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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 07 2019, @02:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the have-they-applied-for-a-patent-yet? dept.

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Microsoft wants developers to start coding in the cloud

As software developers, we tend to get pretty attached to the IDE we use. And it's not hard to see why -- it's the tool we rely on the most, which enables us to create fantastic products and be productive while doing so.

And this can create a problem when we're faced with a change in our flow. We do not like change. Don't get me wrong. Change is great -- as long as it's not happening on our machines. Microsoft, however, doesn't mind a challenge, as it just unveiled Visual Studio Online. Like its name suggests, it's an IDE in the browser. Unlike its name suggests, that's only a small part of it.

Visual Studio Online is basically a service for software developers, which enables users to spin up dedicated environments "for long-term projects, to quickly prototype a new feature, or for short-term tasks like reviewing pull requests."

I am sure that at some point later down the road Microsoft will find a better name for it. Probably one that includes Azure in it -- because that's where those environments live in. But, for now, as it's in the public preview phase, it'll have to do.

[...] One thing to note here is that there will also be a browser-based version of Visual Studio for this -- the Visual Studio part of Visual Studio Online I mentioned in the beginning. It's not ready for prime time yet, but it should come in handy when you're just looking to do some quick work -- at least at first I don't expect it to work as a replacement for its on-premises brothers.

All this makes me wonder if we are not looking at a shift in how we develop software. After all, if the software we create can live in the cloud, why can't the programs we write be designed there as well?


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @03:21PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @03:21PM (#917341)

    I have always been awed by people who write software for Win32. Software development is a fairly masochistic endeavor anyway. Doing it on a platform where the underlying dependencies are changed to fuck over third party developers ON PURPOSE is a whole other thing.

    On *nix you code, then maintain to compensate for bitrot. On Windows you code, then maintain to compensate for bitrape. There is a difference.

    The scary thing is that there are probably congressmen out there demanding that this become the compulsory model. Of course eventually bots will get sophisticated enough to just replace them. Why pay some asshole a million dollars so you can stick your hand up his ass and make his lips move, when you can just compile a patch?

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday November 07 2019, @07:44PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 07 2019, @07:44PM (#917457) Journal

    My most recent project, begun over a decade ago, I went with all open source. I have the source code to my entire stack. Java. Apache Tomcat. Eclipse. All of the third party libraries I use, including front end JavaScript. And I pay attention to the licenses to ensure compliance.

    I would say I'm not dependent on the mercies of Microsoft. I can laugh at the VB developers when Microsoft lost interested and C# and DOT NET were the new shiny. Then VB.NET as the poor (and incompatible!) stepchild. Laugh at the Visual FoxPro developers when Microsoft lost interest in that. What happened to COM? MFC?

    Platform portability and open source are real winners. My entire stack runs on Linux as easily as Windows. I had to make the right decisions early on, but I find myself in what I think is an enviable position now. Things that were a bit controversial (open source!) are now all the rage. Oh, gee, Java is and has been for years the number one programming language. Microsoft is now embracing (OMG) Linux. It all makes me chuckle at the early naysayers.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.