Windows 8 departed No-price desktop software development

Microsoft wants Windows developers to write Windows 8-explicit, Metro-style, influence-friendly applications, and to make specific that they crank these apps out, the company has decided that Visual Studio 11 Express, the free-to-custom version of its integrated development environment, can build nothing else.

If you craving to build desktop applicationsall that runs at the command line or on the conventional Windows desktop that harmony a fully supported, integral, sustenance unique of Windows 8you'll have two options: stick with the rife Visual C++ 2010 Express and Visual C# 2010 Express products, or pay about $400-500 for Visual Studio 11 Professional. A flash version, Visual Studio 11 Express for Web, will be able to build HTML and JavaScript websites, and nothing more.

Visual Studio 11 is an improvement in many ways over Visual Studio 2010. Its C++ compiler, for specimen, is a good bargain more standards-tractable, especially with the fresh C++ 11 specification. It has powerful original optimization features, such as the ability to automatically custom CPU features like SSE2 to speed mathematically intensive programs, and original language features to sanction programs to be executed on the GPU. The new version of the C# language makes it easier to write programs that do their travail on background threads and escape making user interfaces unresponsive. The .NET Framework, updated to version 4.5, includes new capabilities for desktop applications, such as a ribbon manage for Microsoft's WPF GUI framework.

Redmond has decided not only that Visual Studio Express users should have the ability to build Metro-manner applications: they should have no other choice.
Taken together, there are many novel features in Visual Studio 11 that are relevant, interesting, and useful for desktop developers. Indeed, things imagination the new WPF capabilities are only useful for desktop developers.

But Microsoft has decided that if you craving to utilize these things to write desktop apps, you have to pay. The free Express tools will produce only two things: Metro-method applications for Windows 8, and websites. Eventually, the company will also release a third version that can produce applications for Windows Phone, and nothing more. The company announced the Visual Studio 11 product line-up perpetuate week, but the full implications (and explicit acknowledgement of the implications) are only now becoming certain. In Redmond's words "Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8 provides tools for Metro routine app development. To make desktop applications, developers need to practice Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher. In addition, Visual Studio 2010 Express productsVisual Basic 2010 Express, Visual C++ 2010 Express, and Visual C# 2010 Expresswill stay available for free download."

Metro-method applications are obviously going to be an distinctive driver for Windows 8's adoption, especially on tablet machines. Although Windows 8 remainder a fully fledged desktop operating routine and will be competent to run essentially any and all desktop endeavor that Windows 7 can run, Microsoft is impatient to fabricate an ecosystem of applications that are pleasant to habit upon tablets, and to do that, it needs Metro-bearing programs built upon the new WinRT framework.

Extending the Visual Studio Express fury to leisurely Metro-routine development is, therefore, an conspicuous decision. The command barrier to entry is very sordidit costs nothing to download and habit the IDEand it should stir a well amount of endeavor development, impartial as it has done for Windows Phone. Developers, too, have an incentive to build Metro-demeanor applications, when it's appropriate, because the greater promotion and easier distribution should provide some novel revenue opportunities.

But merely extending Visual Studio Express apparently wasn't good enough. Redmond has decided not only that Visual Studio Express users should have the ability to produce Metro-system applications: they should have no other choice.

In custom, you'll probably have to pay even for Metro development. Windows 8 won't, in general, maintain facet-loading of Metro-manner applications. Developers won't be competent to stick a Metro-routine effort that they wrote themselves onto their website and allow situation download it. Every effort will have to go through the Windows store, and will be topic to Microsoft's sanction. Submitting applications to the store will price money, uniform for free applications; private developers will have to pay $49 a year, corporations $99 a year.

It gets worse

Windows is single among mainstream operating systems in charging for development tools.
Just to make doubly positive that nobody will dare attempt to produce desktop applications without paying Redmond for the privilege, Microsoft has gone a step further than crippling Visual Studio Express. The Windows SDK for Windows 7 includes a C++ compiler and every the mandatory bits and pieces to manufacture Windows applications. You'd have to do a bit more toil to profit things coterie up than you do with Visual Studio, as it's a tiny barebones, but it's enough. But that won't be the standard for Windows 8: the Windows SDK for windows 8 will not involve a compiler toolchain at every, lest any sneaky developers attempt to cheat the system and custom it to write desktop apps.

There is no upside to this decision. It is immensely evil.

Throughout its promotion and description of Windows 8, Microsoft has made the specimen that it is a "no settle" operating bearing, one that offers both assume-friendliness for tablet users, and the full power and flexibility of the PC UI paradigm. The desktop is need, and indeed for many applications, live. Microsoft's own Office 15, for instance, will be a desktop application. It's also stupendous and complicated to drudgery with the many constraints that Metro-system applications face.

It's very likely that most productivity applications will stick with the desktop for some years to arrive. The same is genuine of utility programs, AAA-gaming titles, and a large swath of prevalent Windows software: either their interfaces are too complex for the touch-friendly Metro, or they requisite access to APIs that Metro-style apps are prohibited from usingor both.

The desktop, and desktop development, is here to remain. But with Windows 8, hobbyists, -origin developers, those unprejudiced starting out with learning about software development? They're not welcome. The desktop is so significant to Microsoft and Windows 8's future that the company doesn't craving handsome anyone writing software for it, and will only begrudgingly convey such behavior if you cough up some money for the prerogative.

In addition to making a mockery of Microsoft's affirmation that the desktop is significant to Windows 8, the impress means that Windows is no longer a good platform for learning radical skills affection "how to program." Few of us are born with the ability to write a program; most of us have to learn using a combination of books and online resources. Programming can be a complex job smooth upon a great day, and to rescue this complexity biddable, most novice developers stick to hasty, order-line programs without wealthy GUIs. This allows a much greater focus upon mastering the programming language and core concepts.

Simple order-line programs are the bread-and-butter stuff of programming tutorials, with the classic "Hello World" program being the best-known model.

The current, 2010 versions of Microsoft's Express tools are a fine environment for learning these fundamental programming skills. Visual Studio 11 Express? Not so much. If you want to learn software development, you'll have to emotion elsewhere. Want to hone your skills by working upon the Project Euler challenges or enter a programming competition such as ICFP? Again: the 2010 Express versions would be a good agree. Visual Studio 11 Express won't be.

Hindering candid inception development

Open source development is similarly disadvantaged. Consider a project such as the server-phase JavaScript platform Node.js. Node.js was originally developed for UNIX-enjoy platforms, but its developers have worked difficult to create it a first-class citizen upon Windows (including some small contributions made by me). This travail was done with Microsoft's sponsorship and assistance; the company has contributed its vouchsafe development resources to improve bring Node.js to Windows. Most frank origin projects take the (not unreasonable) viewpoint that if the origin is freely available, and the project is free to practice, then it should be free to compile too. Node.js is no exception, and so the developers made specific that it could be compiled and built with Visual C++ 2010 Express.

But going forward, Microsoft won't have any suitable development environment for projects like this to target. They'll have to select between Visual C++ 2010 Expressand a compiler that lacks many of the model C++ features that the latest version includesand the $400-500 Visual Studio 11 Professional.

Short-period, the decision is simplestick with 2010. Long-epoch, the condition is lousy. Microsoft will allow you have a free compiler or a good compiler, but not both.

Windows is unique among mainstream operating systems in charging for development tools: the development tools for Linux or Android are zero-educate, and the tools for Mac OS X and iOS flit between being free or available for a nominal $5 fee, depending upon Apple's wit.

Microsoft's decision to bid for the more powerful versions of Visual Studio leaves a evil refinement in my mouth, because to my reason, a development environment is not really the same as other pieces of software. Software development has a nice of synergy with the operating vogue platform: an operating presence is only made useful by the pieces of software that developers create for it. By itself, the operating manner has tiny treasure or appeal. Platform developers vital third-party developers to produce the applications that create their platforms indispensable.

Charging developers for Visual Studio is, in fulfill, making developers pay money for the relent of making Windows worth buying. And taciturn, without third-party software, Windows itself has next to no esteem; it doesn't seem privilege to make programmers pay pretty to be competent to make Microsoft's operating bearing radical.

I deliberate that Microsoft implicitly understands and acknowledges this feud, too: why else would the Windows Phone and, now, Metro development tools be free?

As much as I dislike charging for such software, the Express products, which first shipped in 2005, partially appeased me. Although Microsoft did not give developers every for free, they did at least have enough to begin developing and shipping Windows software. High-protest features remained the single slow of the extraordinarily expensive Ultimate version, which was a compassion (and not a problem faced by Mac OS X developers) but the radical Express tooling was enough for most purposes.

But it won't be any longer.

Microsoft is sharp to point out that anyone who is currently attending an eligible educational institution will be able to profit a free simulate of Visual Studio 11 Professional through the DreamSpark plot. This is genuine, but inadequate for hobbyists and candid inception developers. As such, it's tiny consolation.

Desktop development is required, and it will tarry so thirst after Windows 8 is released. It's unlikely that Microsoft will ever bow and make its entire roam of development tools zero-expense, but for the company to completely settle out steady the option of using its prevailing tools for the free development of desktop applications, whether for hobbyists, beginners, or source developers, is a big step backward. It threatens to make Windows inaccessible to a large corpse of rife and future programmers, and casts an ominous shadow over the entire desktop.