
Microsoft Answers Coder Cries Over New Development Kit - Fedons
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/visual-studio-pricing/
======
ShabbyDoo
It seems like the risk of not collecting $500 from a bunch of developers is
peanuts compared to the real threat MSFT now faces of people choosing to
develop non Windows-specific apps which happen to still work on Windows. How
many "apps" have you installed lately which are really just local servers with
web front-ends? Qt-based stuff? Java SWT/Swing? What else? While many of these
apps likely are built upon 3rd party components developed using Visual Studio
(perhaps a free version), the makers of these apps almost always provide a Mac
and Linux version. Microsoft has passed a dangerous tipping point where it is
now like Apple in the early 90's -- fighting to attract developers who will
provide killer, platform-specific apps. We all laughed as Ballmer screamed,
"Developers, developers, developers!" However, he's all too well aware of the
danger Microsoft faces of losing its dominance as a platform provider. I'd say
"lost" as I believe they're already running on fumes, but they still control a
huge portion of the desktop market. They should be worrying that developers
won't develop anything at all which relies on their APIs and forgo the overly
ambitious goal of buying developers' use of Metro. In a storm, any 'ol port
will do.

~~~
simonh
True they still control a huge proportion of the desktop market, but most of
that is business desktops. Apple's market share is heavily lopsided towards
the high end consumer market. It's similar to their position with the iPhone.
They have a minority market share, but its the most valuable part of the
market.

For over a decade Microsoft has essentially been able to behave as if they
have no competition, while Apple still has a culture of being lean, mean and
hungry - plus they now have a hundred billion dollar war chest. I'm glad I'm
not working for a competitor of theirs right now. At least

Microsoft does seem to be well aware of the problem, but the question is are
they too big and slow to be able to react effectively? In mobile the answer
was no. On the desktop they have the advantage of a real and significant
market share dominance. It's going to be very interesting to see where things
stand in 3 or 4 years time.

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lunchbox
Off topic: the "headlinese" title of this article results in syntactic
ambiguity.

I read it as: The coder who built Microsoft Answers
(<http://answers.microsoft.com/>) cried because of a new development kit.

Related:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_blossom#In_headlines>

~~~
danilocampos
Same. Then I read the article and couldn't figure out who was crying. Had you
not posted anything, I'd have spent the rest of my evening scratching my head
on that one.

~~~
ars
For everyone else who is still confused (including me until a minute ago),
join coder and cries with a dash.

~~~
user24
Thanks, I now parse it as "Microsoft replies to coder concerns about new
development kit".

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DigitalSea
In before the hate train starts rolling full steam ahead right over Microsoft.
This is a fantastic decision, they obviously really had no choice otherwise a
lot of people would have abandoned Windows 8 development and Microsoft would
have looked bad launching an OS that didn't have many supported applications.

As for Windows XP support, why would Microsoft add in support for an OS they
don't really support any more? It has been 11 years, well almost 12 since XP
came out and the fact people want to support the outdated OS is like asking
Google to start supporting Internet Explorer 6 again.

~~~
bad_user

         As for Windows XP support, why would Microsoft
         add in support for an OS they don't really support 
         any more?
    

Because Windows XP is stable, it works and a lot of companies and people are
still using it.

If anything, Microsoft is to be blamed for not providing a compelling reason
to upgrade. Windows Vista was awful, while Windows 7 is just a re-branded
Vista with a little more polish applied. Which is why at home I still have
Windows XP on my desktop.

    
    
         It has been 11 years, well almost 12
    

Windows 7 was released at the end of 2009, while XP was released in Aug 2001.
That's 8 years in which people had no real upgrade option. Can you really
blame them if they are a little conservative?

    
    
         the fact people want to support the outdated OS is like asking 
         Google to start supporting Internet Explorer 6 again
    

That's not a fair comparison, as downloading Firefox/Chrome is painless, is
free, doesn't require a hardware upgrade, normal people can do it by
themselves and they don't risk losing their data ... saying that upgrading
Windows is painful would be an understatement.

~~~
zooey
That's wrong. 7 is really good. Comparing it to vista or xp shows you don't
know what you are talking about.

~~~
bad_user
Name 3 differences between Vista and XP that don't involve minor UI tweaks.

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rogerbinns
Are they going to include 64bit support? The earlier versions of Visual Studio
Express didn't which was a right royal pain for me. I produce a Python library
and since Windows users don't have compilers have binary downloads available.
To get 64 bit command line compiles I had to do an unholy wedging of VSE and
the platform dev kit. (I'd much rather the Python developers used free
software instead of forcing this stuff onto the rest of us.)

If anyone is curious you can see the downloads and popularity at
<http://code.google.com/p/apsw/downloads/list>

~~~
malkia
I think that if you install the Windows 7.1 SDK, you should be able to choose
Platform SDK and target it, rather than the built in compilers.

WSDK7.1 is VS2010, but at least latest IDE would be used.

~~~
rogerbinns
If only it was so easy. The existing Python versions need VS2008 so I have to
use Platform SDK 7.0 (not 7.1). Then it and VS2008 won't play nice with paths,
so in the end I just hardcoded them in my setup script.
<http://code.google.com/p/apsw/wiki/Win7build>

The next Python release is using VS2012 so I'll have to have it, whatever it
takes to get it and 64 bit binaries, plus VS2008 and PSDK 7.0 all installed at
the same time.

The ultimate cause of all this is Microsoft bundling the C library with the
compiler, and not being able to have more than one version of the C library in
a process which forces the executable and all dlls to be compiled with the
same compiler version.

~~~
malkia
Yup. For that reason I stick with the WDK 7.1 (and target MSVCRT.DLL by
linking with msvcrt_win2000.obj, and this works on XP). Yes this would not
work for Python built with VS2008, but it would not require me to carry
MSVCRxx.DLLs everywhere.

------
RommeDeSerieux
I'm still converned over the fate of the x64 compilers.

------
smoyer
Funny ... I haven't heard anyone crying.

Oh yeah, they're all developing HTML5 applications that will run on Chrome and
Firefox and maybe Internet Explorer. Why worry about the OS' look and feel?

~~~
nigelsampson
Given that there were about four or five posts on the front page about the
changes to the express version changes it would that a lot of people care.

I'm glad Microsoft listened to people on this one.

~~~
cheatercheater
I've only seen this one. Is HN bubbling us in? By this I mean an effect
similar to google search results being personalized to the person who is
searching.

~~~
nigelsampson
Sorry I meant when they announced a few weeks ago that the expression version
wouldn't support native Windows apps.

