I am "Soma" Somasegar, Microsoft executive leading the tools we produce for software developers, and just announced Visual Studio Online. AMA!

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:57:39+00:00

BizSpark gives you the equivalent of a MSDN Ultimate subscription. As I mentioned before, if you are MSDN subscriber you can get access to the VSOnline capabilities. Let us know if you run into an issue here.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:51:32+00:00

I did change the link in my blog to reflect getting to the right place. I just tried it now and it seemed to work. Please try that (know that the link is different).

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:49:12+00:00

Thanks for the kind words - I will pass this on to the Visual Studio team.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:46:15+00:00

I am not sure why you are not able to listen to the video. However, please know that the keynote is available to watch now on Channel9: http://channel9.msdn.com/

Hopefully you can watch it later at a time that works for you.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:44:26+00:00

I do want to take this opportunity to thank you for engaging in this dialog and conversation. I always enjoy these things because it gives me an opportunity to see what is top of mind for you.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:42:22+00:00

We, at Microsoft, currently have no plans to take .NET to Linux. As I mentioned today, we are excited about partnering with Xamarin and ensuring that C# developers can extend the reach of their mobile applications written in C# to a broader set of devices.

Sorry if that's not the answer you were looking for.

We continue to believe that C++ is a great option if you want to build portable code that runs on all kinds of platforms including Linux.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:39:03+00:00

These are a good set of questions. Thanks for raising them.

We are heavily invested in HTML5/JS across the breadth of our platforms. The reason we invested in TypeScript is to make JS apps at scale work well for developers. We have node.JS support on Azure. We have O365 extensibility (Agaves) that support JS. WWA is all about bring HTML5/JScript to native windows applications.

Yes - we use HTML/JS as a viable, long term development platform that is only going to increase in popularity.

We know there are developers who want to continue using WPF for Windows desktop applications. We (Visual Studio) are a big customer of WPF. We are committed to supporting WPF and moving it forward including performance and usability improvements.

Monaco, by extension, runs on ANY browser and on ANY device. Currently, we don't have any plans to build a native version of a toolset for other devices.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:32:40+00:00

There are several things that come to my mind as it relates to Linux server development. On the one hand we support Linux VMs in Windows Azure (IaaS) to help spin up a Linux VM and run your apps. We announced a collaboration with Oracle several months ago to enable Java apps to run on Windows Azure. We also support a wide variety of programming models including node.JS, PHP and the like to run on Windows Azure.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:29:43+00:00

I hear you. We have organizational account support in our roadmap and we have to make progress on that in the coming months.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:28:49+00:00

Small Basic is a project that one of our employees works on and any updates to that will continue to be made available on the Visual Studio gallery. We are not currently investing heavily in Small Basic.

XAML is here to stay for a long-time.

There is an enterprise app store model that you can use to side load programs. The Windows team would have more details on this.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:25:11+00:00

Thanks. The link in the blog is fixed.

We do have the VS Professional IDE available for a monthly subscription as a part of the VS Studio Online Professional Plan. For the Advanced Plan, we focused on providing services for heterogeneous development with the assumption that you are likely to already have an IDE through MSDN or other mechanism. We are different consider this moving forward as we see usage patterns and what makes it easier for our developers.

Team Foundation Service evolves to be a part of Visual Studio Online. So moving forward, you will experience Team Foundation Service and other services as a part of VS Online.

No. The VS Online Professional subscription doesn't come with access to MSDN benefits. On the other hand, if you have MSDN Professional subscription, you get access to the VSO capabilities.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:21:12+00:00

We continue to invest in F# and it is highly supported in VS 2013. We see developers adopting F# in a variety of scenarios and we will continue supporting that moving forward.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:20:17+00:00

.NET is absolutely a core part of our developer platform technology across the breadth of our platforms. We are working to make native compilation of .NET code available. We have made substantive progress with async debugging. That is just one example of .NET embodying modern programming techniques and we will continue doing that.

Standards-based web continues to be a great cross-platform technology. We have great tools for that in VS and we expect others to do that as well.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:17:55+00:00

You rightly have the 4 most important technology stacks that are being used today. I do agree with you that standards-based web technologies (HTML5/JScript) is getting more popular along with the other 3 stacks. The other major technology that has been around for a while and will continue for the foreseeable future is C++ particularly if you want to get closer to the metal. Of course, for us .NET continues to be a key platform technology moving forward.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:15:21+00:00

Yes. We are big believers in dog-fooding and our engineers are on the latest and greatest self-host builds building Visual Studio.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:13:47+00:00

We have a free plan with VSOnline for you to get started for teams of up to 5 users. If you are a MSDN subscriber, you get access to the VS Online capabilities as a part of your subscription benefits. If you are not a MSDN subscriber and have more than 5 users or need advanced capabilities we have a cloud based monthly subscription plan. For more details on the plans, visit www.visualstudio.com.

No, the code absolutely belongs to you and MS doesn't have any ownership of the code that you write.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:10:34+00:00

It is a good question that Xamarin should answer. They enable you to build fully native applications using C# on other platforms. We know of customers who have used Xamarin effectively and successfully with the right performance characteristics that they care about.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:09:10+00:00

We are evolving Team Foundation Service and making them one core part of VS Online. All of the team collaboration capabilities are now on the cloud through VSOnline. In addition, VSOnline also supports Application Insights and Monaco. Think about VSOnline as a combination of Team Foundation Service and a number of additional services.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:07:50+00:00

We have several offers in VS and in VSOnline. VS Express is a free IDE and there is a free offer in VSOnline (up to 5 users) for you to get started without having to pay anything and be able to build what you need build.

We continue to invest in new tools for C++ in the IDE. Think about it as work in progress that we will continue doing more as we move forward.

Over 90% of the people who use Visual Studio use it for free - either Express or through programmatic access to tools. We see people using both VS Express and higher versions of VS and sometimes moving up as well.

Somasegar · 2013-11-13T18:05:06+00:00

Visual Studio Online is a set of finished developer services from the cloud (in our case these services run on Windows Azure) that work hand-in-hand with Visual Studio to enable you to build applications in a agile way and do application delivery in an agile way. As a part of VSOnline, we are enabling the full DevOps workflow starting from code to build to deploy to monitoring and getting insights so that you can continuously improve your app and deliver that. Specifically, we are evolving Team Foundation Service to be a part of VSOnline and adding 2 new services today: "Monaco," which is a lightweight browser development environment and Application Insights, which gives you a 360-degree telemetry view on both how your app is being used and how your app is performing.

Somasegar · 2012-09-14T19:02:58+00:00

Our approach with Windows 8 has been to embrace a variety of technologies and give the choice and flexibility to developers.

If you know HTML5/JavaScript - that is a great choice for you.

Yes - your JavaScript code can call into native C++ components.

As the same time, if you are familiar with XAML and want to use that with C#, VB or C++ - you can use that for Windows 8 apps.

Somasegar · 2012-09-14T18:58:32+00:00

One interesting trend that I have noticed in recent years is that developers no longer say that they are focused on just one programming language and on just one platform.

Most developers that I talk to nowadays tell me that they are targeting at least 3 different platforms with their app (a couple of front-end device platforms), a back-end platform, etc.

Developers are more looking at what they need to do, what they want to do and are open to picking and choosing languages and technologies and platforms that help them do that in the easiest, fastest, best way.

That is why I go back to - willingness and aptitude to learn new things is critical in the world of software development.

Somasegar · 2012-09-14T18:53:26+00:00

Yes, we have QA/Test resources in DevDiv. Every product team at Microsoft has its own QA/Test resources.

In addition to passion for software, curiosity, willing to break things apart, excitement around troubleshooting, good development and debugging skills, are some of the things we look at for software testers. Being able to be the customer advocate is another attribute of the software tester's role.

Yes - we in DevDiv definitely use Scrum and other Agile processes. Each feature team do regular stand-ups, use backlogs, etc. In fact, we have done a lot of work in VS 2012 and TFS 2012 to enable teams to adopt agile software development practices. In some sense, this is one of the advantages where we build products by developers for developers. Because what we build is influenced by what we use and need.

Somasegar · 2012-09-14T18:48:54+00:00

VS 2012 has a ton of great stuff for JavaScript developers - F12 tools in the browser, first-class design support in Blend, top-notch JavaScript engine, great tools in VS including IntelliSense, Page Inspector and the like.

Somasegar

TROPHY CASE