - POS

[Camel Pilot]

The last time I installed VC (taking several hours)... it was not able to completely un-install. It wrapped itself around IE and popped up a debugger every time IE encountered a buggy web page.

Re:Coumminty edition is FREE! Not crippled

[Anonymous Coward]

Because recruiters will insist applicants have experience with the professional or enterprise editions.

Re:Comes with CLANG

[Anonymous Coward]

Use any compiler you want

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c...

captcha: impress

And now debugging in VS2008 is broken

[fisternipply]

Installing VS2017 overwrites a dll shared by VS2008 that handles the debugger. So with this new release, devs now need to run VS2008 inside a VM for it to work properly.

Now with more forced telemetry!

[Anonymous Coward]

Previous versions you could turn off (After the got caught). Now you need a Microsoft account. Holy crap that's evil.

Re: Coumminty edition is FREE! Not crippled

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard of a recruiter requiring developer to have used Pro/Enterprise. All they care about is what stack you have experience using. Their is not much yippy can't do with Community Edition.

Re:Step-by-step impressions (assessment)

[CustomSolvers2]

I have finished my analysis of VS 2017 much sooner than expected because of deciding to continue writing the aforementioned code with the 2012 version. Without getting a too bad impression about it, I didn't feel comfortable enough to continue; additionally, I found what IMHO is a serious issue which should be fixed right away.

As already pointed out, the modularity of 2017 is very appealing and allows a very light environment which is certainly quick; as quick as the much older and under-featured 2012. Note that, during the installation, I selected the main C#/VB.NET desktop and web options and some basic Visual C++. For me, just this issue makes this version more appealing than 2015.

In its default configuration, 2017 has much more coding helps (all the bells and whistles automatically appearing when typing or moving the mouse or similar) than 2012 and 2015. This is one of the defining features of VS with respect to other IDEs, but Microsoft might have brought things way too far on this front. Nothing of this seems to affect the VS usability (quick and responsive; additionally, all these functionalities are likely to be easily disabled) and that’s why I cannot say that is completely wrong. Small details helping to improve your coding experience are certainly nice, but including too many details which virtually nobody would ever use (e.g., showing some information when placing the cursor in certain area which can quickly be retrieved in 3 different ways) doesn't seem too logical. All this is even more relevant by bearing in mind the usual evolution of VS releases: first versions full of bugs which usually take over 1 year to be fixed. They have an excellent underlying framework (almost none of the new features since VS 2008 have improved my coding experience in a relevant way), why unnecessarily making it buggy or kind of joker-of-all-trades-master-of-none? I think that Microsoft should eminently focus on delivering reliable and bug-free versions, rather than on continue adding not-too-useful features.

In general terms, I felt quite comfortable working on VS 2017 (at least, before discovering the problem below), but by basically using it as VS 2012. Note that I continued a C# (library + console) project created in VS 2012. Right at the start, I saw a curious error-over-reporting issue: a simple 1 error in 2012 clearly stating the problem (wrong definition of a class) vs. 88 in 2017 (one for the wrongly-defined class and 87 for further references to that class). I saw also other weirdnesses like expanding a tree of sub-folders in the project window which got suddenly closed. But all these things happened just once or twice and I was kind of expecting them, so I didn't really mind any of this (on the other hand, this should be seen by Microsoft as bad news: I do expect random errors and glitches in a first VS version because this has always been the case!).

The real deal breaker was the problems with the debugger: it plainly doesn't work as it should. I tested the created-in-VS-2012-a-bit-complex code, also new-2017-extremely-simple projects and the behaviour was always quite chaotic via ignoring lines for no clear reason. For example, I usually write codes including something like string string1 = "whatever"; string1 = string1;, where the whole purpose of the second line is to hold a break-point (where I will see the string1 properties via the popup window); VS 2017 skips the break-point in this second line! And this skipping-lines behaviour occurs in other situations, what makes the whole debugging process very uncomfortable right away (I have relevant experience in different IDEs and languages, VS and C# among them; I don't need to spend even one minute to try to fully understand the unexpected behaviour of a debugger to know that I don't like it). Hopefully, this is just a buggy behaviour and Microsoft hasn't actually modified the way in which the VS debugger has always worked. Another issue I didn't like too much about debugging was the fact that the break-poin