
Visual Studio 2013 - norkans7
http://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs
======
jc4p
Sadly VS 2013 has a huge regression which makes it a no-go for my team over at
Stack Exchange, any changes made to the server settings are saved to the
_project_ file rather than the per-user settings file, it's been reported but
doesn't look like it's going to get fixed soon:
[http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/8...](http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/800003/the-
apply-server-settings-to-all-users-store-in-project-file-option-is-missing-in-
vs2013)

~~~
shanselman
Ok, I talked to them and this is fixed and waiting for QA. It will be in the
first 2013 update, soon.

~~~
S_A_P
Visual Studio 2013 sp1 now includes Scott Hanselman?!?! This will do wonders
for my productivity!!!

Edit: Scott initially said "I will be in the update", not it will be in the
update...

~~~
shanselman
;)

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ColinDabritz
Another neat thing is the Visual Studio Online services:
[http://www.visualstudio.com/en-
us/news/2013-nov-13-vso](http://www.visualstudio.com/en-
us/news/2013-nov-13-vso)

This is TFS and lots of project management tools in the cloud. TFS covers a
lot of core stuff such as bug/work-item tracking, Scheduling/Planning, source
control and automated builds. You get a reasonable baseline for free, and pay
for usage after that.

It looks like it integrates with the Azure portal. Although a 'windows box' is
required, this integrates with the free VS2013 Express editions as well. Props
to Microsoft for bringing better developer tools to their environment.

~~~
stevecooperorg
I think you need a Windows Azure account, not a windows box -- I've seen
someone using VS Online on Macbook Pro/Chrome, IIRC. (Can't remember where,
though.)

~~~
ColinDabritz
The confusion here is that "Visual Studio Online" is a set of support
services, not the Visual Studio IDE itself.

What you have probably seen is something like this:
[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/UsingASurface2RTARMToGetActual...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/UsingASurface2RTARMToGetActualWorkDoneRemoteDesktopVisualStudioAzure.aspx)

Scott Hanselman used an Azure VM to run VS2013 and tools, and remoted into it
from a coffee shop using a Surface 2 (the 'RT' flavor, not a full desktop).
It's a nice way to work from lower power machines. To do this, of course, does
require an Azure account, and after your 'intro' phase would be paid.

The support services provide things like source control, work item tracking,
and similar 'in the cloud' but they work with your VS2013 install, wether on a
desktop or on a VM on Azure.

Hope that clears things up!

------
mattgreenrocks
I disagree with a lot of VS UI ideas (all caps menus?) but VS still remains
the gold standard for IDEs. C++ IntelliSense makes me immensely more
productive in a very tough language to parse. And UI designers like WinForms
are 100% more pleasant than laying things out in code.

~~~
ajross
OK, I'm a long time emacs guy and not the target market, but I'm genuinely
curious about the IntelliSense claim. Really? Are there any screencasts or
whatnot I can look at to see an expert developer demonstrating that they're
"immensely more productive" than just typing the symbol names?

Honestly my experience is exactly the opposite: I watch windows people try to
edit code and wince. Their hands are bouncing to the mouse and arrow keys
constantly. They mash keys and wait for key repeat instead of deleting marked
regions. They pop dialog boxes up to search for things and have to move them
around the screen to see.

And yeah: sometimes they press some kind of button and get a big list of
symbol names that they end up staring at for a while before picking one.

It all just seems like a mess to me, but I'm willing to be educated.

~~~
tokenrove
It's worth noting it's pretty easy to setup good IntelliSense-style behavior
for emacs, too. I often try to press people who are fans of VS on why they
think it's the best and I have yet to see anything that improves on a well-
configured emacs with CEDET, magit, etc.

~~~
Nilzor
I'm not familiar with Emacs+CEDET+magit, but if it has these features, then
basically yes - its Intellisense is as good as Visual Studio's:

    
    
      -Method and property completion on framework and own methods
      -Parameter hints on all methods
      -Enum completion
    

In addition, VS has a solution-understanding which goes way beyond
intellisense. For instance I cannot fathom how people are able to work without
"Navigate to definition", "Find usages" or "Refactor > Rename" in any
development environment.

~~~
tokenrove
I use at least the first two on the list regularly in emacs; I don't have enum
completion setup in C++ code, but it may be available or easily addable with
some CEDET hacking. The big caveat that configuration is onerous, depending on
the target language. I doubt that emacs's IntelliSense-like packages are as
good as VS's, certainly in terms of polish and packaging, but what it has is
good enough.

Also nice is being able to immediately pop up the man page for the symbol
under the cursor, as well as language-specific documentation (like the
Hyperspec in CL), and the ease of extending it to do exactly what you want,
and supporting new languages, can't be beaten.

I refuse to work in an environment without jump to definition/references.
These things should be considered a bare minimum requirement for a
programmer's editor.

------
sker
VS 2013 has IntelliSense support for TypeScript and AngularJS, although it
does ask you to install the latest TypeScript plug-in. I'm using it full time
and I prefer it over SublimeText, probably because I used to do a lot of C#
and I'm used to the environment.

~~~
janson0
Is there anyway to get PHP intellisense in VS2013? I love me some Visual
Studio, but since we do our web apps in laravel... I have had to abandon it
for the time being.

~~~
profquail
DevSense makes a nice PHP extension for Visual Studio
([http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/8292e47d-8ed2-...](http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/8292e47d-8ed2-48cb-9ebd-064e0b7891cf)).
It's not free, but it's inexpensive.

On a related note, DevSense has also taken over development the Phalanger
project (a PHP compiler/runtime for .NET). It's Apache 2.0-licensed and on
GitHub if you're interested:
[https://github.com/DEVSENSE/Phalanger](https://github.com/DEVSENSE/Phalanger)

DevSense does provide some free tools for VS if you're using Phalanger, maybe
they'd be good enough for what you want:
[http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/419916fb-
ec89-...](http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/419916fb-
ec89-4f18-ba97-75cf66037797)

------
malkia
I only wish Visual Studio retained the same MVCRT/MSVCP runtime libraries, or
at least some backward-compability mechanism.

It really boils down to this - if you do plugin development for a product
(Adobe's, Autodesk, etc.) or ffi-bindings for some language or environment,
then you have to make sure you use the same CRT version as the host
application.

And while statically linking to your CRT in your plugin DLL might work, it
might not always - hopefully most people have found workarounds - for example
not exposing "FILE*" or memory allocations/deallocations across DLL boundaries
- e.g. alloc/free is done from the same DLL. But sometimes things like C++
exceptions make this even harder.

And now I'm seeing VS2013 brings yet another new CRT. Oh bummer!

~~~
garenp
I'd like to see them automatically versioned and the "right" one selected at
load time somehow. .NET can do it with assemblies, and it's a great idea.

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Chromozon
I downloaded and installed VS2012 a few months ago, but I saw no reason to use
that over VS2010. However, I downloaded 2013 two weeks ago, and now it is my
favorite version. I'm thinking about uninstalling 2012, and I haven't used
2010 since installing 2013. Why? 2013 adds some really nice improvements:
cursor position, line changes, and breakpoints are shown on the scroll bar;
peek definition; Intellisense seems better; predictive typing everywhere.
Having all these improvements out of the box without having to download third
party addons is a nice touch. Microsoft should have had all these features a
long time ago, but it's good that they are finally here.

~~~
ScottWhigham
I did the same with VS2010 and VS2012. The problem for me is that I'd have to
buy MSDN all over again just to get VS2013. The features just aren't enough to
plunk $1000+ down. I like it but, for single person devs like me, the cost is
just too damn high.

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JeremyMorgan
I've been using it a couple weeks, and I really like it. Vast improvements in
usability for me. It's mostly a bunch of little things that add up to a better
experience. Peek Definition, Map Mode, support for Zen coding, MVC 5 goodness,
and the list goes on and on. Lots and lots of little fixes that go a long way.

------
ScottWhigham
For everyone who thinks the cloud-based option is a good deal (Visual Studio
Online), I have to ask:

\-- You are paying $550+ per year ($45*12+tax) yet you don't own the software

\-- What projects are you working on where, if the software locked you out
(due to non-payment, error, server unavailable, etc), you would be okay with
that?

\-- Lastly, how secure do you feel the source code you upload is?

In the wake of the Adobe breach, it would seem that "The hackers accessed our
users' source code, user details, and CC numbers." would be far worse than
"The hackers accessed our old builds, user details, and CC numbers." In the
former, I would think there are legal ramifications for many of you. For
example, if you have a contract that states that you can't share source code
with a 3rd party, yet you upload these files to MSFT (a 3rd party) and they
get leaked, how will you protect yourself if a client files a breach of
contract lawsuit?

Interesting times and all that.

~~~
ville
How is uploading source code to a cloud IDE different than using a hosted VCS
like GitHub or Bitbucket, which is also increasing in popularity? Also the
people who are deploying to Azure are already trusting Microsoft with their
source code.

And you're not owning the software even with a normal Visual Studio license.
You just get the binary blob and a license to use it, not the source code.
Using the cloud-based version, you don't get the binary blob, but does that
make a difference?

------
Pxtl
I'd love to use this, but the jump to VS2012 broke installer projects and
T4Toolbox so I'm stuck on 2010.

~~~
RyJones
And you have to log in once a month or your buildslaves break. So much for
fire and forget

------
Suro
Still no full C++11 compliance...

~~~
JeremyMorgan
They're working on it:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2013/06/28/cpp-
con...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2013/06/28/cpp-conformance-
roadmap.aspx)

~~~
adandy
From yesterday:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2013/11/18/announcing...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2013/11/18/announcing-
the-visual-c-compiler-november-2013-ctp.aspx)

------
tucaz
All improvements are much appreciated. The only problem that gets worse at
every release is Visual Studio's context menus. They are getting more bloated
everyday and that is a PITA.

They[1] say it's been resolved in 2013RC, but I don't see much improvement
specially when you add the now-almost-standard extensions such as WebWorkbench
and WebEssentials.

[1] [http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-
studi...](http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-
studio/suggestions/3669763-cleanup-the-solution-explorer-context-menu)

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avenger123
Question for anyone that has used vsvim and ViEmu (the commercial product).

I have ViEmu for older version of Visual Studio and looking at purchasing the
new version.

I am thinking that I can possibly get by without ViEmu and just use VsVim the
free extension. I don't particularly use all the advanced features of ViEmu.

Anyone have any thoughts on this at all?

~~~
platz
Haven't tried ViEmu, but vsvim is actively maintained. Lots of fixes have gone
in to making it play more nicely with other plugins like ReSharper. Compared
to vim emulation plugins in other editors like sublime text or even emacs,
vsvim provides some pretty good coverage of vim features. Don't expect
vimscript support or anything - the modes are pretty good though.

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guiomie
I just migrated lots of my project to vs2012 from vs2010 ... why should I go
to vs2013 ? I've got resharper et deamon installed, and I really like my IDE
like this ...

~~~
_random_
Considering new short release cycles do what you would do with smartphones and
tablets - just skip a cycle. 2013 feels like fat SP rather than a new release:
no new WPF/etc., just some Azure and Win 8 crap. And MVC 5 is now a separate
release.

~~~
guiomie
Thanks. The only part I would potentially look into is MVC5, and with your
comment, seems like I'll just get it via Nugget.

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rblatz
I'm loving Browser Link. Being able to edit CSS in Chrome dev tools and have
it automatically update my CSS is beyond cool.

~~~
omphalos
FWIW you can don't need VS for that - you can do this in Chrome by itself with
the recent workspaces feature. Worth checking out.

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checker659
Are the compiler tools available for free? It's not part of the SDK or the DDK
is it?

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Demiurge
waiting for the OSX version :p

~~~
masklinn
It's slated for release on the same day as Xcode's Win64 version.

~~~
Demiurge
would be pretty sweet, can't wait for both! although, I prefer C# to ObjC and
VS to Xcode by a large margin.

~~~
bratsche
You can target Mac/iOS from Visual Studio with Xamarin. :)

~~~
_random_
...and an additional Mac machine on the network. It's not like they are free.

~~~
avenger123
I do agree with you but nowadays you could pickup a used Mac Mini for
$400-$500 that should be more than good enough for this. It's still a cost but
its not as out of reach it may have been.

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caiob
is it 1995 all over again?

~~~
rbanffy
Care to explain?

