The signs are undeniable at this point.
The very first sign was when Microsoft refused to port Visual Studio (VS) to 64 bit. While VS is indeed a large codebase, MS had no qualms doing the same for Microsoft Office. The fact that they no longer want to invest too much resources into it should point to the fact Visual Studio is very much in maintenance mode now.
Visual Studio was always paid software. But in 2014 MS introduced the Community Edition. The only real difference between it and the Pro (paid) version is the 'Code Lens' feature. Another sign that MS no longer sees Visual Studio as driving any meaningful revenue.
[...] Visual Studio Code continues to release enhancements every single month, moving at a fast pace. Compare that to Visual Studio Pro, whose development seems pretty much only about updating its integration of the various Language Services to the latest version.
With Microsoft's focus shifting from Windows to Azure, it is but natural that they no longer want an IDE that runs only on Windows. Thus comes in VS Code, a free, cross platform IDE that supports all modern languages.
(Score: 5, Informative) by KritonK on Sunday May 06 2018, @03:51PM (4 children)
For those, like me, who couldn't make head or tails of the subject, Visual Studio Code [visualstudio.com] is an open source code editor by Microsoft, complete with a trendy dark theme, trendy, incomprehensible icons for important functions such as adding the plugin for your language of choice, and, most, important of all, telemetry [visualstudio.com], which is, of course, opt-out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @07:03PM
Microsoft extend the name by one word (50%) and so increase the built-in vulnerability count by the same amount. ??
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 06 2018, @11:29PM
They ask us to "Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads." There was an earlier comment about telemetry [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 1) by DeVilla on Monday May 07 2018, @03:13AM (1 child)
Has anyone submitted a patch yet to completely disable all telemetry by default and make it opt in? It is open source. Site GDPR or something.
Better yet, submit a patch to send the telemetry to someone else instead and see how that goes over.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07 2018, @06:26PM
Better yet, send fake telemetry that bleeps up their pattern matching algorithms. When all the coders get Hello Kitty ads, I'll laugh my pu..., um, cat off.