While this is significantly different from what we usually write about, I have a feeling that there is some overlap with our audience.
Update: If you use Visual Studio Express 2013, you may wish to uninstall it before installing Community. My experience seems to be that it thinks that both are installed to the same directory, and so uninstalling Express after installing Community will break both. I am currently repairing Community, which should fix it, but there's no sense for you to install twice if you know better.
Visual Studio Express has been the free, cut-down option for small and independent software developers. It can be used for commercial applications, but it was severely limited in many areas, such as its lack of plug-in support. Today, Microsoft announced Visual Studio Community 2013, which is a free version of Visual Studio that is equivalent to Visual Studio Professional 2013 for certain users (explained below). According to TechCrunch, while Visual Studio Express will still be available for download, Community is expected to be the version going forward.
Image Credit: Wikimedia (modified)
There are four use cases for Visual Studio Community 2013:
- To contribute to open-source projects (unlimited users)
- To use in a classroom environment for learning (unlimited users)
- To use as a tool for Academic research (unlimited users)
- To create free or commercial, closed-source applications (up to 5 users)
- You must be an individual or small studio with less than 250 PCs
- You must have no more than $1 million USD in yearly revenue
Honestly, this is a give-and-take scenario, but it seems generally positive. I can see this being problematic for small studios with 6+ developers, but they can (probably) still use Visual Studio Express 2013 Update 3 until it gets too old. For basically everyone else, this means that you do not need to worry about technical restrictions when developing software. This opens the avenue for companies like NVIDIA (Nsight Visual Studio Edition) and Epic Games (Unreal Engine 4) to deliver their plug-ins to the independent developer community. When I get a chance, and after it finishes installing, I will probably check to see if those examples already work.
Visual Studio Community 2013 Update 4 is available now at Microsoft's website.
What about the individual
What about the individual user, do you have to be registered as a developer to use the community version, over the express edition. And will M$ stop all this fooling around with the features, I stopped using the newer versions when M$ skipped having intellisense, for managed C++ code, supported for the VS 2010 version, and by the time they added it back, to the next addition, the IDE was more geared towards Win 8, had numerous Bugs, and a terrible UI/scheme colors in the 2012 edition. I see that windows forms applications are maybe being supported again in the 2013 express desktop edition, if I have read the notes correctly, for the 2013 express desktop edition(for windows 7) version. The only applications I had developed for my use, were windows forms applications, but after all the deprecation of the forms applications code base, and other such M$ messing around, I decided to stick with VS 2008 express.
How big is the download, and is it an all features combined, with no Option to just download and work with the C++ part, or individual programming language packages? Also is there an ISO installer image that can be downloaded and burned to a DVD, or thumb drive?
My biggest pet peeve with many software packages, is incomplete download/install instructions, this also goes for open source software, but there should be a note placed next to the download button that states if the previous edition needs to be uninstalled, before the new version is installed. And why can’t the new version’s installer detect the presence of an older version, and ask the user if they want it uninstalled.
When I ran the installer, it
When I ran the installer, it said something about 5 gigabytes of space needed, so it’s going to be on the large side.
I exited the setup at that point, since I didn’t have the time to give to it then. I installed the free Mount and Blade from GOG instead. 🙂
You do not need to register
You do not need to register as a developer (except for Windows Store apps). I don't even think you need a Microsoft account.
Anytime a software house
Anytime a software house tacks words like ‘subscription’, ‘cloud’, ‘community’ onto one of their products or marketing slides my eyes instantly glaze over and i’m suddenly too tired to read another word.
Hey assholes please take your ‘software as a service’ and shove it up your ass.
Well, I installed it to play
Well, I installed it to play around with, and after my unfamiliarity led to wxwidget frustration, I went back to the mingw-w64 + Code::Blocks I’m familiar with. This is how I discovered the single worst thing about Visual Studio!
It’s FREEAKING HARD to uninstall! It installs itself in lots of pieces, and many of the pieces are obscure. And when you uninstall those pieces, they leave behind pieces of themselves littered all over your filesystem and registry! I spent an afternoon just getting rid of all the remnants it left behind… With MingW-W64 (I use TDM’s flavor now) One knows what’s installed, and where it’s installed, and when you uninstall it, it’s uninstalled. Ditto for Code::Blocks.
If you’re going to use Visual Studio, you’d best be sure you’re going to KEEP Visual Studio. I really really didn’t need the IIS, SQL Server, or Phone Emulators… :p
I do not like ALL or none
I do not like ALL or none versions of IDEs, I would rather have something broken down into language packs, for specific languages, with the ability to install, and remove any which I do not need. I was Turned OFF of visual studio, because too many things were changed, and too many things were deprecated, or features removed, or features like intellisense for managed C++ code was not ready, and were deferred to a later release, How the hell can you code for a massive framework like .net managed code, and not have working intellisense, to tell you what methods, or properties can be called and queried in a massive framework that is constantly being updated and added to. The so called Knowledge base built up around Visual studio was so full of broken links, or links to deprecated code, and was so untenable, that without intellisense for assistence, and the dropping of windows forms application support and project templates, that I felt I was being forced along for the wild ride to TIFKAM land, or whatever was the M$’s soup du jour at the time, soon to be preempted by the next FAD that M$ is always in the process of tripping into. So for me, as well as others, It’s NO SOUP FOR YOU M$!
IDE’s are the one thing that need stability, along with OSs, there simply are not enough days, to spend reinventing the wheel, and any new features should be added in easy to manage modules/language packs, that can be fully uninstalled, without leaving any unresolved registry, files, other components, including dependency code/frameworks, etc. that are installed to support the removed language/database language packs, I have had to reinstall/reimage the OS drive on too many occasions with VS.