The latest version of Microsoft's flagship developer tool is cutting out the older operating systems.
We can’t fault Microsoft for wanting developers to write Metro-style apps for Windows 8, but they aren’t just encouraging it, they are forcing the matter. Visual Studio 11 Express, the free-to-use version of its developer toolkit, won’t generate anything but Metro apps.
Visual Studio Express is basically a compiler and nothing more, certainly not as comprehensive as the for-charge products. But it was enough to get started, and certainly helped out more than a few beginning developers find their feet.
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Microsoft has made a free version of VS available under the name Express for several versions now, allowing single, individual developers with aspirations of being the next Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates to get started without having to shell out big bucks for the toolkit.
Microsoft announced the Visual Studio 11 lineup two weeks ago. In hindsight, it made it clear that Express would not support older platforms. A tip of the hat to Ars Technica for first noticing this.
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“If you would like to use a language specific Express edition (C# Express, Visual Basic Express, or C++ Express) without specialized tooling for the latest platforms, you can use the Visual Studio 2010 Express editions, which will continue to be available as free downloads,” the company wrote in the announcement. The key words here are “without specialized tooling for the latest platforms.”
But Visual Studio 11, the upcoming version that is designed to support Windows 8, will only let you generate Metro-style apps. If you want to develop Windows 7 apps, you have two choices: stick with Visual Studio 2010, the current version, or cough up about $400 for Visual Studio 11 Professional.
Now for many of you, I realize VS2010 will be more than sufficient, but remember, Microsoft puts a lot into its new toolkit. Companies are built on Visual Studio. Every time Sony’s EverQuest crashes on me, I see a VisualC++ error box.
VS11 will feature updates to the compiler, like support for GPU computing and new CPU extensions like SSE2 as well as an Auto-parallelizer, which helps optimize code for execution in parallel on a multi-core system. VS11 will also support the new .NET Framework 4.5.
It’s hard for me to get too worked up. Microsoft is being generous by giving out a free developer tool of this caliber, after all. This isn’t a barebones, command-line compiler like GCC. And there is still VS2010.
Still, it’s an attempt to push people in a direction in which they may not voluntarily go. We still don’t know how well Windows 8 will be embraced by the public. The beta hasn’t generated the kind of buzz Windows 7 saw. The best move would have been to support Windows 7 and 8 and help migrate the app between the two platforms. But I’m not the head of the tools division.
I recognize Microsoft’s desire to get people working on Metro as soon as possible, but the company seems tone deaf to any potential blowback from this move. You’d think after Vista it would have learned by now that consumers can push back very hard.
