
Visual Studio 2015 announced - Ecio78
https://www.visualstudio.com/products/vs-2015-product-editions
======
jasode
This is a confusing announcement from Microsoft.

They are actually announcing a new product _lineup_ (1) and not a new _release
for actual download_. The article predicts that the actual release (RTM) will
be in the summer. The current (beta) release is still CTP 6 which was already
announced a few weeks ago.

I suppose this is a press release intended more for the corporate IT manager
planning his purchasing budget (what SKU do I buy/upgrade) rather than
developers to actually install and play with today.

(1) e.g. Premium and Ultimate editions will be merged into one Enterprise
edition

~~~
dragonwriter
I'm not sure how this is confusing. It very clearly says that it is announcing
a new product line in the first sentence of the announcement.

~~~
jasode
It's confusing because when Microsoft has put prior splashy pages announcing
VS2010, VS2012, and VS2013, the _actual_ RTM downloadable iso images were
available the same day.

Therefore, it's not unreasonable to read their verbage of the first sentence
_[with interpretation in brackets]_ as:

 _> Introducing the newly announced Visual Studio 2015 product line _[so go
and download the new RTM iso image that's in the link below] _, including the
all-new Visual Studio Enterprise with MSDN, Visual Studio Professional with
MSDN, and the free Visual Studio Community edition._

... instead of reading it like Microsoft intends:

 _> Introducing the newly announced Visual Studio 2015 product line _[and
you've already got the latest beta version last week so don't go looking for
the RTM until summer] _, including the all-new Visual Studio Enterprise with
MSDN, Visual Studio Professional with MSDN, and the free Visual Studio
Community edition._

A bit of Pavlov's conditioning based on the last 3 VS releases makes the bold
headlines a little confusing. The fact that it's on HN's front page makes it
seem like a more newsworthy announcement than it actually is. The expected
summer RTM would be more typical of rising to the HN front page(1). This
announcement of reshuffling SKU editions doesn't seem to warrant the hype of
being voted to the front page -- unless -- people misunderstand what Microsoft
is actually announcing. :-)

(1) it was #2 on the front page before I wrote this post. In the 5 minutes it
took to write this post and save it, it's now #236. I suppose an moderator
pushed it down into oblivion as a service to HN readers.

------
NicoJuicy
You can now use "extensions" in the community edition and you can create
whatever project you want, without installing 3 different versions of Visual
Studio.

Which makes Visual Studio actually attractive for a community edition (the
express edition is deprecated though - that's a good thing).

~~~
interdrift
Express isn't depricated

>Visual Studio Express 2015 editions. (Non-enterprise customers are encouraged
to check out Visual Studio Community 2015, which is also free and provides a
more comprehensive solution)

~~~
gagege
That's pretty much the definition of "deprecated".

~~~
icegreentea
It might seem that way... but "non-enterprise" based on the Community
Edition's licensing terms is basically just open-source + hobbyist use. Your
company becomes 'enterprise' the moment it surpasses $1 million of revenue.
Not even revenue from software created, revenue period.

~~~
mrec
I'd have thought there was a decent space between "hobbyist" and "$1m annual
revenue". A lot of small software businesses would fall into that bucket.

------
ilitirit
VS2015 seemed to be pretty much the same as VS2013, although my experience was
limited to the enhanced project support for Apache Cordova.

Findings:

\- There's a very bad (known) bug that renders the entire IDE unusable. If you
attempt to modify the markup of certain databound elements (possibly others),
an error message will pop up and the IDE will cease to function in a
predictable manner

\- The VS Android Emulator is great, but it needs a bit more work. For
example, it modifies you network settings without notifying you (installs
Virtual adapters). Now if something else modifies those settings, the Emulator
will refuse to start. You have to poke around a bit with the Hyper-V manager
to get things working again. They should have a "restore default settings"
option. (My Emulator refuses to work now even after I removed and reinstalled
it).

\- The VS emulator would be better if it had a default "Shared" folder that
could be used to transfer files between the device and host.

\- You can't specify the port you want to run Ripple on. I believe they are
planning on fixing this, but it's a big problem at the moment as VS will just
choose randomly from 40 different ports, each time creating a new folder and
recreating your local databases. This makes it hard to track down bugs, or
continuing from a known state.

\- Build support is very limited. You have to muck about with the project
settings to do trivial things like redirecting output based on Project
configuration

\- The Javascript debugger needs work. It will sometimes break whenever a new
Javascript file is loaded. Or it will break on lines where no breakpoints have
been set, even though no (visible) error occurred.

Other than that the IDE seems more-or-less the same as what I'm used to in
VS2013.

------
apalmer
Been hearing a lot about Visual Studio 2015 recently, as far as I am aware it
is not even in Beta yet...

I am a .Net developer in a Corporate IT job, so I am exactly in the
demographic Microsoft aims for as users (not buyers though). Visual Studio is
hands down the best IDE, period.

The pricing is absolutely, absolutely insane.

~~~
manigandham
MSDN (especially in the enterprise/corporate environment) is absolutely worth
it.

If you're just doing basic development, the community edition is actually
really good and completely free.

~~~
jauco
Interesting. What value would msdn give me?

~~~
Redoubts
Looks like all the microsoft catalog [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/subscriptions/downloads/def...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/subscriptions/downloads/default.aspx)

------
JohnBooty
The pricing for Visual Studio kind of blows my mind. I happen to think it's a
great product and I don't mind paying for software (as a developer I want
people to pay for software, or at least value it highly) but it creates a
pretty high barrier to entry for developing Windows software.

Although maybe I'm wrong: I don't know exactly how restricted the free
Community edition is. Also, Resharper apparently works with the free Community
edition so that's a huge plus.

~~~
amithgeorge
The Community edition is basically the Professional edition with licensing
restrictions. Meaning extensions are fully supported. From the [official
page]([https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-
co...](https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-community-
vs.aspx))

> Q: Who can use Visual Studio Community?

> A: Here’s how individual developers can use Visual Studio Community: Any
> individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own
> free or paid apps. Here’s how Visual Studio Community can be used in
> organizations: An unlimited number of users within an organization can use
> Visual Studio Community for the following scenarios: in a classroom learning
> environment, for academic research, or for contributing to open source
> projects. For all other usage scenarios: In non-enterprise organizations, up
> to 5 users can use Visual Studio Community. In enterprise organizations
> (meaning those with >250 PCs or > $1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue),
> no use is permitted beyond the open source, academic research, and classroom
> learning environment scenarios described above.

From another
[article]([http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dorischen/archive/2014/11/12/q-amp-a...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dorischen/archive/2014/11/12/q-amp-
a-on-visual-studio-community-2013-and-2015-preview.aspx))

> Q: What are the specific features of the Visual Studio Community 2013?

> A: Visual Studio Community 2013 shares the same features as Visual Studio
> Professional 2013 today and licensing terms determine who can use this
> product. Based on the target audience for this product, SharePoint, Office,
> LightSwitch and Cloud Business Applications are not included in the
> installation.

Edit: formatting, can't figure out how to quote the text.

~~~
JohnBooty
I'm extremely happy to know that I was extremely wrong about how restricted
the Community Edition is. Thanks for the informative reply!

------
jmkni
Gah, _announced_ is really misleading.

------
Jare
I'm not an F# dev but I kinda miss it from the list of supported languages.

~~~
amithgeorge
It might have been a marketing mistake. F# is fully supported.
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/fsharpteam/archive/2014/11/12/announ...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/fsharpteam/archive/2014/11/12/announcing-
a-preview-of-f-4-0-and-the-visual-f-tools-in-vs-2015.aspx)

~~~
LyalinDotCom
Good catch, F# is fully supported and its my mistake for not adding it into
the page, ill get it fixed. Thanks!

------
S4M
There is an Android version. I am curious, are there people out there who use
Android device to code? I tried a bit QPython but it was frustrating not to be
able to use the app I created from outside of QPython.

~~~
tluyben2
It can build for Android (aka you can make Android apps with it); it does not
have a version running on Android. And yes, I use tablets and phones to code
on, but nothing production yet. Cannot say it's that much less productive than
on desktop though for what I do.

Edit: is iOS/Android building Xamarin or?

Edit2: Yep , this is Xamarin.

~~~
S4M
> And yes, I use tablets and phones to code on, but nothing production yet.
> Cannot say it's that much less productive than on desktop though for what I
> do.

Interested in that. What's your "mobile stack"?

------
Havoc
This is really cool. VS is ideal for someone like me that occasionally needs
an IDE that works out of the box for button + code behind it type projects.
(Tried Python GUI frameworks...what a mess)

------
WDCDev
Looks like the prices have been dropped and CodeLens is now available at the
Premium level.

I can't wait until I can target builds against CoreCLR.

------
untog
Is Visual Studio made with .NET? If it was I could dream of a Mac/Linux
version one day...

~~~
WDCDev
Yes. It's a WPF app running on the framework. MS has no plans to open source
WPF or include the required assemblies into the CoreCLR so I doubt we will
ever see VS running on a *nix platform.

~~~
WorldWideWayne
The majority of the Visual Studio code is still C++. The shell was rewritten
to use WPF and MEF. So, I wouldn't exactly call it a WPF app. More like it
uses some WPF.

------
Yuioup
Has it been released as well ?

(Sorry, non-MSDN subscriber here)

~~~
jbigelow76
It's still in CTP.

