Visual Studio 11 Express

So they're literally forcing new developers onto other platforms now?

Steven Ballmer thinks not. Apparently Metro is simply the greatest thing since burnt toast. Once developers see how fantastic and great it is, and how they can experience the same Metro feel on different formats, they can't go back. Windows is dead. Long live Metro.

Sad, sad news.

Edit: for spelling and wording.

Windows is dead.

Frankly this just makes me want to go back to OpenGL + GCC/MinGW.

Steam is coming to Linux finally. Maybe consumers will hate Windows 8 and Windows really will die. I can always hope.

Steam is coming to Linux finally. Maybe consumers will hate Windows 8 and Windows really will die. I can always hope.

For consumer market, windows is already on the way out (outside of pc gaming). Mobile computing (or at a real outside chance osx) will replace it
Steam is already on osx, those who have not switched unix by now are unlikely to migrate en masse in the future. Certainly neither me nor anyone I know plans to. Tried linux, didn't like it, went back to windows. If windows doesn't do what I want, then osx.

For business market, they will just buy pro version of visual studio and continue making desktop apps, until inertia overcomes them and it goes on the web, so at least 10-15 more years.

Oh no. Nononono. That's nonsense. I guess I'll backup some 2010 installs for extra safety, and don't switch.

Though I will stay with VC 2008 Express because I have no need to upgrade, I will say thanks to MS, so generous. Express version is so good and is also FREE.

[quote name='Don Carnage' timestamp='1337662800' post='4942091']
Windows is dead.

Frankly this just makes me want to go back to OpenGL + GCC/MinGW.

Steam is coming to Linux finally. Maybe consumers will hate Windows 8 and Windows really will die. I can always hope.
[/quote]

Possible flame war warning:

[spoiler]
Now now there - don't diss the OS because of the company. Apple couldn't take the heat.
[/spoiler]

Given the utter fail which is the VS11 UI I really wouldn't worry that much about it...

About the only annoying thing about VS11 is that .Net4.5/C#5 dev seems tied to it - I want to play with async/await + Rx2 god damn it!

Oh no. Nononono. That's nonsense. I guess I'll backup some 2010 installs for extra safety, and don't switch.

The page mentions that VS 2010 Express will remain available for free download. This is still crappy news, though.

Windows 8 is transitional technology. Win 9 will be the shift. It will then transform into the following two branches:
- Consumer market, completely regulated, built on top of WinRT, completely sandboxed, but limited in what can be done. No new technology, platforms, no new browsers, text editors, ... You get nice XML frontends to display your blogs, pictures and movies, obviously only in MS-supported formats.

- Infrastructure market. Like old Windows, general purpose computing, but at an increasingly high price. Since it will be reserved for a handful of licensed partners, they may as well set the starter price at $100k for compiler - it won't matter. Those that need it or use it have business models that support it. Just like they do for IBM or Oracle.

As for market sizes - MS is shrinking it. Instead of old monopoly, they created their own world. Phones, *XBox*, tablets, laptops, PCs, servers. This new platform will support everything, from internet, mail, social, cloud services - all made on top of Microsoft's proprietary technologies.

And in order to do that, they are abandoning the rest of the world, the open source, Apple, Linux, ... It no longer matters to them, if anything, it's vital that they lose dominant status to prevent old monopoly laws from kicking in. Second reason why it won't matter is because of absurdly high per-user profits available through such model.

Microsoft is playing long term here, 5, maybe 10 years. But when the shift is completed, it will be similar to the way rest of the world works (TV/Radio stations, cars, infrastructure). You, as a consumer, can tweak the knobs and maybe put a sticker on it. But want to become active in development of platform, better pay through your nose for the privilege of entering their market.

Economically, the price shifts kill SOHO type operations which traditionally represented majority, but offered smallest revenues.


The incredibly fast shift towards fully regulated platform is somewhat interesting as well. For the first time, there is no serious alternative or contender. On desktop there is *nix, but it doesn't come close to anything consumer-friendly. On mobiles, there is simply nothing. Android isn't really open and it relies completely on device vendors.

But as an article quite a while ago said, this is the war on general purpose computing.


For a practical example on how this matters: you will no longer be able to build Chrome, Firefox, MySql, git, Ruby, Python, Mono (interpreters/VMs), SDL-based apps, DosBox, Qt and so on for Windows without paid Professional edition (2010 will work for now, but as said, this is just transitional).

About the only annoying thing about VS11 is that .Net4.5/C#5 dev seems tied to it - I want to play with async/await + Rx2 god damn it!

I wonder if (or more likely when) MonoDevelop will support them?

Well I actually like what they are doing to some extent. It would be awesome to write code for one platform and it work the same on everything. However, I think they are going about it all wrong. I would prefer the UI to be made of some type of modular building blocks that can be shifted around and these building blocks would default to a standard Windows UI on the PC versions but on a tablet they would default to a tablet layout. This way you would have the advantages of both worlds. What they are doing with this metro crap is forcing us to choose between tablet interface or desktop interface. There is no middle ground.

For consumer market, windows is already on the way out (outside of pc gaming). Mobile computing (or at a real outside chance osx) will replace it

This seems like a backwards leap. Windows 8 is about unifying the experience and focusing on the casual user on tablet/mobile markets. This comment read like, "Microsoft focusing on the casual user will fail because windows is already losing out because it's not focusing on the casual user."

I have yet to hear a convincing argument against developing Metro apps vs. desktop apps. There are a couple extra constraints put on developers, but from a consumer standpoint it's a very appealing OS and those constraints will make happier more accessible customers in most cases.

The only thing I really don't get it why windows server is metro based now; that doesn't make much sense at all. Not sure if that's just because they needed to push out a UI with the server beta so they just threw the consumer UI on top of it or if that's actually what's intended long term.

Can somebody give a good reason why this is bad that's more detailed than just that you want to make desktop apps?

I have yet to hear a convincing argument against developing Metro apps vs. desktop apps. There are a couple extra constraints put on developers, but from a consumer standpoint it's a very appealing OS and those constraints will make happier more accessible customers in most cases.[/quote]

You lose just about everything.

Instead of full Windows or OS API, you are given a tiny sandbox, something like Flash. Which is great for simple things and for well-defined uses. But it completely eliminates possibility of developing certain types of applications, not even considering mandatory AppStore approval process.

Examples: Want to make a BitTorrent client? Nope. Want to make Office? Nope, but feel free to use WordControl in your app. Browser? Nope, but there is IEControl. NativeClient? Nope. WebGL? Nope - make a DX app. Want to use custom video, perhaps a .mov or webm or ogg? Nope - use WMV. Want to implement LZMA? Well, you could... But why not just use Zip class. Git? Nope. But there's Visual Studio which comes with TeamStudio.

Metro apps have no control over platform, you are only left with a fair amount of widgets, graciously provided by Microsoft. Anything more - it cannot be done. Not technically, as a policy.

But you can go ahead and make Angry Birds. Games are good. And you can make a blog reader. Custom Facebook app? Nah, use the one provided by MS.

See the problem here? Microsoft can make anything - you as user can only call a few predefined controls. So there will be no new apps, no new concepts, ideas. It will all be just pretty animated shallow frontends to some email, pictures and movies. Web sites? Why bother, download an app instead.

http://www.microsoft...roducts/express

Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8 provides tools for Metro style app development. To create desktop apps, you need to use Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher.

Well that's just brilliant. Thanks a lot Microsoft.
[/quote]I don't think this is true. Surely existing apps will run in W8 x86/64 desktop mode just fine. So you can use VS2010 Express to create W7 apps that will also run on W8.

No?

[quote name='Chris_F' timestamp='1337650160' post='4942054']
http://www.microsoft...roducts/express

Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8 provides tools for Metro style app development. To create desktop apps, you need to use Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher.

Well that's just brilliant. Thanks a lot Microsoft.
[/quote]I don't think this is true.
[/quote]
Uhhh... it is true... it came from Microsoft's website...

Surely existing apps will run in W8 x86/64 desktop mode just fine. So you can use VS2010 Express to create W7 apps that will also run on W8.

No?

Yeah, but you missed the point. It's not that you can't use VS2010 to make a desktop app (because you can). It's that VS11 Express can't (which means you miss out on the new features, most interesting of which (for me) is more C++11 support (though VS11 still sucks in that regard)).

Examples: Want to make a BitTorrent client? Nope.

This is probably valid, but you could just make it as a desktop app and it would function fine.

Want to make Office? Nope[/quote]
Why not?

Browser? Nope, but there is IEControl. NativeClient? Nope. WebGL? Nope[/quote]
Yes you can. They announced it after the Firefox hubub.

Want to use custom video, perhaps a .mov or webm or ogg? Nope - use WMV. [/quote]
This is just false. Not only is WMV not a recommended format for W8, but you can use whatever format you want in your own apps.

Want to implement LZMA? Well, you could... But why not just use Zip class. Git? Nope.[/quote]
Why would you make these metro anyway? They wouldn't make that much sense as metro apps to begin with.

But there's Visual Studio which comes with TeamStudio.[/quote]
I didn't think VS11 was even a metro app, so why is this even relevant?

See the problem here? Microsoft can make anything - you as user can only call a few predefined controls. So there will be no new apps, no new concepts, ideas. It will all be just pretty animated shallow frontends to some email, pictures and movies. Web sites? Why bother, download an app instead.[/quote]
That's pretty alarmist.

In theory this needn't be that significant - I mean, Microsoft doesn't have to give away anything for free, and until 2005 there were no free development tools at all (though I think it's in their interest to do so). IIRC you don't get 64-bit compiling in Express, but this clearly doesn't mean they're trying to kill off 64-bit. Also note that Metro applications can only be distributed through Microsoft (a far more worrying thing, I feel), at a cost of $99 per year - so Metro isn't free either.

But yes - I do fear that this is symbolic as part of some "kill off the desktop" (which is a misnomer anyway - most Windows PCs are mobile devices like laptops).

In theory having applications run fullscreen isn't a bad idea for many cases - but Windows can already do that anyway. But sometimes it is useful to be able to look at one window whilst using another.

Once upon a time, OSs like DOS only let you have simple full screen apps. Then we had side-by-side tiled windows in Windows 1. Then things like overlapping windows were seen as a great breakthrough - was that reasoning wrong? I'm not sure what I think about the Metro-look-and-feel UI at the moment - it looks more consumer friendly, but then it may just be another Fisher Price XP UI (that worse, you can't turn off). But if I'm viewing on a 1920x1080 24" dual monitors - why not have the ability to run non-full-screen?

I did see an MS video about Windows 8, which showed the neat feature that it can also have two applications side-by-side. Well, I say neat, but that just demonstrates my point - this is just re-inventing the tiled windowing system of almost 30 years ago, in Windows 1.0! So maybe we can hope that Windows 9 will add in support for overlapping Metro windows and so on, by which time they can ditch the old "desktop"...

But yes, as Antheus says, the big worries are not simply what it looks like, but the control exerted by MS over what you can do. I share Antheus's fears on what this means about the war on general purpose computing.

I don't buy this business-versus-consumer separation. The whole reason Windows became popular, and mainstream in the home, was because it (and x86 PCs) were standard in business. People do take their work home, people like a consistent interface with what they're used to, students want to write essays, some people are creative with computers, and so on. Of course there's a place now for Internet access devices, whether that's smartphones/tablets (where Windows has yet to do well on) or netbooks (where Windows did end up doing well on, after an early start from Linux). It makes sense for Windows to adapt to that - but it seems odd for them to throw away their current core market.

Of course there's a good argument that consumer and "work" should be separate devices - have a dumbed down device for posting to Facebook, still have a laptop for more general use (in contrast to the other future prediction, where people just have a single mobile device that docks into everything). MS and manufacturers obviously benefit from a model where people buy multiple devices and licences.


But I don't buy the idea that "work" computer type things are only things done in the office - indeed, that's the very stereotype that MS have been arguing against in their "I'm a PC" adverts.

So what will the Metro versions of Office look like? What about Photoshop for the creative artists? Or indeed, is VS 2013 going to be Metro-only? I hope that my fears will be unfounded because Metro eventually ends up being a suitable UI for all - and not because no one is supposed to do these things anymore.

I agree entirely with EnigmaticProgrammer's comment - the intent is great, but not everything is best suited to a fullscreen touch-only interface, when you're not on a small screen, and have other input devices to hand.

@way2lazy2care Well sure, all the while that people can create them as "desktop" apps, that's fine. But does MS intend to keep that API around? Is Metro just meant to be an alternative, or a replacement?

For consumer market, windows is already on the way out (outside of pc gaming). Mobile computing (or at a real outside chance osx) will replace it
Steam is already on osx, those who have not switched unix by now are unlikely to migrate en masse in the future. Certainly neither me nor anyone I know plans to. Tried linux, didn't like it, went back to windows. If windows doesn't do what I want, then osx.
For business market, they will just buy pro version of visual studio and continue making desktop apps, until inertia overcomes them and it goes on the web, so at least 10-15 more years.

People are criticising Windows for Metro, but you're saying Windows will die because people prefer mobile computing - but if they prefer it, then surely that's exactly why they are doing it?

Mobile computing has already outsold desktops, in that laptops have outsold desktops for a few years now, but that hasn't meant the end of Windows.

(It would be ironic if Apple, the ones hyping a dumbed down phone OS, end up being the only ones still selling a decent computer OS...)

This is hilarious. People criticizing a company for what they choose to release as free tools? Microsoft's goal is to offer a compelling free tool while balancing the feature limitations to encourage people to upgrade to its paid tool. I think they do an excellent job. The free tools are usable for creating pretty much any application you want. If you want a desktop app, use 2010 express, if you want metro use 2011 express. It's not that difficult. If you want one tool to do it all, fork over the $500 to buy a professional license. Hell you don't even need to use Microsoft tools, you can use SharpDevelop, or MonoDevelop for C#. I don't see anyone bitching about not being able to use Ruby or PHP in the free version of IntelliJ.

I havent used it, VS2011 but 100:1 its still better than any version of Xcode
Hell any MSVC version after 6 is