
Introducing Visual Studio’s Emulator for Android - AaronFriel
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2014/11/12/introducing-visual-studio-s-emulator-for-android.aspx
======
felixrieseberg
This is a great time to reiterate that startups receive Microsoft's software
for _free_ , obviously including all versions of Visual Studio.

Check out BizSpark.com or get in touch with me if you happen to be a YC
company (felix.rieseberg@microsoft.com).

~~~
pzxc
You mean they receive Microsoft's software for free _for 3 years_ , after
which they get a discounted price for 2 years as an "alumni", after which they
have to pay full price now they are fully on your stack and have large
switching costs.

I'm not buying that Trojan horse.

~~~
peripitea
If you're starting a business, "what will our operating costs be in 3-5
years?" is just about the last thing you should be worried about. In fact, I'd
guess that most new business owners would _love_ to end up facing that
problem. I certainly would. Plus, it's not like they gouge you after 5 years;
Microsoft has a strong incentive to keep its products/services competitively
priced. I'm far from a Microsoft fan, but I fail to see how BizSpark is
anything but a huge boon to the startup/small business community.

~~~
rbanffy
> I fail to see how BizSpark is anything but a huge boon to the startup/small
> business community.

For starters, it encourages a bad habit: using the Microsoft stack and
deploying on Windows.

Unless you are significantly more productive by using this toolset, I'd advise
against it. Having said that, most startups fail, so, chances are using
Windows will not be a problem 3-5 years down the road.

~~~
sliverstorm
Aren't all three bad choices?

\- Windows: proprietary, hard(ish?) to scale. BizSpark.

\- Linux: Finicky, spend time & money getting it working right. Scales well.

\- Apple: Expensive. Nice.

I'm not a startup guy, but I can easily picture a world in which Apple is
chosen by the _massively-funded_ , Linux is chosen by the _scaling-is-our-
business-model_ , and Windows is chosen by the _get-off-the-ground-first lean_
(curiously enough) thanks to BizSpark.

FWIW my terminal is Windows, and my datacenter is *nix.

~~~
tracker1
Windows isn't particularly more difficult to scale than Linux. A lot of
tooling that you would use to scale in Linux is also available in Windows. The
cost of such scaling either horizontally or vertically is another issue
altogether.

I actually like a lot of things when it comes to windows, and dislike a lot
with Linux. That said, I'm still targeting Linux for next-generation app
development... When you need to have 3-5 servers for your data and application
layers, the price of MS's stack is a bigger difference here.

It really depends on your situation though.. if you have a need for small LOB
apps, or even a SaaS that can work in Azure deployments, using BizSpark and
sticking to MS isn't a bad option.

Apple may be used by the developers, but depending on your business need, you
really aren't deploying to apple servers.

------
wvenable
I've only slightly dabbled in Android development: installing the SDK, IDE,
build a "hello world", and run in an emulator. I've done a bit of old-school
mobile development (Symbian, WinMobile) and I was very surprised how poor the
emulation experience was for Android.

It looks like Microsoft might have a better Android emulation workflow than
Google. What strange times!

~~~
angersock
Microsoft has, consistently, supported developers better than almost any other
ecosystem. It's a walled garden, but it's well-kempt.

~~~
bad_user
Yeah, you know, if they wanted to support developers better, they would have
turned Windows into a Unix, they would have made Visual Studio cross-platform,
or at the very least they would have fixed that goddamn cmd.exe, which is like
the worst CLI ever and they would have cared about web standards. I also find
Visual Studio to be worse than IntelliJ IDEA (at least without IntelliJ
Resharper that is) and in the past every time I did anything with .NET I was
baffled to find out that I do not have access to source with one click, or
that .NET doesn't have anything like Maven.

At least now they are open-sourcing the CLR, the core library, ASP.NET, are
making .NET cross-platform and made progress on the tooling, like with NuGet
(still not close to what Maven does, but it's something). So I'm ready to
forgive and forget, but lets not go overboard - only 2 years ago .NET and
Windows felt like going back to 1998 ;-)

~~~
angersock
So, if you're still using cmd instead of PowerShell (which we are, sigh...),
you deserve the misery.

Why would turning Windows into a Unix have helped anyone? Pike and Plan9 tried
to save Unix better then ten years ago, and nobody gave a shit.

Also, why do you even _want_ something like Maven? That's like bitching that
Windows doesn't have autotools--or was that next on your list of complaints?

Tell me about how the MSDN is less helpful than man pages. Tell me about how
the Windows API is worse documented and more poorly designed than POSIX (lol).
Tell me about how executables compiled on one Windows machine don't transport
to other Windows machines easily.

I'll stand by my statement, thank you very much.

~~~
bad_user
> _if you 're still using cmd instead of PowerShell_

PowerShell is a _shell_ , not a CLI, one starts PowerShell inside cmd.exe.

> _Why would turning Windows into a Unix have helped anyone?_

It helped OS X ;-)

> _Also, why do you even want something like Maven?_

Because you have to rely on Visual Studio for automating your build, testing
and deployment process, it it's not doing a good job and again, is like going
back to the nineties.

> _Tell me about how the MSDN is less helpful than man pages._

Well, MSDN isn't competing with man pages, but with readily available source-
code at the click of a button and with libraries documented like this one is -
[http://akka.io/](http://akka.io/)

> _Tell me about how executables compiled on one Windows machine don 't
> transport to other Windows machines easily._

Never had a problem with OS X. And on Linux, people automate the shit out of
the build process so it isn't much of a problem, hence the need for tools ;-)

~~~
angersock
One does not, in fact, start Powershell from inside cmd.

 _" It helped OS X ;-)"_

Have you seen what they were _coming from_? Apple is a fucking joke when it
comes to systems and software engineering--it's their industrial design and UX
that everyone loves.

 _" rely on Visual Studio for automating your build"_

msbuild.exe and PowerShell.

 _" It's not doing a good job"_ compared to what, exactly? It's super easy to
set up compiler options in C/C++ on MSVC, pretty easy to add other things.
You'd prefer makefiles?

 _" available source-code at the click of a button"_

because when we're hacking we want to stop and read somebody else's code
instead of, you know, _just using a cleanly documented API_.

 _" And on Linux, people automate the shit out of the build process so it
isn't much of a problem"_

bahahahahahha

hahahahaa

haha

(no)

~

It seems like you're trolling or you've never worked on a project outside of
your bubble.

~~~
bad_user
> _One does not, in fact, start Powershell from inside cmd_

I'm talking about the Command Prompt, that window with which you get access to
a shell. I really don't know what you're talking about.

> _Apple is a fucking joke when it comes to systems and software engineering_

That's not an argument I can reply to.

> _msbuild.exe and PowerShell_

MsBuild.exe is Ant. PowerShell is, well, a shell language. This combination is
not a substitute for Maven, hence my argument that it felt like going back to
the nineties.

> _You 'd prefer makefiles?_

No, I'd prefer something like Maven.

> _Because when we 're hacking we want to stop and read somebody else's code_

Yes, precisely.

> _It seems like you 're trolling or you've never worked on a project outside
> of your bubble._

Note that I never resorted to ad-hominems. That's very unprofessional and very
unlike the HN attitude. Chill.

And if you do feel the need for personal attacks, I'm also public about my
identity, it's not much, but here you have my resume and my GitHub profile, no
need to guess -
[https://www.bionicspirit.com/pages/about.html](https://www.bionicspirit.com/pages/about.html)

~~~
dragonwriter
> I'm talking about the Command Prompt, that window with which you get access
> to a shell.

You mean "a console window". Command Prompt is the name of the baked-in
shortcut which starts cmd.exe in a console window.

------
terrence_giggy
Visual Studio had always been what I perceive to be the most polished work
environment (IDE) i've used. Despite that I have moved away from Microsoft and
into Linux based environments over the past couple years. The thought of
working out of Visual Studio for all of my Android, Node.js and .NET projects
is very tempting.

I however didn't see any mention for Maven / Gradle support, and my latest VS
is 2012. Anyone here with some insight into dependency management outside of
NuGet?

Sometimes I have nightmares of updating Newtonsoft.Json
([https://www.nuget.org/packages/Newtonsoft.Json/](https://www.nuget.org/packages/Newtonsoft.Json/))
and chasing down all of the version conflicts for the next several days.

~~~
gagege
Android and iOS development in VS will be done via Xamarin, Cordova, or C++.
That's why you don't see Maven or Gradle support anywhere, there's no Java
involved.

~~~
LoneWolf
So no native android development? Or am I wrong thinking these options are not
native.

~~~
bratsche
It depends on your definition of native. Xamarin lets you use all the native
Android APIs, but you're using them via bindings in C# or F# instead of Java.

------
cek
When we built the WP7 emulator (not really an emulator because that implies
cpu emulation) we chose to make it x86 based, using virtual machine tech. We
could do this and get great performance because all 3rd party apps used
managed CLR code and thus were processor independent.

Later the WP8 emulator was actually fully based on Hyper-v and this is
too...meaning it is "just" a vm running x86 android, which explains why it's
so fast.

~~~
ja27
The Hyper-V requirement is kind of a pain - or rather, the requirements to run
Hyper-V are a pain. On non-server versions of Windows, it's only available on
Windows 8+ Pro / Enterprise. So anyone with Windows 7 or non-Pro Windows 8
can't run it.

I've been to a few Windows Phone developer camps and this is always an issue
for attendees.

------
wasyl
Does anyone know what kind of development for Android does VS offer? I guess
it's not java, and I'm not familiar with options

~~~
Aldo_MX
From the article:

    
    
      With Visual Studio 2015 Preview you can target Android and edit-compile-debug regardless
      of your choice of programming models:
    
      JavaScript (or TypeScript) with Cordova, C++, or C# with Xamarin.

~~~
gcb0
any famous apps done with cordova?

~~~
Aldo_MX
[http://phonegap.com/app/feature/](http://phonegap.com/app/feature/)

------
RachelF
Right now it is x86 Android only, not ARM, which is the vast majority of
Android devices:

"You need to recompile your code for x86. If you have parts of your code that
can only be compiled for ARM, or you depend on 3rd-party libraries for which
you do not have an x86 version, your code will not run on our emulator at this
point."

~~~
kpozin
I believe those are the same limitations as on the x86 emulator provided by
Google/Intel.

------
kozikow
How does it compare to Genymotion? It would be much more interesting
comparison than stock emulator.

~~~
bratsche
One difference is that it probably doesn't include adware/malware.

~~~
y2bd
I hadn't heard of Genymotion having adware/malware previously. Would you mind
linking a source?

------
untog
This looks fantastic - Google's emulator offering has always been so poor that
I turned to Genymotion. The only shame is that we won't see the same for iOS,
given that the simulator requires OS X.

------
giancarlostoro
This is great, the main thing really keeping me from Android development is
the Emulators. I'm going to try this out. I love Visual Studio, never thought
I'd get to do Android development on it, I wish Visual Studio for Ubuntu / Mac
would come next though, but this is good enough for me!

------
pjmlp
So Microsoft is able to provide a better Android emulator than Google itself.

I really wonder who is developing Android at Google, when I look at the
emulator, open bugs in the SDK or NDK support.

I guess spending resources moving from Eclipse to Android Studio and still not
there, after one year is more important.

------
kayman
Its great news, but I think it will take some time before the developers that
grew up thinking of MSoft as a closed shop will slowly change their minds. A
few "wow" open source releases will really help shift this mindset.

------
maresca
Such amazingly convenient timing. I just picked up my droid app I paused on
working on. Definitely going to give this a shot. Thanks for posting!

Microsoft is so hot right now!

------
dested
This is incredible, perfect for xamarin or phonegag. Cant wait to use it

------
Dorian-Marie
This is a great time to reiterate that startups receive Microsoft's software
for _free_ , obviously it's a trap and you should not be hooked to Microsoft
technology if you want to iterate quickly.

~~~
bigdubs
"hooked to Microsoft technology if you want to iterate quickly."

Why the hatchet comment? What basis do you have for saying this?

