
Visual Studio now available in cloud subscriptions - mynameisvlad
https://www.visualstudio.com/products/how-to-buy-vs
======
vblord
For those of you indie developers that want Visual Studio (non-community
edition) but don't want to pay for Visual Studio. MS run a program called
BizSpark. You can get a few MSDN items (windows, office, VS, SQL Server,
etc...) for free for 3 years.

[https://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/](https://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/)

~~~
Someone1234
Bizspark is great. But let me just give a generic reminder: Consider what
you'll do after the three years if you get heavily invested.

If you are a Microsoft shop either way then it doesn't matter too much, but if
you're making technological choices now, consider how well that will scale
without free licenses (e.g. ASP.net/MVC, how much is Windows Serve licensing
going to cost you? Visual Studio? Active Directory? MS SQL?).

This isn't an anti-Microsoft post, just a post to remind everyone to think
about the future of your small business with technological choices. Bizspark
is designed for you to get yourself into the Microsoft's way of doing things
(which is good and bad, depending on your needs, etc).

I actually like Microsoft's stack, but realise it is expensive, too expensive
for many small businesses.

~~~
Thieum22
Isn't the Partner Network another way to get dev. softwares at a reasonable
price if you meet the requirements? I always thought it was kind of the
suggested path: bizspark => ms partner, but I may be wrong.

[https://mspartner.microsoft.com/en/us/Pages/index.aspx](https://mspartner.microsoft.com/en/us/Pages/index.aspx)

~~~
Someone1234
You have to be a basic Microsoft Partner to be part of Bizspark.

Some higher tiers of the partnership program receive free software. But
initially you'll be at "Network member" which doesn't provide any free stuff.

Silver and Gold tiers receive:

\- Free support (20 and 50 hrs respectively, 15 and 20 incidents)

\- Internal use licenses: 25 and 50 on-site respectively.

\- MSDN: 5 or 10 seats.

However to get to Silver or Gold you need:

\- Customer references: 3 or 5 (silver or gold).

\- Business-focused competency assessment: 1 or 2.

\- Revenue commitment (i.e. buy a certain number of Microsoft licenses)

\- Microsoft certified staff: 1 or 2 minimum (that must be active, so renewed
every few years).

The Silver and Gold partnership tiers are pointless for large
business/corporations, and unreachable for startups/small businesses. They're
really for mid level businesses that are Microsoft focused.

------
jakejake
I'm kinda surprised that MS continues to charge for visual studio. Not that it
isn't worth it because it's an incredible IDE. But because it seems like
Microsoft would have more to gain by having more developers using it vs the
profit from developer licenses.

~~~
wernercd
You get more for "free" now. Community Edition allows plugins (like Resharper)
where as before it didn't.

The "better" versions only add bells and whistles - which entice people onto
MSDN or similar.

------
yread
$539/yr (with MSDN subscription) or $45/mo (without) versus $499 for the
standalone and $1199 for MSDN subscription

~~~
dragonwriter
> $539/yr (with MSDN subscription) or $45/mo (without)

So, MSDN has a net cost of -$1?

~~~
mynameisvlad
Yes. You only get the MSDN benefits on annual subscriptions. Plus, the benefit
comes with $50/mo in Azure credit, so it can pay for itself and then some.

------
cjensen
I'm on the VS Pro with MSDN track and paying $799/year. I pay every year, and
don't need a perpetual license. Is there any reason why I shouldn't switch to
the cloud subscription for $539/year?

------
abluecloud
How nice of them to give me $1 off when paying yearly.

~~~
jrs235
You get Full Subscriber Benefits
([https://www.visualstudio.com/products/subscriber-benefits-
vs](https://www.visualstudio.com/products/subscriber-benefits-vs)) for paying
yearly, you don't get any subscriber benefits if you pay monthly.

~~~
jrs235
One such benefit is $50 per month of Azure credit for dev/test. That pays for
the subscription right there.

~~~
at-fates-hands
You can also throw in the product licenses you get for all of their products
as well. Last place I worked let me keep my VS Pro sub and I realized it gave
me a TON of licenses with the sub:

[http://imgur.com/uQxIeVA](http://imgur.com/uQxIeVA)

------
merb
I didn't found the page where to look at the pricing / buying a monthly
subscription.

Currently we already consumed Bizspark so I'm looking forward for a Visual
Studio 2015 monthly subscription.

------
frugalmail
If you're stuck on Windows/.NET this is good. But the bigger question is WTF
are you doing developing on Windows (unless they're games). They're making
good progress open sourcing, and at some point it will have enough community
worthwhile open libraries, support multiple platforms, but it still is a bad
decision.

~~~
cmdkeen
Because Visual Studio is a very powerful IDE I like using. Because I like
writing statically typed code for both the server and client (props to
Typescript).

I grew up writing VBA and hating it. At university Java and Linux opened my
eyes. But then I learned to be a professional developer on C# and ASP.Net MVC,
and it is good.

~~~
mpeg
Not only is VS the best IDE ever (and each version keeps getting better, with
the new profilers / test runners, etc.) but the .NET vm is very powerful, and
comes without a lot of the baggage of the JVM.

I feel there is a certain distaste of .NET and c# among programmers
(especially in the startup world) but I honestly don't understand it.

I use and love dynamic languages like python, js, ruby... but when it comes to
performance + happiness, or low level windows hacking[0], .NET is king.

[0] I've recently been using c# for code injection and hooking third party
libraries.

Some of the performance drawbacks can be avoided by falling back to inline asm
via FASM, since native code is easy to call from .NET and the productivity
gains from being able to quickly prototype something are huge.

~~~
corysama
And if you love Python, Python Tools for Visual Studio is pretty friggin
awesome --even if you are debugging python that is running on a Linux box.

[https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/python-
vs.aspx](https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/python-vs.aspx)

[https://github.com/Microsoft/PTVS/releases/v2.2](https://github.com/Microsoft/PTVS/releases/v2.2)

