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posted by janrinok on Thursday April 30 2015, @09:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the head-in-the-cloud dept.

MS Releases "Visual Studio Code" - a Slim Cross Platform Code Editor

Microsoft appears like they may actually be starting to get serious about cross platform support. Their new slim code editor for developing cloud applications supports both OS X and Linux, as well as Windows.

At its Build developer conference, Microsoft today announced the launch of Visual Studio Code, a lightweight cross-platform code editor for writing modern web and cloud applications that will run on OS X, Linux and Windows. The application is still officially in preview, but you can now download it here (if this link isn’t live yet, give it a few more minutes and then try again).

This marks the first time that Microsoft offers developers a true cross-platform code editor. The full Visual Studio is still Windows-only, but today’s announcement shows the company’s commitment to supporting other platforms.

From the Techcrunch article:

Today’s announcement will surely come as a surprise to many. It does, however, fit in well with the direction the company’s developer group has been on for quite a while now, be that the open sourcing of .NET Core (and taking that platform cross-platform) or the launch of the free Visual Studio Community edition.

Another Publicity Stunt from MSFT: "Visual Studio Code"

Roy Schestowitz at TechRights reports "Visual Studio Code": Not News, Not Free, Not Open Source

Another publicity stunt from Microsoft, this time going under the name "Visual Studio Code", which is basically proprietary lock-in

Despite an openwashing campaign and an effort to deceive the public (as chronicled here before), Visual Studio is (and will remain) proprietary. There is currently yet another PR blitz from Microsoft, which at the moment is trying to openwash it and pretend that it's "news" (it's not, it goes back to last year).

Sadly, some FOSS proponents have already fallen for it and Phoronix is doing marketing for Microsoft. This is not really news and it's not even a surprise. It's just some publicity stunt which got Microsoft boosters and Microsoft-friendly sites on board.

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @10:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2015, @10:33PM (#177293)

    Now, I think it's ok for anyone to build programs and give them for free, and it's their choice to open it up or not. (unless it's spyware, obv)

    And thanks to the way this company spoons with the NSA, we can be super-duper ultra-confident that there won't be any code in this compiler that injects a backdoor into any application you're thinking of creating with it.

    ( cf. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheKenThompsonHack [c2.com] )

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  • (Score: 2) by mtrycz on Friday May 01 2015, @09:31AM

    by mtrycz (60) on Friday May 01 2015, @09:31AM (#177414)

    Oh yeah, I love "trusting trust". The insight it gave me the first time I read it was what hooked me up to security problems.

    Anyway it looks like it's an editor, not an IDE, and it comes without a compiler. So unless it can scramble your sources in some stealthy indetectable ways (it can't), it should be safe for that.

    The only problem I could see with it is that they make a great product that everybody ends up using and THEN they start to lock you in. But it's not a necessary outcome; we'll see.

    --
    In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Nuke on Friday May 01 2015, @11:59AM

    by Nuke (3162) on Friday May 01 2015, @11:59AM (#177428)

    It isn't a compiler.