
No-cost desktop software development is dead on Windows 8 - Goronmon
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/no-cost-desktop-software-development-is-dead-on-windows-8
======
programminggeek
I think that non-windows devs don't realize how much Windows devs LOVE Visual
Studio. They will spend however much money it costs to use it. Also, VS is
like $500-600? Devs pay that for IntelliJ all day long, so why not VS?

Honestly, for a tool you would use all day long at work, $500 is cheap. If you
NEED Visual Studio for C++, then it's worth the money.

Sure, on Linux and OS X you get free dev tools like XCode and GCC, but MSFT
spends a lot of money building these tools, so if they decide they no longer
want to subsidize them by offering them free, it's their business.

They want devs making Metro apps, not old Win32 C++ apps. If they don't get
Metro apps to be built in a big way, Windows 8 tablet edition for human beings
2012 is never going to take off.

It makes sense for Microsoft.

~~~
gouranga
developers only like visual studio because either they haven't had much
experience with anything else, they use languages that require massive amounts
of IDE to be practical or they paid for it which results in 'money bias'.

Its rarely because they knowingly like it.

That's the opinion I've managed to deduce after working with over 200 heavy vs
users over 10 years.

~~~
potatolicious
I beg to differ. I've written code on Windows, OS X, and Linux, with tools
ranging anywhere between Xcode, VS, and plain old vim.

Visual Studio is a fine IDE that has a lot of things going for it. Hell, now
that I write Obj-C for a living I wish Xcode was more like VS (especially when
it comes to stability).

In contrast, I'd rather marathon American Idol than use Eclipse for a single
day.

~~~
gouranga
Xcode is horrid. I used it for a year or so in 2008 on a project so I agree
there.

Eclipse is fine when you get used to it. It has a fairly hefty learning curve
but when you get there, it's awesome.

~~~
drewcrawford
XCode has matured very recently. It's gone from worst IDE to arguably best in
a very short amount of time.

Recent additions include integrated Git, code intelligence so good that it
understands C++ templates, in-IDE static analysis, one-keystroke to fix typos
in identifiers, etc.

~~~
to3m
Hmm...

No scripting. Cretinous window layout facilities. No search and replace in
selection. No mixed source/disassembly view. Registers view disappears when as
you debug. No keyboard shortcut for rectangular selections. Code browsing menu
'thing' doesn't show structs. That stupid log navigator is too damn narrow,
and has a proportional font. Pasting of rectangular selections doesn't work.
No column/line number display. Lacks numerous basic simple text manipulation
commands.

------
gouranga
Good. Microsoft can officially go to hell with respect to desktop development
after the day I've had today dredging through a debugging job from hell.

75% of my time writing software is:

* Watching VS crash miserably. It's just seriously unreliable.

* Digging through MSDN trying to find out cryptic errors.

* Desperately trying to debug issues with various black boxes (today was 4 hours on a w3wp crash due to a CLR.dll bug related to stack usage resulting in an interesting session with EDITBIN).

* Dredging through hotfix lists trying to find out which one solved a problem.

* Sitting on the phone for HOURS to MS support who barely speak a work of English these days and don't give a shit - they just want you to fuck off so they can close the case. This is usually because two products won't talk to each other (IE and ClickOnce for example).

* WAITING LITERALLY FUCKING HOURS for things to compile and rebuild.

* Endless fucking updates that take several minutes to apply, sometimes an hour plus. I WANT TO USE MY FUCKING COMPUTER.

Not much:

* solving problems of my own.

Sorry for the rant but that's why it's really dead.

Good riddance.

It's all a "me too" as google and apple have app stores.

Bring on the web for everything.

~~~
keithwarren
You are clearly a troll who has either A) Spent no time using VS in real life
or B) well...see A

~~~
gouranga
Indeed I'm trolling so bad because I've only clocked approximately 18000 hours
of using it in real life since the first beta drop of VS.Net 2002 to 22:15
this evening...

Yes that's really three zeroes rounded down heavily (8 hours a day, 23 days a
month, 12 months a year for 10 years)...

~~~
keithwarren
Being that there was never a VS.Net 2002...It was merely Visual Studio.NET

But I digress.

Even if I assume honesty from you, what does it say about you that you would
use a tool for 18K hours and then berate it in such a way because you had a
bad day today? I have been using VS in its various forms since 1995 and while
it can be buggy and can crash - it is still a venerable tool. I use XCode,
MonoDevlop, RubyMine and Eclipse as well and they all have problems. Claiming
VS is 'seriously unreliable' basically makes people ignore everything you say
after that because millions of people know better. Crash yes, on
occasion...unreliable is different.

~~~
gouranga
It is referred to as VS.Net 2002 after VS.Net 2003 came out with .Net 1.1 if
you want to be pendantic.

If you really want to be pedantic, Visual Studio .Net 7.0.

It's not just today - it's been 10 years of hell. Unfortunately it pays the
bills (just about).

It's not venerable tool. It's like sitting in front of a pressing machine that
pokes you in the eye once an hour, but not quite enough to do you serious
damage.

I've been poked in the eye 18,000 times.

------
marshray
It seems Microsoft only has one reliable tactical move: leverage the installed
base of Windows users. They always fall back on this strategy whenever they
want to prop up some other product.

For developers, they often provided carrots to encourage them in a certain
direction. This tended to work sort of well, as there are always large numbers
of new CS students expecting the Microsoft-recommended stack to provide a
reliable career ticket. Maybe after they saw what Microsoft just did to
Silverlight developers and they're not so eager to follow that path.

I never thought that they'd go so far as to actually take the stick to native
Win32 developers. How can they not realize how much of their app ecosystem is
still built on native code and how much easier it is to get started with that
type of development on other platforms?

(In every one of these forums one or two people pop up to say how great this
will be for developers and you can still use the free Visual Studio 2010
Express Edition to write native code or managed code to write C++. This is not
correct, that product is crippleware and the managed code stuff is not
anything like native C++.)

------
patio11
Directly contrary to the thesis of the article: Microsoft is _absurdly_
generous with software licenses if you're going to build on their stack. Even
without getting a deal from the inside, you can get on their e.g. BizSpark
program, which gets you essentially _every software product made by Microsoft_
for free for three years.

<http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/>

The only requirements are you have to be working on the MS stack, privately
held, and making less than a million bucks.

~~~
mythz
You're right it is _absurd_ \-- to think it's generosity. Whilst most
development stacks these days are free in-beer-and-use for life - Microsoft
gives you unlimited access to try out all their wares hoping you get hooked on
as much of it as possible so when the 3 year is up, you're up for the lump
some of your IT development infrastructure. It's a lot harder to move off a
platform once you're hooked on it so by doing this Microsoft expects a life-
long re-occurring income as your infrastructure upgrades and grows.

This 3 year "absurd generosity" is nothing more than a classic bait and switch
Marketing strategy - although it does have the pleasant side-effect of not
immediately obvious, and is sometimes mistaken for generosity.

~~~
ctdonath
By the time your biz has been developing for Windows for _3 years_ you should
be able to afford the tools. It's not bait-and-switch, it's helping customers
use a product to make money with which they can pay for the product - more a
"pay only if it works for you" model. Fair enough.

~~~
mythz
> It's not bait-and-switch, it's helping customers use a product

It's only helping customers _choose their product_ and "3 years free!" makes
the MS Stack look like a better choice than it really is against the "really
is free for life" stacks. This all happens at the most critical time for a
business - when stakeholders decide what platform they're going to adopt.

Meanwhile whilst your busy building your business on their stack MS is free to
raise their prices - and SQL Server is amongst the most expensive licences and
hosting there is, which has recently seen liberal price increases - whilst at
the same time offering a sweet migration path to their expensive subscription-
in-the-sky services (aka Azure).

~~~
statictype
So do you feel the same way about Basecamp or ZenDesk or Salesforce offering
30-day free trials?

They also have the ability to crank up the price whenever they feel like it.
They're also offering their product 'for free' at the most critical time for a
business - when deciding what product to use.

The only way what you say makes sense is if people buying into the program are
dumb enough or ill-informed enough to not know that there are open-source
alternatives available for what they want to do.

~~~
mythz
I don't use either myself.

But no one is confusing their free-trials as anything other than a marketing
strategy to maintain a low barrier to entry to get more people to first try
then use their product.

i.e. I've never heard anyone say SalesForce is absurdly generous because of
their free trials.

------
jlarocco
This seems like a huge over reaction, and bordering on misinformation.

First of all, for the longest time there were no free versions of Visual
Studio for producing any kind of application.

Second, even the recent "Express" versions have always been severely crippled.
Where were the "No-cost 64-bit development is Dead on Windows 7" when the
previous Express versions were released?

The Express versions are more like promotional tools than real versions of VS.
For any serious development you'll probably need to buy a VS license anyway.

~~~
smiler
Exactly, Express didn't allow you to manage class library projects, which
rules out almost all serious development anyway.

~~~
ramchip
I've built class libraries just fine with Express. Personally, what is a
problem for me is that it can't handle multi-language projects.

~~~
smiler
Apologies - I thought this was a restriction on early versions, maybe they
changed it with later ones

------
loso
I started off as a hobbyist developer who thought you had to use Visual Studio
to develop for Windows. So I pirated a copy because I couldn't afford the real
thing. As soon as I figured out that there were cheaper or open source
alternatives, I uninstalled and went that route. The Express versions made me
look at Windows development again.

Even though I can afford the Professional version now, I really don't like to
see the way that they are going. I think its boneheaded and might close them
off to a new generation of programmers. Open Source and IOS development are
already seen as the "cool thing". I don't see how this move gets Microsoft
back into the good graces of a younger generation of programmers.

------
mmcconnell1618
I see this as just another side-effect of letting a marketing guy (Balmer)
take the helm instead of a developer (Gates). As soon as visual studio became
segmented into different versions it no longer represented a product designed
to increase developer adoption of Windows. Instead, it became a potential
profit center. A short-term financial gain at the long-term expense of Windows
applications and market share.

Companies that are willing to take long term risks are not valued in a world
of high frequency trading. Balmer is hoping that by force feeding Windows 8
Metro apps down developer throats he will convince Wall Street that Microsoft
isn't dead yet.

------
cobrausn
"It's very likely that most productivity applications will stick with the
desktop for some years to come. The same is true of utility programs, AAA-
gaming titles, and a large swath of current Windows software..."

My bet is most of these developers currently pay for Visual Studio
professional versions anyway. So, not much different for them. Seems like the
new restrictions are just for hobby development - they'll be forced to make
Metro-style apps, which is what they (MS) wants.

~~~
marshray
How do you think these professional Windows developers got into it before they
turned pro? Hint: most of them didn't learn it in college.

~~~
mattmanser
Downloaded VB6 for free from Kazaa?

Not me of course...

I actually remember trying to decide between eclipse and VB6. What whim made
me end up choosing the latter now completely escapes me. I think it was
because it didn't have those weird {} braces. Ah, C#, the irony.

~~~
flomo
Note you could buy a copy of VB for about $100. Which wasn't a bad deal
considering it came with a thousand pages of manuals & tutorials.

~~~
mattmanser
At the time I was a hobbyist straight out of uni where £100 was rather a lot
of money (yeah, they always convert dollars to pounds over here, greedy
buggers). And I didn't need a manual as I picked up a 'learn VB6 in 30 days
book'. Classic.

The trouble with all these 'cheap cause you use it all the time' tools is that
to start with you don't want to use them all the time. So they're relatively
very expensive.

For example I was just re-learning programming to prove a point to my boss
that the internal IT program sucked.

------
brudgers
If my VS 2010 Express Edition works, why should I care?

Not having the 2011 IDE isn't going to affect my productivity anywhere near
the degree that a lack of coding expertise does...it's not like I need to rush
out and upgrade just for the sake of upgrading. If I have an excuse to skip an
upgrade cycle next year, that's fine with me.

Over the long term, I expect Microsoft to continue to provide appropriate
tools for the amazing price of free as in beer...again, it's just hard for me
to see what someone is complaining about when 2010 Express Edition will
continue to be available.

Finally, Reading through the comments, there's very little, "I use VS Express
and now I'm screwed." I've played around with Windows Phone SDK, and it's
easier to produce something that looks good than with WPF or Forms. Though I
hate to say it, switching to all Metro for anything desktop related will
probably make me more productive not less.

(edit) If I want to write a command line utility, I'll continue to use
powershell.

------
snorkel
I used be one of those suckers who would fork over $hundreds to Microsoft
every few years to keep up with the latest-greatest VC++ and SDKs. Always
annoyed me how Microsoft would cripple its affordable tools in ways that I
feel actually hurt Windows in the long run. It definitely made me shelve my
own Windows projects and get into web development instead, and there's no
regrets there.

------
drhayes9
What's the larger strategy here: "Lose"?

I don't understand why they would do this. Seems like people will just shrug
and migrate towards the free tools that will help them solve a variety of
problems in more interesting ways (e.g. gcc, python, ruby, JS, etc.). Then
they'll start migrating towards platforms that make it easy to create those
solutions (Linux, OSX).

------
malkia
I've found myself a nice sweet spot - Windows Driver Kit (WDK) - it ships with
Compiler (MSC 15.0) that can target MSVCRT.DLL

It's unusual to use something like the WDK for Desktop Apps, but it works.

The compiler is a bit outdated, and there is need for some trickery to get
stl7 (internal naming) to work, but if something is missing you can install
latest WSDK with it and reuse missing libs/headers from there (platform sdk)

At work I do use VS2010 with .sln/.vcxproj, but for my projects I just stay
away from this - either makefiles, shell scripts, or some other tool, but not
.sln/.vcxproj

Then again, I don't do much UI stuff, and If I do - I do it in code.

Debugging is there (but a bit harder, then again much more powerful) with
WinDBG. There is also OllyDBG.

So WDK + SDK (missing pieces) and I'm set. And since I avoid heavy C++
projects, prefer to stick to C it's not problem for me. Occasionally I have to
fix simple problems, like variable not declared at the top of the block, which
never "C" compilers are okay, but MSC 15.0 is not (the one from WDK 7.1)

------
ognyankulev
Reminds me of OS/2: a great OS with expensive development tools, and some of
us remember how it ended... except that Windows 8 is not so great in
comparison with contemporaries.

I hope Ubuntu exploits this opportunity.

~~~
marshray
I remember reading a Jerry Porunelle column where he described the difference
between talking to IBM and Microsoft at COMDEX that year (1991?). IBM was
charging something like $400 for its driver development kit at the time. He
said "if I go over to the Microsoft booth and tell them I want to write device
drivers for Windows, they'll stuff diskettes in my bag".

But I'm sure IBM was thinking "if you're making hardware devices why couldn't
you afford $400 for a OS/2 driver developer license?" Like Microsoft's dim
early understanding of open source software, completely missing the point.

------
jaredsohn
For those just reading the headline and not the article, it is important to
note that Visual Studio 2010 Express will continue to be available for free.
(But it won't take advantage of changes to the compiler or the environment.)

~~~
marshray
Only a fool would base their development environment on the hope that an
outdated compiler version will still be downloadable from Microsoft's website
into the future.

That thing is crippleware anyway, it can't even produce native 64-bit
executables. Raise your hand if you're still on a 32-bit operating system.

~~~
brudgers
Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition is still available from Microsoft here:

[http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-
us/products/2008-ed...](http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-
us/products/2008-editions/express)

The reason Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition is no longer available for
download may be found here:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/780741/where-is-visual-
st...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/780741/where-is-visual-
studio-2005-express)

------
gecko
I agree with Ars that the VisualStudio changes are bad, but is there any
confirmation that the SDK change isn't temporary/won't have an official
solution by the time of shipping? Microsoft has distributed the C++ compiler
for _years_ ; it'd be very odd for them to do an about-face now. This reminds
me off the uproar when Xcode 4 was suddenly a $5 purchase...except that it
wasn't for users on the newer OS, when it actually shipped.

~~~
randomfool
If so this _really_ sucks for build machines- don't want to have to get a VS
license just for that.

------
alexbell
Hopefully university CS courses will stop utilizing Visual Studio now.

~~~
thomaslangston
I'd rate that as highly unlikely. Microsoft's DreamSpark initiative makes this
software free for many schools.

<https://www.dreamspark.com/>

~~~
AlexFromBelgium
I get everything for free.. Server software, IDE, ... and I feel dirtier, and
dirtier every time!

------
ginko
Or they can just use MinGW again just like when there was no free version of
VS.

~~~
law
I used to be devoted VS2010 user, but when C++11 came out, I realized that
Microsoft had no intention of incorporating all of the changes into its
products in the near future. Accordingly, I moved to MinGW with gcc 4.7 and
use Code::Blocks as my IDE. Although I'm giving up a considerable amount of
usability, the trade off was well worth it.

~~~
jpdoctor
> _Accordingly, I moved to MinGW with gcc 4.7 and use Code::Blocks as my IDE._

I note that eclipse + MinGW works quite well, though I wish the debugger was a
little more configurable. I haven't used Code::Blocks, so I can't compare.

------
gfosco
This is bone-headed, as are the restrictions on WinRT... Makes me more likely
to focus on other platforms.

~~~
cooldeal
Why are restrictions on WinRT boneheaded? Windows on the desktop and Android
on mobile shows us how spyware and viruses are a very big problem without
those restrictions, compared to, say iOS. Not to mention battery life and
security.

~~~
myko
What's with the Android FUD? Care to back up your assertion that Android is
inherently less secure than say, iOS?

~~~
cooldeal
Too easy.

How about this news from an hour ago?

[http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/2400009...](http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/240000992)

Or this posted 6 hours ago?

[http://www.cbronline.com/news/uk-regulator-shuts-down-
androi...](http://www.cbronline.com/news/uk-regulator-shuts-down-android-
malware-network-240512)

This was posted yesterday.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/05/23/researc...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/05/23/researchers-
say-they-snuck-malware-app-past-googles-bouncer-android-market-scanner/)

Let me know if you need more references.

Note, I didn't say Android is inherently less secure than iOS. Apps policy is
the difference and the topic of discussion.

What's up with the needless FUD accusations?

~~~
myko
You said:

> Android on mobile shows us how spyware and viruses are a very big problem
> without those restrictions, compared to, say iOS

Which I took as saying Android is inherently less secure, but I agree after
your clarification that isn't what you were actually saying.

That said, this doesn't show Android is more susceptible to viruses than iOS
devices, and iPhones are not immune to botnets either
([http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2010/03/09/8000-iphone-
andro...](http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2010/03/09/8000-iphone-android-
users-duped-joining-smartphone-botnet/) \- though this only affected
jailbroken iPhones). Previous jailbreak exploits that worked through Safari
could have been disastrous as well - it's not that iOS is more secure, but I
do agree it seems to be less targeted. As the popularity of iOS seems to be on
the rise I believe this will change.

------
stan_rogers
I hope nobody minds too very much if I inject just a little bit of reality
here: we are just about the only profession/trade/occupation on the planet
that seems to believe that our tools should be free (as in beer). Carpenters,
mechanics, hairdressers, even window-washers all have to pay for their tools
(and the associated supplies and tool maintenance), and most of them don't get
anything like the ROI that a door-to-door ASP.NET site peddler would get
pounding the pavement in downtown Lesser Podunk after buying the ultimate all-
in version of VS. Maybe it's time we dropped the entitlement attitude.

~~~
delian66
>>we are just about the only profession/trade/occupation on the planet that
seems to believe that our tools should be free (as in beer).

That is because software development tools like all other software is just
data, once written and debugged. Data can be copied at zero cost, which can
not be said about physical tools, at least for now.

------
forrestthewoods
This is not a real issue.

Visual Studio 2010 will continue to work just fine. As will 2008 or even 2005.
Anyone with a business license, even a $50 sole proprietorship, can get every
piece of software Microsoft makes for zero dollars via free MSDN subscription
[1]. This includes licenses for Office, XP/Vista/Win7 home/pro/ultimate,
Visual Studio Ultimate, SQL Server, and so on and so forth. The licenses are
free forever and ever.

[1] BizSpark program. It's fantastic. <http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/>

------
ChuckMcM
Its an interesting trend. The Ars prose was a bit more breathless than I'd
prefer but there is an underlying 'computer as appliance' trend that has been
steadily growing for some time. Some folks talk about the 'Post-PC' era but I
feel like its more like things that didn't use to require a computer are being
aggregated and replaced by something that contains a computer.
TV/Book/Catalog/Phone/Game thingy. The canonical example is an iPad.

That said, there are more folks who could care less about writing code on a PC
doing work or using one, than people who do write code. That fact coupled with
the cost of tool maintenance leads Microsoft to choose the route they are on.

Computers, and dedicated personal computers, will continue until the heat
death of the universe as far as I can tell but the number of folks who need
the 'general purpose programmability' seems to have flattened out.

------
coffeeaddicted
As opensource library developer I think this sucks hard. They should at least
let the command-line tools working so people can test if software still
compiles/runs with their compiler without having to buy a license just for
that (Borland C++ is this way these days). VS 2010 staying free is nice, but
certainly it's missing some new C++11 features and obviously the amount of
missing features will only increase over time.

Also I'm wondering something about Metro... so far I haven't found a wrapper
for OpenGL, but only Direct3D. Yet another attempt at killing a competing
standard?

------
diego_moita
From a business perspective this makes sense.

C++ is a slowly fading language. Most universities/colleges are abandoning it
and those that still cling to it are in an anti-MS mindset. Therefore, not to
much to loose here.

~~~
marshray
FWIW, I've been hearing this since about a year or two after Sun released
Java. I'll consider believing it when I see a major web browser or office
suite written in something else.

~~~
kibwen
Could have sworn that OpenOffice was Java, but turns out it's C++ after all.

In that case, I suppose this is your best hope:
<https://github.com/mozilla/servo>

(Not quite a web browser _yet_ , last I checked its exhaustive feature list
was "drawing rectangles". But getting there, slowly.)

~~~
marshray
Yeah I'm keeping my eye on Rust. I like what I'm seeing so far.

------
chj
Is this saying that no way to develop c++ applications with VS 11 Express? If
so, it is horrible for beginners, and I don't see how MS is going to benefit
from this move.

------
jpdoctor
Every other release from microsoft gets committed to obscurity and ridicule.
(ME, Vista, )

I was wondering how Win8 was going to self-destruct, thanks for letting me
know.

------
terjetyl
You already have tons of other super-lightweight great tools enabling you to
create great client applications using only javascript and html5 already so
server side languages are pretty soon mostly restricted to creating rest
services consumed by the same javascript applications. Also when you can just
use node.js to create the rest services the need for a tool like visual studio
is really fading.

------
leke
Why are people complaining? This is exactly what one would expect with the
MicroSoft OS option. This is their business model -- to make money and then
use that money to deliver a user experience. Long term Windows users should
not be surprised or offended by this.

------
drivingmenuts
If it encourages people to dump Microsoft and develop on other platforms, I'm
all for it.

------
moistgorilla
I am happy about this. Now c++ developers will hopefully look at the other
options (Qt Creator, please try it) and normal users will look at other
operating systems (ubuntu).

------
ajasmin
I hope they at least let us write console apps. How many lines of code is a
Metro "Hello, World"?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Four.

    
    
        <!doctype html>
        <meta charset=utf-8>
        <title>Metro app</title>
        hello, world<br>

------
nl
Yeah, that's kind of useless if you are a hobby developer releasing a free
product.

------
clarky07
This is an absurd article. Microsoft spends tons and tons of time and money
making this product that is Visual Studio. How dare they want people to pay
for the full version. Express is a demo, nothing more and nothing less. Be
happy they provide it at all.

------
hereonbusiness
It seems that Microsoft is going full Apple.

------
dos1
Why is Microsoft so hell-bent on destroying the desktop OS that made them what
they are today? The Metro stuff is fine for tablets, but it's a TERRIBLE user
experience on a traditional desktop computer.

I don't even understand this "everything must be a super simple little app"
approach that both Apple and (and now because they're a big copy cat)
Microsoft are taking. Is this really what the populace wants? I understand
that constraints often yield the best designs, but this is a little crazy.

And as far as the dev tooling - that was one area that Microsoft was notably
competent. I really can't see how this will benefit them in the long term.
Seriously, what is the upside for them? A few more Metro apps? They'll win the
battle but lose the war.

~~~
ajross
It's a disease. Once everyone realized that touch (and mobile more generally)
interfaces were going to "replace" the desktop for many day-to-day uses, they
all went nuts trying to rearchitect and "evolve" the desktop in that
direction.

Thus Unity, and Gnome 3, and Lion, and Metro. And most of these things don't
even suck, they're just needlessly different.

What irks me and others, I suspect, is that the standard WIMP desktop was a
_mature, well-understood, and very usable_ metaphor. There's nothing wrong
with it.

~~~
superuser2
For you. For me. Not for grandpa. And there are more grandpas than hackers
right now.

Immediate visibility of functionality, dropping the filesystem metaphor,
standardizing and simplifying the installation of software, and enforcing a
consistent UX works better than WIMP for a significant portion of people who
would rather not expend effort on making their tools carry out their will.
(Only, of course, if their wills are relatively simple. But the intuitiveness
vs. power tradeoff is a technology problem, and one there is going to be
market pressure to solve.)

~~~
ajross
This sounds like a statement out of 1985. It's belied by simple facts:
penetration of smartphones and tablets into the "general population" is no
better than it was for web browsing and general desktop computing 10-12 years
ago. It's selling more devices, mostly because they're cheaper but also
because they're inherently personal. Kids that would have shared the family PC
in 1998 now expect their own 4S to carry.

And that's not to say that there aren't usability enhancements in the new
devices that are worthwhile. But don't pretend that smartphones are "opening
computing to a whole new world", becuase they aren't. Like the desktop PC
before them, they are the tools of the middle class.

------
drivebyacct2
Microsoft still gives away the compilers, SDKs, .NET Runtime/SDKs, no?

Is the expectation that an IDE as powerful as Visual Studio be given away for
free? Or just that the Windows Store not charge a fee for utilizing their
distribution infrastructure?

There _was_ a time before Express editions.

edit: I failed to scroll through the rest of the article, feel free to ignore
me. I would delete but I don't like stranding replies. Apologies.

~~~
gecko
If you read the article, you will find that MS is currently declining to ship
compilers as part of the Windows 8 SDK, which is why Ars is so concerned. But
I'd also point out that Visual Studio Express 2010 is indeed free, and far
more flexible than its 2011 replacement. This represents a massive policy
shift.

~~~
hartez
From [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/hardware/hh852363.as...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/hardware/hh852363.aspx) (under the section "Updated or Removed
Features"):

    
    
          The Windows SDK no longer ships with a complete command-line build environment. The Windows SDK now requires a compiler and build environment to be installed separately.
    

Below that they also list a dozen tools and a bunch of documentation and
samples that they also no longer include in the SDK. My guess is that they're
just trimming down their SDK downloads. Their SDK has been getting more and
more bloated over the years with utilities and samples and stuff that most
devs don't need.

Completely dropping their command line tools doesn't make sense for anyone who
runs build servers; it doesn't make sense for their Powershell tools; and it
_really_ doesn't make sense when you consider their recent moves in Open
Source. My guess is that the command line tools will be separate downloads
from the basic SDK and you'll still be able to write C# code in Notepad++ if
you like. The basic SDK will be targeting people writing Metro apps (which
they want to encourage by default), but they aren't going to just drop
everything else. This is a company that lives and breathes backward
compatibility, after all.

It's just a case of poor messaging by Microsoft. Remember last year when
everyone thought that all Windows 8 apps were going to be Javascript/HTML 5?

~~~
gecko
That's also my guess, which I indicated elsewhere in the thread. I'm
definitely withholding judgment until we get a wee bit closer to the release
date and have a better idea what Microsoft's actually trying to accomplish
here. The lack of simple compilers in any capacity is bizarre, if taken as a
final statement, since it'd _really_ throw the wrench in pretty much every
Windows build farm ever. I suspect this is simply that, right now, given that
VS.NET 2k11 Ultimate beta is free anyway, they don't yet have the compiler or
doc downloads. I expect them to show up soon.

------
excuse-me
" productivity applications will stick with the desktop "

So by definition tablet and phone apps are unproductive? Actually that's
probably true!

------
ascendant
This really isn't a big deal for me. Mainly because I have no urge to develop
for Windows now, nor will I have the urge to do so then. That makes things so
much easier.

------
voodoochilo
nice, foss wins:)

