Visual Studio 2015 announced | Hacker News Reader

Visual Studio 2015 announced

visualstudio.com

62 pointsEcio7845 comments

This is a confusing announcement from Microsoft.

They are actually announcing a new product lineup (1) and not a new release for actual download. The article predicts that the actual release (RTM) will be in the summer. The current (beta) release is still CTP 6 which was already announced a few weeks ago.

I suppose this is a press release intended more for the corporate IT manager planning his purchasing budget (what SKU do I buy/upgrade) rather than developers to actually install and play with today.

(1) e.g. Premium and Ultimate editions will be merged into one Enterprise edition

I'm not sure how this is confusing. It very clearly says that it is announcing a new product line in the first sentence of the announcement.

It's confusing because when Microsoft has put prior splashy pages announcing VS2010, VS2012, and VS2013, the actual RTM downloadable iso images were available the same day.

Therefore, it's not unreasonable to read their verbage of the first sentence [with interpretation in brackets] as:

>Introducing the newly announced Visual Studio 2015 product line [so go and download the new RTM iso image that's in the link below], including the all-new Visual Studio Enterprise with MSDN, Visual Studio Professional with MSDN, and the free Visual Studio Community edition.

... instead of reading it like Microsoft intends:

>Introducing the newly announced Visual Studio 2015 product line [and you've already got the latest beta version last week so don't go looking for the RTM until summer], including the all-new Visual Studio Enterprise with MSDN, Visual Studio Professional with MSDN, and the free Visual Studio Community edition.

A bit of Pavlov's conditioning based on the last 3 VS releases makes the bold headlines a little confusing. The fact that it's on HN's front page makes it seem like a more newsworthy announcement than it actually is. The expected summer RTM would be more typical of rising to the HN front page(1). This announcement of reshuffling SKU editions doesn't seem to warrant the hype of being voted to the front page -- unless -- people misunderstand what Microsoft is actually announcing. :-)

(1) it was #2 on the front page before I wrote this post. In the 5 minutes it took to write this post and save it, it's now #236. I suppose an moderator pushed it down into oblivion as a service to HN readers.

I posted it and I received it because I have a MSDN subscription so I agree, it's more for telling use that is coming, the merge change that you noted etc..

thanks for posting this, though its unfortunate that folks got confused and I am sorry if the way the page was setup did anything to contribute to the problem.

We appreciate your support of our announcement though :).

Ok, so I can expect to be upgraded from Professional to Enterprise as appreciation :D

I am the Visual Studio Product manager that created this page and am sorry folks that it caused some confusion. I know Ecio had the right intentions but I can see how it was confusing here as to the scope of our announcement.

The goal for us was to make sure that folks that do pay for MSDN Subscriptions know what we are doing for Visual Studio 2015 wave.

If anyone actually wants to try the latest test version of Visual Studio 2015 you can do so here:

https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/downloads/visual-studio-2...

Also we have detailed release notes on what's new in Visual Studio here: - https://www.visualstudio.com/news/vs2015-preview-vs - https://www.visualstudio.com/news/vs2015-vs

You can now use "extensions" in the community edition and you can create whatever project you want, without installing 3 different versions of Visual Studio.

Which makes Visual Studio actually attractive for a community edition (the express edition is deprecated though - that's a good thing).

Express isn't depricated

>Visual Studio Express 2015 editions. (Non-enterprise customers are encouraged to check out Visual Studio Community 2015, which is also free and provides a more comprehensive solution)

That's pretty much the definition of "deprecated".

It might seem that way... but "non-enterprise" based on the Community Edition's licensing terms is basically just open-source + hobbyist use. Your company becomes 'enterprise' the moment it surpasses $1 million of revenue. Not even revenue from software created, revenue period.

I'd have thought there was a decent space between "hobbyist" and "$1m annual revenue". A lot of small software businesses would fall into that bucket.

No, its not. If the qualifier "non-enterprise" wasn't in their, it would be close to "deprecated"; as it is, its just a narrower target.

The Express Edition isn't officially deprecated, but the role in which it makes sense is pretty small. It only makes sense in organizations with more than 5 devs (or enterprise organizations of any size, but those will also probably generally have more than 5 devs) that aren't doing open source work and for some reason don't want to spring for a paid version.

VS2015 seemed to be pretty much the same as VS2013, although my experience was limited to the enhanced project support for Apache Cordova.

Findings:

- There's a very bad (known) bug that renders the entire IDE unusable. If you attempt to modify the markup of certain databound elements (possibly others), an error message will pop up and the IDE will cease to function in a predictable manner

- The VS Android Emulator is great, but it needs a bit more work. For example, it modifies you network settings without notifying you (installs Virtual adapters). Now if something else modifies those settings, the Emulator will refuse to start. You have to poke around a bit with the Hyper-V manager to get things working again. They should have a "restore default settings" option. (My Emulator refuses to work now even after I removed and reinstalled it).

- The VS emulator would be better if it had a default "Shared" folder that could be used to transfer files between the device and host.

- You can't specify the port you want to run Ripple on. I believe they are planning on fixing this, but it's a big problem at the moment as VS will just choose randomly from 40 different ports, each time creating a new folder and recreating your local databases. This makes it hard to track down bugs, or continuing from a known state.

- Build support is very limited. You have to muck about with the project settings to do trivial things like redirecting output based on Project configuration

- The Javascript debugger needs work. It will sometimes break whenever a new Javascript file is loaded. Or it will break on lines where no breakpoints have been set, even though no (visible) error occurred.

Other than that the IDE seems more-or-less the same as what I'm used to in VS2013.

Been hearing a lot about Visual Studio 2015 recently, as far as I am aware it is not even in Beta yet...

I am a .Net developer in a Corporate IT job, so I am exactly in the demographic Microsoft aims for as users (not buyers though). Visual Studio is hands down the best IDE, period.

The pricing is absolutely, absolutely insane.

It's worth noting that the price listed for Pro is with MSDN subscription included. They have tucked away at the bottom that they will also offer Pro without MSDN license. If this follows previous pricing patterns, then it'll probably cost ~600 dollars. Somewhat more reasonable.

While I agree that the price is insane if you consider the cost of the IDE ONLY, once you realize that corporations don't buy Visual Studio standalone but instead buy the whole MSDN subscription package, you'll see that the price is quite low and it's a nice deal since you're able to get every single thing Microsoft has to offer.

MSDN (especially in the enterprise/corporate environment) is absolutely worth it.

If you're just doing basic development, the community edition is actually really good and completely free.

Interesting. What value would msdn give me?

Looks like all the microsoft catalog https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/def...

Depending on the subscription level, you get access to the Microsoft software catalog and can basically download and keep all the licenses you need.

This isn't really something you buy as an individual unless you're a consultant or running a small shop but it's great for enterprises to get the IDE and all the production software as well (Windows, SQL, etc).

I consider test coverage analysis pretty basic development nowadays, which is not covered by the community edition.

Enterprise has gotten cheaper - it was 10 grand at one point. I used to have a personal subscription, and even with any tax-return benefits, I couldn't swing that.

The pricing for Visual Studio kind of blows my mind. I happen to think it's a great product and I don't mind paying for software (as a developer I want people to pay for software, or at least value it highly) but it creates a pretty high barrier to entry for developing Windows software.

Although maybe I'm wrong: I don't know exactly how restricted the free Community edition is. Also, Resharper apparently works with the free Community edition so that's a huge plus.

The Community edition is basically the Professional edition with licensing restrictions. Meaning extensions are fully supported. From the [official page](https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-co...)

> Q: Who can use Visual Studio Community?

> A: Here’s how individual developers can use Visual Studio Community: Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps. Here’s how Visual Studio Community can be used in organizations: An unlimited number of users within an organization can use Visual Studio Community for the following scenarios: in a classroom learning environment, for academic research, or for contributing to open source projects. For all other usage scenarios: In non-enterprise organizations, up to 5 users can use Visual Studio Community. In enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or > $1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue), no use is permitted beyond the open source, academic research, and classroom learning environment scenarios described above.

From another [article](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dorischen/archive/2014/11/12/q-amp-a...)

> Q: What are the specific features of the Visual Studio Community 2013?

> A: Visual Studio Community 2013 shares the same features as Visual Studio Professional 2013 today and licensing terms determine who can use this product. Based on the target audience for this product, SharePoint, Office, LightSwitch and Cloud Business Applications are not included in the installation.

Edit: formatting, can't figure out how to quote the text.

I'm extremely happy to know that I was extremely wrong about how restricted the Community Edition is. Thanks for the informative reply!

Gah, announced is really misleading.

I'm not an F# dev but I kinda miss it from the list of supported languages.

It might have been a marketing mistake. F# is fully supported. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/fsharpteam/archive/2014/11/12/announ...

Good catch, F# is fully supported and its my mistake for not adding it into the page, ill get it fixed. Thanks!

There is an Android version. I am curious, are there people out there who use Android device to code? I tried a bit QPython but it was frustrating not to be able to use the app I created from outside of QPython.

It can build for Android (aka you can make Android apps with it); it does not have a version running on Android. And yes, I use tablets and phones to code on, but nothing production yet. Cannot say it's that much less productive than on desktop though for what I do.

Edit: is iOS/Android building Xamarin or?

Edit2: Yep , this is Xamarin.

> And yes, I use tablets and phones to code on, but nothing production yet. Cannot say it's that much less productive than on desktop though for what I do.

Interested in that. What's your "mobile stack"?

> There is an Android version.

There's actually not, Android is supported as a target, not a platform the IDE runs on.

> I am curious, are there people out there who use Android device to code? I tried a bit QPython but it was frustrating not to be able to use the app I created from outside of QPython.

There are IDEs that will let you develop and build APKs on Android that have been around and supported for a while, which I wouldn't expect if no one was using them (e.g., AIDE.) QPython isn't exactly the top-of-the-line in terms of coding environments that run on Android.

This is really cool. VS is ideal for someone like me that occasionally needs an IDE that works out of the box for button + code behind it type projects. (Tried Python GUI frameworks...what a mess)

Looks like the prices have been dropped and CodeLens is now available at the Premium level.

I can't wait until I can target builds against CoreCLR.

Is Visual Studio made with .NET? If it was I could dream of a Mac/Linux version one day...

I'm sure it uses a lot of Windows specific libraries. That being said the Mono project has been working to create open source equivalents for a while.

Yes. It's a WPF app running on the framework. MS has no plans to open source WPF or include the required assemblies into the CoreCLR so I doubt we will ever see VS running on a *nix platform.

The majority of the Visual Studio code is still C++. The shell was rewritten to use WPF and MEF. So, I wouldn't exactly call it a WPF app. More like it uses some WPF.

Run Visual GDB and target x86 Linux... http://visualgdb.com/toolchains/embedded

XamarinStudio has gotten a lot nicer the past two-three years. That might be worth a go. I've also had varying success running VisualStudio well in VirtualBox.

Has it been released as well ?

(Sorry, non-MSDN subscriber here)

It's still in CTP.

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