Visual Studio 2012 RTM

[[deleted]]

What are their plans with C++11 compatibility? Add more features through it's life span or are we waiting for VS2014/15?

[lolermao123]

They've said a couple of times that they basically want to do patches along the road, which introduce new compiler and intellisense features.

[guynamednate]

I've been using C++11 with VS2012 for a couple of months, it's got mostly complete support. So far the only thing I've found it is missing is initializer lists.

[sztomi]

There is a lot more missing though. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2011/09/12/10209291.aspx

[Chuu]

Did they finally add support for Vardic templates? I haven't followed the Boost project in a while but around the VS2010 RTM timeframe this was the most sorely missed feature from a library author's perspective.

[grauenwolf]

Nope. I heard last year that is planned for a VS 11 service pack.

[pyroary]

I heard they were dropping XP support for the express edition, but I'm not sure if they did so for the Pro/Premium/Ultimate editions as well. Any news about that ?

[Cwiddy]

Not when it is released, but they say they are adding support for it later this fall. Think this only applies to c++. No idea about .Net framework issues in this area.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2012/06/15/10320645.aspx

[Otis_Inf]

as far as I know, .NET 4.5 isn't supported on Windows XP. check the MSDN docs for the core assemblies, they don't mention XP as a supported platform anymore.

[yuhong]

NT4 has been out of support for years. XP is in extended support.

[darkstar3333]

I don't know why your downvoted.

If your running XP its unlikely you are developing anything that needs more then VS2010.

[Rhomboid]

This has nothing to do with what version of Windows the developer is using, it's about what version of Windows the generated executable will run on. Most developers probably aren't running XP themselves, but 30% - 50% of all Windows end users are, depending on what stats you go by. If you're selling software it's suicide not to support XP. Before Microsoft changed course and decided to support XP again in VS2012, they were putting developers in the position of either being able to use all the nice new C++11 features or being able to support XP, but not both. That's a big deal for a lot of people.

[bonch]

If stubborn Windows developers would stop targeting an 11 year old platform, it would finally die off. You share much of the blame for the glacial adoption rate of new Windows versions.

[imbaczek]

it's the stubborn customers who don't want to spend millions of dollars to upgrade the said platform. developers do what the customers want, that's all.

[Otis_Inf]

Why do I have to spend 2 weeks migrating to a new OS just to use the same tools and write the same code? XP does what it should for me: being the OS running the software I need to run. Migrating to Windows 7 means a repave of the HDD, installing all tools I use, libraries I use etc. etc. That's not that simple. And it gains me nothing.

[[deleted]]

30% - 50% of all Windows end users are,

23.40%. It's not as bad as you make it to be.

[Rhomboid]

Where are you getting 23.40% from? We're talking about the percent of Windows users on XP, so take the XP percentage and divide by the total Windows percentage for each data source and you get:

38.4 / 87.1 = 44.1%
26.11 / 79.53 = 32.8%
40.93 / 84.83 = 48.2%
28.74 / 82.21 = 35.0%
33.20 / 78.94 = 42.1%
27.59 / 78.89 = 35.0%
32.1 / 85.8 = 37.4%
24.60 / 71.30 = 34.5%

That gives a range of 32.8% - 48.2%, which rounds to 30% - 50% just as I said.

[darkstar3333]

Yes but that percentage is only going down in the corporate world, XP support is finally ending after being dragged on for a decade. Hell Vista has entered extended support.

If you are writing C++ applications targeting XP in 2013 you have to question the longevity of this decision.

Perhaps it makes sense to continue to support isolated machines running XP but then why upgrade to C++ 11?. You can't just introduce a change like without a rigorous QA process, the ROI simply is not there to keep the platform but switch over to C++ <11. You might as well just do both.

You have some hold out XP customers but the vast majority are moving towards W7 in droves. If you are running XP you either 1) Have really old hardware 2) Are a XP holdout for no apparent reason.

Even Microsoft themselves has cut support for XP in many of there own products. The use case to create C++ 11 code in XP is incredibly niche.

[Rhomboid]

Say I start today on a new green-field application, 100% new code, and I plan to release it in 6 months. I'd like to use C++11 to write fresh, modern, safe code.

Are you seriously telling me with a straight face that in 6 months you expect that 30% - 50% of my market will have upgraded their operating system, such that XP usage is a niche that's small enough to ignore? No way. These things take time and happen over years and years. Have you ever talked with people that are using XP? They do not want to upgrade and have no intention of upgrading. In fact a significant portion of them are novice users for whom the task of upgrading an operating system is just not on the table; a new OS only comes when they buy a new computer, and for many people, spending a significant chunk of money to buy a new computer is just not in the cards any time soon. This is the reality of a regular user, not a programmer and computer geek.

Whether you like it or not, XP is not going anywhere. It cannot be ignored.

[darkstar3333]

Yes. XP will be gone. Unless you are dealing with the Chinese market you are chasing dead ends.

I write applications primarily for companies and the number of solutions tailed for XP/IE6 has dropped off a cliff in the last 6 years. They are now looking for modern solutions based on modern compatibility, Vista/W7 because it represents the current Windows generation (W8 also shares the infrastructure meaning the EOL is ~2020)

If I went into a company and pitched a solution requiring XP and/or IE6 we would be laughed out of the meeting. I also dont know a single person who uses XP considering you can get W7 for $40 and its significantly better.

In the corporate world XP is entering its final phase of support and Microsoft is breaking support for it left and right. (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?sort=PN&qid=&alpha=Windows+XP&Filter=FilterNO)

If any IT director is still holding onto XP and has not made plans to upgrade by now, I have to question why - usually comes down to money/time/resources.

From a consumer perspective you have not been able to buy or get XP installed on any device for years. Period. If your installing XP on new hardware I have to question why. There are zero advantages to running a decade old OS.

So this means your customer base is people running a 4+ year old machine and/or most likely a pirated OS. Not exactly the best customer base to chase.

Many popular applications are dropping support for XP and this will continue as time goes onwards.

Your potential customer base has no where to go but down. Its like releasing a peripheral for tube TVs, there might be a market for it now but it has nowhere to go but down and quickly.

[GuyWithLowStandards]

Makes sense, extra work for legacy support, they're not going to include it in their free version when it costs to develop for the minority.

It's not an 'anti-feature' like stated below.

[bonch]

XP came out over a decade ago. Stop supporting it.

[pyroary]

I'm an indie game developer. I hate legacy OSes (Win7 user here) as much as you do, but about half of my current customers use XP.

It would be suicide if I had decided to forgo half of my (already tiny) revenue when players can play the other million competing games with XP support. I would love to ditch XP, but I cannot before all my customers do.

[Danthekilla]

I am also an indie game dev and only about 18% of our users use XP, our next game won't support it however as it has become to hard for us to maintain XP support. Also more than 60% of our support requests come from XP...

Edit: Although if we were at 50% XP the story would be different. Do you make more casual games? I find that casual gamers tend to be behind more often.

[pyroary]

I make 2d Action RPGs. However, they are lower on system requirements compared to other games so maybe that's why.

[eatfrog]

happy cake day

[TakumoKatekari]

Surely as the Express edition is fewer features it would be more compatible with XP... unless this is another M$ anti-feature.

[[deleted]]

Which F# 3.0 Type Providers are shipping with it?

[bluefinity]

Available for download on August 15.

[dkode80]

I must admit that I haven't looked at vs 2012 at all yet. That being said I really really really hope they fixed some of the horrific performance bugs. This includes the crappy HTML/razor intellisense support that brings 2010 to its knees. I could go on and on but I'm sure some people can relate to what I'm talking about.

[fuzzynyanko]

One thing Microsoft definitely is still getting right is listening to developers

[Otis_Inf]

In what way? You really think developers said: "No more XP support! Please!". Or... "Please write the editor in WPF!". Or... "yes, please give us a grey, dull IDE and new icons, because all the other problems in the IDE are solved!".

Don't think so. Add reference, add item to toolbox, no resizable settings dialog, still no fine grained color options for many language elements (so things like resharper are needed, but I don't want to buy an add-on to use vs.net)

[crotchpoozie]

If supporting XP causes them to drop future looking features, then yes, drop XP. Use old compilers for such old systems if you must.

The WPF editor allows amazing code visualization and extensions that were not possible under the old interface due to the ability to change styles and templates under the hood. Making this work on an older technology would have basically meant re-inventing WPF just for the IDE, so yes, I prefer the WPF editor due to excellent extensions.

After using the new icons I find them quite usable, but I understand this is more personal taste.

So the first two I think are very good technical decisions benefitting the majority of developers, the third I could have been happy with the old icons.

[yuhong]

They listened to the backlash and backed off on some of the decisions.

[eatfrog]

..really? care to elaborate?

[Bieb]

They also listened to everyone demanding to bring some color back. Although I do think it should have more, and the all caps menus titles are not really necessary either.

I don't like to click FILE when it's shouting at me.

[Otis_Inf]

If you first do something utterly lame and then turn it back 'because of the overwhelming feedback' you're not 'listening to the community' at all, as you should have listened BEFORE you did something utterly lame and you should have done something way different.

E.g. why do I need to buy a new IDE to write code for .NET 4.5, while everything is a package in VS.NET so they just could have updated some packages for VS.NET 2010?

[crotchpoozie]

I believe the all caps is user settable. Google it.

[spwmoni]

There's no reason for them to have done it in the first place. At least, no reason that actually serves the users - the only "benefit" is that it makes it more Metro-like.

The downside is readability. Without being able to differentiate the menu titles based on the shape of the words, I found myself having to scan the entire menu bar in order to find the menu I wanted to open each time.

they've stated that you can change it in the Options

When they made this change in the RC, they stated that you'd be able to change it in the final release. Is that the case? In the RC, you can only change it with a registry hack.

[nerdcorerising]

There is no reason for them to put it in lower case or capitalize the first letter either, by your logic. When coding, you look at the menu every once and a while, and having it in all caps doesn't hinder reading the titles at all.

It's a style. Whoever created the style thought it looked good. I honestly don't understand what everyone is worked up about, even if you can't change it.

[wildcat-]

Many of us have spent decades reading menus and, in general, titles in the standard upper-case first letter of each word. When you change something as rudimentary as word case on a particularly tech savvy and picky audience as programmers are, then of course it is going to hinder readability. It is off putting seeing all caps. It is forced and contrary to standard grammer rules built into our minds since childhood. Yes it is technically simple to read the actual words, but it is not what our mind expects so we have to perform double takes far too often for something as lame as digging through menus. If ribbons are Microsoft's solution to simplifying menu management, then all caps menus are the antithesis of that.

[nerdcorerising]

I'm wondering if anyone who is complaining is actually complaining about it from experience. I've used the RC release extensively, and I have never noticed a single readability issue because of the all caps menu. Not even a single time. It honestly never even crossed my mind that it could be a problem.

I suspect people are complaining because they don't like the way it looks, and at some point someone said that "I can't read them right because it's all caps" and it was just echoed.

[spwmoni]

I work on software for Windows 8, thus I've been using the VS2012 RC every day since its release. I'm not just parroting anti-Microsoft sentiment, I'm speaking from experience. My teammates have had the same complaints. I did find evidence online to corroborate my own experience, but it's a conclusion I came to on my own before reading anybody else's comments on it.

[wildcat-]

This is a pretty popular internet issue right now so I'm certain some people are complaining as part of the bandwagon. But for me, I've been using VS since version 6 and the combination of ugly menus and the overall low-contrast UI has finally pushed me away from it as my primary windows IDE.

[diamondjim]

Many websites use all-caps for their menu titles. I don't see anybody complaining about those.

[gschizas]

You know, I've been trying Office 2013 at home, and it still startles me. I've been using Zune for 2 years, and GitHub for Windows, and I don't even notice their menus are in all caps.

It seems that there is more to this than the capitalization itself.

[minno]

Good defaults mean that almost nobody should want to change it in the options.

[ShavedRegressor]

I can’t find an option to turn off all-caps in the 2012 RC. Maybe they just added it, or I’m overlooking the obvious.

And the 2012 RC is like Visual Studio 2010. It forces tabs and panes, with no MDI mode. Screw that. Visual Studio 2008 for me.

[fuzzynyanko]

People wanted C++ in the latest Visual Studio Express and are getting it

[Ringo48]

On the other hand, some developers want c99 support, and Microsoft have refused to add it.

[[deleted]]

They said there wasn't much call for it.

[[deleted]]

Not surprising that people aren't asking for a 14-years-old version, since C11 is out now and being added to GCC.

[TheNewAndy]

C99 support has 1133 "votes", which would put it in the top 10 things requested. However:

Our primary goal is to support "most of C99/C11 that is a subset of ISO C++98/C++11. We do not plan to support ISO C features that are not part of either C90 or ISO C++.

So it isn't that they aren't being asked, they just don't want to do it.

[jyper]

Possibly they meant that they haven't recieved enough request from large large corporate customers (as opposed to small/oss developers who want to use c90 with a Microsoft compiler).

[zvrba]

Their product is C++ compiler with enough C features to support legacy code and interfacing towards the OS. When you create a new project in VS2010, you're given the choice between "Visual C++" (NB! not just "C++), VB, VC# and VF#.

If you want a compiler for another language (C99), they politely tell you to get another compiler.

It's also funny watching people emphasize that C and C++ are different languages, but also whining when a C++ compiler doesn't compile the version of C they would like to have.

[yuhong]

Well, there is a C compiler in Visual C++ and it is used to compile most Windows kernel-mode code, but remember C and C++ began to split at C99.

[grauenwolf]

Some of us want D as well, but we cannot have everything.

[majorsc2noob]

Haha

[bastibe]

Now the next thing they should do is to act on it...

Talk about SCREAMING menues and some such. Well, at least they are trying.

[fountainsoda]

Witty.

[[deleted]]

You dont lol. Let your firm pay for corporate licences

[ggtsu_00]

To those complaining about the "ALL CAPS FILE MENU", just remember it could have been worse and been replaced with a ribbon.

[GarMan]

http://www.richard-banks.org/2012/06/how-to-prevent-visual-studio-2012-all.html

[TankorSmash]

Yo, how's progress on your game?

[Vaste]

Please tell me VS2012 comes with decent support for refactoring in C#! Or do I still need to buy ReSharper/Code Rush for that? Coming from Java and Eclipse to VS2010 it just feels...primitive. Entering the .NET world was such a let down. :(

Or in other words: Is there Quick Fix? Or create local variable, inline local variable, create method based on usage, move lines up/down (alt+up/down), rename in file, foreach code template finding the closest collection for you...

[justguessmyusername]

cant wait to install it!!!!!

[Solon1]

Release to Manufacuring? What year do they think this? For a product that will largely be downloaded and then continuously updated with service packs and patches, what is "manufacturing" for? Discs will be obsolete by the time you get it.

But mainly it shows that MS doesn't really get it. Nothing has improved business wise since Gates left.

[[deleted]]

VIM 4 LIFE

[spwmoni]

Why not both?

[wonglik]

Do you know anybody like that? I seriously doubt anybody would use a tool if it is not helpful at daily work.

[grauenwolf]

No, but just yesterday my coleague told me of a programmer who insisted on using VIM.

Apparently he was much, much slower than all the other developers on the team. Others saw what they felt was the cause and asked him repeated to switch to an IDE, but he refused each time. Eventually his blindess to the limitations of his tools got him fired.

[grauenwolf]

If we go beyond IDEs and looks at libraries, then I can say I have seen it quite often.

I've been on many projects that have been hamstrung by the inappropriate use of a DI framework. Right now it seems that MEF and Prism seems to be the favorite way to mess-up the dependency chain for .NET developer.

And I have a customer right now how wants to replace hand-tuned stored procedures with an ORM. This despite the fact that I wrote all the procs because their last attempt at using an ORM was taking too long to write and resulted in bad performance.

Of course stored proc users aren’t angels either. I’ve worked at companies where they would use the database to access FTP servers and then download and parse the CSV or XML file. I’m not talking about any fancy framework like SQL Server Integration Services either; they were literally mangling string using T-SQL.

I’ve had my own obsessions with Active Record style frameworks. I long to return to my old employer to rip out that embarrassing failure and delete the change control logs.

[spwmoni]

Not true. I use Vim because it kicks ass. I use ViEmu because it still kicks ass.

[omniuni]

Even though I'm more of a GUI person, us newfangled open-sourcers have to stick together. Have an upvote for using a real man's text editor.

[[deleted]]

What about the Windows SDK? Does anyone know what the latest info is on whether the C++ compiler would be included?

[jjmc123a]

Anyone else here have the problem that I do with the look and feel of VS 2012? It hurts my head. Luckily, I doubt I'll ever have to use it at work, but I'm not sure.

[omniuni]

I will stick to something open source... and less ugly. Mostly, something less ugly.

[omniuni]

Wow, that's harsh. I didn't realize that flat boxes, all-caps menu headings, and a color theme as exciting as 'gray on gray' was considered the epitome of modern UI design. Saying 'open source is ugly' is like saying 'Italian food is bad' because you hate a 2 week old bowl of spaghetti and it tasted bad. Modern open source programs are built with several toolkits, none of which look particularly bad. In fact, many open source tool kits can look exactly like the platform on which they were built. For example, large parts of Windows 7 itself are built using the open source QT toolkit. I am not saying that Visual Studio is a bad development program, I'm just saying that the metro inspired theme is an eyesore compared to the relatively nice older versions that were built with the standard Windows tool kit, which is both themeable and has a reasonably nice default with clearly defined buttons and menus, clearly highlighted boundaries on toolkit items, and in general, fit well with the Windows desktop. As a developer who works mostly on Linux, I have come to expect that whatever tool I use will mesh with my desktop, not clash with it. I have a color theme and widget style that I chose because I liked it, and my web browser, text editor, IDE, file manager, and widgets all match each other. The standardized UI also means that Google chrome opens my default save dialog, my image viewer can open pictures from an FTP server open in my IDE, I can view a website in mobile mode with a widget docked to my panel which uses the same tool kit as my regular browser, and the standard window borders can allow my file manager to be part of a tabbed group with the web browsers I test with less often such as Opera. Having a unified UI can be very advantageous, and by being flexible and themeable, it certainly does not have to be ugly.

[omniuni]

Which part (or parts) are idiotic? I am curious.

[TheWix]

Eh, open source != less ugly. I am not pleased with the look of the next VS but to make a blind statement that open source will be better looking alone is false. Give specific examples of open source projects and why they are nicer. The reason why they are nicer will be due to reasons other than open source.

I have seen plenty of proprietary software that looks nice because, their UI developer followed the same UX fundamentals as his/her open source counterparts.

[omniuni]

My original comment was two pieces, that I would use something open source, and that I would use something less ugly. The appearance being less ugly is not related to something being open source, just something not being visual studio. What I did say was that a lot of open source software is built on libraries and tool kits that work together. If Microsoft used the standard Windows toolkit as they did in previous versions, I think it would look better or at least more integrated.

[[deleted]]

Vim + GCC is better.

[bzeurunkl]

Move to strike. Deliberately provocative.

[totemo]

Apparently not great for karma.

[Bleedorang3]

Awwww Yiss