

Herb Sutter: Visual C++ for Windows 8 - AndreyKarpov
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Windows-Camp/Developing-Windows-8-Metro-style-apps-in-Cpp/Cpp-for-the-Windows-Runtime

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binarycrusader
"How much would you pay? But wait there's more. If you act now, and pay only
$500, you too will be honoured with the privilege of developing C++11
Applications for Windows 8!"

It's hard to take Sutter seriously about Micorosoft's support for C++ when the
Visual Studio product management decides that you have to pay for the
privilege of developing C++ applications for Windows 8 if you want to use
Microsoft's tools.

~~~
iwwr
It's worked so far, hasn't it? And $500 is petty cash in the grand scheme of
things (what it costs to actually support a developer).

~~~
binarycrusader
I'm not sure what you mean by "it's worked so far"; Microsoft has provided C++
compilers freely for around 7+ years now.

They have chosen to not do so any longer.

Instead, they give you only the tools needed to write Metro applications,
which, just coincidentally require you to sell them through their store and
can't be side-loaded onto normal systems, and they get a 30% cut.

As for "what it actually costs to support a developer" -- you're forgetting
about the open source developers and other independents. Unless you're talking
about Microsoft's costs, in which case, I could care less.

So much for "developers, developers, developers!"

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nhebb
The more I see of Windows 8, the less I'm convinced businesses will migrate to
it. Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I wonder whether the direction taken by
Microsoft will spur more businesses to finally migrate from XP to Windows 7 -
before it's too late.

~~~
bztzt
FWIW, getting (any sizable % of) businesses to migrate was an explicit non-
goal of the Windows 8 project from the beginning.

~~~
nhebb
Did Ballmer (or other Microsoft exec) address this? If so I'd be curious to
read what they said.

~~~
bztzt
It's not like they're going to go around encouraging businesses not to
migrate, but from the start the thinking was that after just moving to W7 they
wouldn't want to migrate anyway, that there was little short-term threat from
desktop competitors, and that the _long-term_ (or really medium-term) threat
was from "consumerization of IT" and employees forming their expectations of
how computing should work via iPhone etc. - so they decided W8 should be a
heavily consumer-focused release.

