
Visual Studio 2013 released to web - pjvds
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2013/10/17/visual-studio-2013-released-to-web.aspx
======
727374
This rant has been brewing for many years...

Everything's been downhill since VS6. I'm only joking, but seriously, does
anyone remember how lightning fast VS6 was? That was over 15 years ago with
much slower computers. I guess application 'snappiness' has not been a
priority for the Visual Studio decision makers.

I've used VS since the late 90s (writing node.js in ST2 now) and honestly
appreciate the hard work and cool features that goes into it. The new VS2013
feature that shows how often a function is referenced is useful. I don't get
that in ST2 and probably never will. But I've used VS enough that I've become
philosophically opposed to it and other similar IDEs. The core of the problem
for me was that all the fancy wizards and project templates are not
maintainable for MS. There were a number of times I was using some new project
type introduced in a version of VS only to find the template was incompatible
in the _next_ version (e.g. reporting in 2005). This inevitably lead to a lot
of unexpected work when my team would upgrade. Many of the productivity
wizards impose hidden debt on their users.

Another major gripe was that VS would get really sludgy for solutions with a
great number of projects/files. Take note that whenever you see MS demo a hot
new feature, it's always with a very simple solution. Also, VS would block for
me a lot, but that was probably due using too many plugins. I'd find that an
application freeze of even 2 seconds would distract me. Not an issue I face
now with a text editor + repl.

</rant>

~~~
bengoodger
Chromium is an extreme case of this. When we started we wanted to live the VS
way of life (IDE tools and the like), so we had a Chrome.sln and various
projects. Eventually it became too much. It would take minutes to load the
sln, and woe to you if you synced your source tree while msvs was open, as
you'd receive a neverending slew of modal prompts asking you to reload each of
hundreds of projects. I think we still have a msvs build, but most developers
use ninja on Windows, and just use msvs for debugging. The sad fact is that
addons like Visual Assist X provide many of the benefits of the IDE without
requiring projects to be loaded.

~~~
stinos
The hundreds of modal prompts are combined into a single 'Reload All'. Only
since VS2012 though if I'm not mistaken.

------
jpalomaki
And finally we should be able to see function return values in debugger:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/06/27/s...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/06/27/seeing-
function-return-values-in-the-debugger-in-visual-studio-2013.aspx)

~~~
platz
That's a great feature which will actually help avoid creating local bindings
just to easily see the value.

~~~
mischanix
You can also reference register values (e.g. rax) in quickwatch and cast them
to the appropriate type.

~~~
dmcg
and the fact that you've had to do that since I was using VC6 in 1995 is the
indictment.

------
Pxtl
VS2012 took out installer projects (instead telling you to just use
InstallShield), SQLCLR projects, was incompatible with Oleg Sych's T4 Toolbox
plug-in, and had a colour-scheme in the TFS source browser that made my eyes
want to bleed.

Every other VS upgrade has been comparatively painless. I can't say I'm
excited to try VS2013.

~~~
daigoba66
For installers, use [http://wixtoolset.org/](http://wixtoolset.org/).

~~~
anton_gogolev
Yeah, because I really want to spend hours upon hours studying obscure
incantations that someone decided to be making sense.

WiX (and MSI, for that matter) is a disaster.

~~~
DrJokepu
It’s really not that bad. WiX is actually pretty decent, definitely not a
“disaster”. It might look more frightening than InstallShield because you
don’t get a nice UI that allows you to set up an installer with a few clicks,
but I mean, we’re programmers here, surely editing textual configuration files
is not an issue? It took me somethong like 30 minutes to replace our old
InstallShield installer with WiX.

~~~
coffeeaddicted
I gave it a shot for a day recently but found it way harder to use than
InstallShield or NSIS. Part of it was probably the broken documentation where
half the links just ended in nirvana. But I gave up when I learned you really
have to add each single file one-by-one and the documentation even defended
this as a feature.

~~~
euroclydon
You can use this Wix tool or command called Heat, which will automate the
adding (and creating GUIDs) for a bunch of files. Really it's the underlying
MSI target that's so painful, especially when you get into versioning. The OS
wants to have detailed information on every file that is part of your
installation. I think this is primarily for uninstallation purposes, but also
for upgrades and who know what else. If I could get away with it, I'd just use
NullSoft. It's like writing assembly, but it's so much simpler.

With Wix/MSI, there were certain executables that I could never get it to run
as part of the install process. The XML would look the same as other execute
commands that worked, but I could never figure out why they didn't run.

------
mu_killnine
Very nice. I really love 2012 and the 2013 RC was pretty solid as well. The
step up from 2010 was the most pronounced, as 2012 just runs circles around
2010 in (albeit, my own anecdotal) performance.

Just gotta wait for an upgrade license of R# to go on sale, as R#7 isn't
compatible with 2013 ;(

~~~
rubberband
For what it's worth, I got a 50% discount from them from buying R#7 so close
to the R#8 release date (uninstalled 7, and mentioned in the "please tell us
why" comments that it was just too expensive). May be worth a shot.

------
teamonkey
Fully-integrated TypeScript support!

For me that elevates TypeScript from a MS side project to something they're
serious about.

~~~
apaprocki
From their TypeScript blog post re: path to 1.0:

"There are now dozens of large applications written by teams in Microsoft,
including Bing, Xbox, TFS, So.cl, as well as in projects such as Adobe Digital
Publishing Suite for Windows 8.1, Zud.io, Away3D, and Turbulenz."

I think they've been pretty serious about it from the start due to the design
decisions in Metro.

~~~
Touche
That's pretty impressive. Why isn't Google releasing info about all of their
projects that are using Dart?

~~~
pjmlp
Because there isn't any? :)

------
scrabble
I'm still using VS 2010 at work. Can't seem to make a compelling case to
upgrade for the cost, and it's just getting more frustrating.

VS 2013 is looking like a really great product, especially in comparison to VS
2010.

~~~
kossmoboleat
VS 2008 here, somebody apparently tested 2012 but nothing came out of it with
people fearing that a different C++ compiler will break everything...

~~~
chillitom
Man! If you're doing C++ then you definitely want to get onto 2012/2013 ASAP,
the improvements in tooling are amazing. "Navigate to.." alone is worth it.

~~~
acqq
VS 2008 is the last one capable to compile the C++ to produce the binaries
that can run on Windows 2000. Believe or not, I actually need that. That
prevents me to use any C++ language changes introduced after VS 2008.

The frustrating part is that MS actually removed the existing code from the
already existing libraries (but which are not binary interchangeable between
the compiler versions) in order to disable the support for Windows 2000.
Otherwise I'd be able to use even VS 2013. They did the same for XP with VS
2012, but more people made the fuss so now even VS 2013 should support XP,
AFAIK.

~~~
anton_gogolev
"MSDN Camp"[1] in its full glory.

[1]:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html)

~~~
moron4hire
That's "MSDN _Magazine_ Camp". MSDN Magazine was a rag of a publication that
was mostly just advertisements for 3rd party tools than it was anything
interesting about programming. MSDN is the Microsoft Developer's Network,
which houses basically all of their documentation, tutorials, articles, and
support for developers.

------
buckbova
[http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-
studi...](http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-
studio/suggestions/4153040-remove-the-requirment-for-internet-explorer-10-to-)

Apparrently there is a requirement to have IE10 installed. Dealbreaker for
many in the corp world.

These should be developed independently.

~~~
flipchart
Why is a dealbreaker for a development machine to have a certain browser
installed?

------
mamby
VS2013 is great, try it guys! watch this (for web devs):
[http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2013/3-503](http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2013/3-503)

------
taude
Since moving to OS X, I've left Visual Studio behind. At first, I had a boot
camp partition running windows so I could still develop our C#-based web
product. Then eventually we changed the product significantly enough that
moving to an OSS tech stack made sense.

I'd probably still be using some MSFT technologies if I could use a VSS-style
IDE on OS X without virtualization (I tired MonoDevelop, but it just wan't the
same). I didn't have issues with the speed of Visual Studio running on my
beefed up MBPro, but the keybinding stuff was just too much to deal with.

Not to mention, having a ton of different runtime/hosting options is a pretty
nice bonus for the OSS stack.

Also, for mostly web apps, I think Visual Studio is massive overkill (but I'll
still watch their videos on features).

For now, I've settled happily using on cross-platform tools (PyCharm/WebStorm
for a feature rich IDE and Sublime Text 2 for code editing, and VIm when
tweaking stuff on the server). Should I ever go back to Windows (likely,
because I want a Surface Pro 2), my tooling should carry over (though I'll
have to go through some keybinding issues again).

Never again will I use products that are locked down to a single OS. Even the
tools on my Mac (with the exception of Keynote) run on Windows and vice-versa.

------
nailer
Thought this was announcing a web version of VS.

------
xradionut
VS 2010 is the last one I got for personal use. Not enamored with the changes
in VS 2012, Windows 8.* nor the cyclical abandonment of APIs. Add in the
increased license cost we face on all Microsoft products at work and any
announcement from Redmond gets a "meh" from me.

~~~
gecko
VS 2013 adds fix-and-continue to x64 builds. That right there is enough for
me.

Beyond that, though, I'd encourage you to at least look at VS 2012, get past
the superficial changes, and look underneath. There were a lot of performance
improvements in the GUI rendering that added up, and there were a lot of
tweaks to project search and management that became indispensable to me
shortly after launch.

------
acqq
In VS 2012 MSFT removed the color for the icons in the UI. Everybody
complained on the web. Now the color icons are back. MSFT's spin:

"Visual Studio 2013 includes many user interface improvements based on
customer feedback and Microsoft’s core design principle of keeping the focus
on the content to deliver an improved user experience. You may notice the more
than 400 modified icons with greater differentiation and increased use of
color,"

[http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/visual-
studio-2013](http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/visual-studio-2013)

~~~
atwebb
So they put it back and now people are unhappy a company didn't flat out say
they made a bad decision? Spin is everywhere, startups seem worse than others.
Every day there's something on the HN front page that's going to revolutionize
and disrupt the internet...

~~~
acqq
No, I'm unhappy that they kept the capitals in menus(!) like "FILE" "EDIT"
"VIEW" "PROJECT" "BUILD" even though there were enough complaints about these
too. I'm also unhappy there's no real Start menu back in W8.1.

~~~
anton_gogolev
At least this one is trivial to fix:
[http://stackoverflow.com/a/17413002/60188](http://stackoverflow.com/a/17413002/60188)

------
macca321
I got a free copy of 2010 by attending a launch event, and 2012 from the (now
defunct) websitespark program. Anyone know of any freebies for 2013?

~~~
smortaz
one cool freebie imho is "PTVS-Integrated". it's VisualStudio 2013 + Python
Tools bundled together. It's perpetually free. link:
[http://pytools.codeplex.com](http://pytools.codeplex.com) video overview:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNNAOypc6Ek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNNAOypc6Ek)

(disclaimer, etc).

------
yeukhon
Imagine one day you can just loan Windows Azure server and launches a build
when you click a button on VS web edition. I think that's an attractive
feature. Or pair programming on web over VS with co-workers.

------
Flow
There are few new features I actually need. I want speed. Speed when
compiling(currently it's file-copy mania), speed when starting my
project(minutes of loading debug symbol, really?)

------
swalsh
I had the preview installed, and I had really grown to love the navigation bar
for Javascript.

After installing the professional edition from MSDN... my navigation bars are
gone. WTF?

------
gwjp
If you need to justify upgrades I would recommend measuring build speed
savings in teams - vs 2012 & vs 2013 build faster than 2010 in my findings.

~~~
taspeotis
Anecdote: for one C++ solution I work on (two projects, 300k SLOC)

VS2008: 5 min

VS2012: 15 min

VS2013 Preview: 10 min

I use VS2012 and I'm about to use VS2013 for .NET development, but our C++
project is stuck in VS2008.

~~~
tiedemann
C# solutions on the other hand builds way faster (in my experience).

------
rossy
Is it available on DreamSpark yet? There's a link to DreamSpark on the
download page, but it takes you to the RC, which has been out for a while.

~~~
taspeotis
There's no link to DreamSpark on the download page [1]

[1]
[http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng#downloads](http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng#downloads)

~~~
rossy
I can see a banner about halfway down linking to DreamSpark. They still only
have the RC, but apparently the final version will be available on the 31st.

------
ChikkaChiChi
Came here thinking VS2k13 was going to be free.

~~~
ScottWhigham
It sort of is - they have the Express Editions which are free:

[http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2013-e...](http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/downloads#d-2013-express)

------
V-2
Is exception assistant still removed from Express edition? Yes? Put me back in

------
saejox
"Please install Internet Explorer 10 and then retry installing Visual Studio"

Internet Explorer 10 also insists on Windows 7 SP1 installation. I'm using
this Win7 install since 2009. I'm very scared the update will jinx it.

~~~
mynameisvlad
That's such a horrible practice I don't even.

You're forcing yourself to stay on an older, potentially less maintained
version of the OS so you don't "jinx it"?

~~~
saejox
I heard many complaints about SP1 slow starting and getting stuck in 'Shutting
Down'. On top of that SP1 has zero new features. Bunch of so called security
updates. From my perpective i'm using the stable version.

If thing go awry i would need to waste a day or two reinstalling the OS again.
It's very easy to resist installing this update.

~~~
yuhong
Zero new features is not true. AVX support for newer processors is one new
feature. But more importantly Win7 RTM support ended April 2013.

------
oddshocks
> people use this > what

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mauricedb
Cool :-)

------
ninjakeyboard
I can't seem to find the dmg for mac.

~~~
adamdavis
It's probably on apple's homepage in the same section for the iOS windows dev
tools. Please share the link when you find it.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
I think it's on the same page as the .deb and .rpm files.

