[ale] OT: Windows 8 Open Source development crippled

[Charles Shapiro]

Yeah, saw this.  I think Ballmer is shooting himself in the foot here.
 The next generation of programmers is gonna be raised on linux or
Macs, 'cause that's where they can develop simple command-line
programs with low-level interfaces to learn the craft.  You cannot
realistically expect a young, inexperienced coder to understand
"Hello, World" when it's embedded deep inside 800 lines of
javascript//html5 generated from some automated development tool.

-- CHS


On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 12:32 PM, JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:
> On 05/30/2012 11:34 AM, Vernard Martin wrote:
>> Or rather more crippled than normal. This message came across a
>> distribution list where I work.
>>
>> For anyone with an eye towards development work on Windows 8, the only
>> “free” to use version of Visual Studio Express will only make “metro”
>> friendly touch style apps and web pages. Development for desktop will
>> require Visual Studio Pro at about $500 a copy. But if you are a clever
>> developer you may say to yourself, “Fine, I’ll just use the Windows SDK
>> C++ compiler... stripped down but good enough!” Well, MS thought of that
>> too and the compiler is being stripped from the Windows SDK. At the end
>> of the day, this means that there will be less desktop freeware for
>> Window 8 and most new freeware will likely use the Windows 7 SDK, so
>> there’s really no point in Windows 8 for desktops. So, this means
>> Windows 8 is going to be a lot like Vista, only not as good.
>>
>> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/no-cost-desktop-software-development-is-dead-on-windows-8/
>>
>
> Perhaps I'm just slow, but can't windows devs looking for a free setup use gcc
> and GTK or Qt?  There will be a learning curve, since their crutch with VS
> completing parameters will be gone until they get a new IDE setup, but still ...
>
> Back when I did MS-Windows development, only a paid version of MS-Studio was
> available.  Of course, on all the other platforms we used g++, so it was Windows
> that was the hassle for our team.
>
> I can't imagine that SDK changes between Win7 and Win8 for desktop apps are
> really much different. MS builds in backwards compatibility for at least the
> last OS, if not the last 5-10 yrs worth.
>
> If they are professional developers, addicted to VS, they will already have a
> $500 license anyway - I know I did.
>
> Switching to GNU tools would be better anyway - better for F/LOSS and Linux.
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