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Visual Studio 11 Express to only build Metro apps

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craigvn:
Via Hacker News

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/24/microsoft-pulling-free-development-tools-for-windows-8-desktop-apps/

Microsoft has instituted a big change with its free Visual Studio 11 Express suite that's leaving some current- and soon-to-be Windows 8 developers up in arms: it's pulling support for creating anything but Metro-native apps.
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-Jibz (May 25, 2012, 03:31 AM)
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This is actually totally incorrect, but never let the truth get in the way of a good story. The reality is

1) Express 11 will allow you to create apps for Metro, Web or Windows Phone, not just Metro.
2) What has been dropped is support for WinForms (who uses that anyway?), Silverlight and WPF (dead technologies).
3) Native C++ development is also now only in Professional, but the target market for Express doesn't have much overlap with C++ developers.

wraith808:
WPF is not a dead technology (and they haven't said that it is or that they're dropping support, at least as far as I know).  Silverlight, yes.  But WPF?  Source?  And as far as I know you can't create services and such with just Metro coding either.

Carol Haynes:
Windows Phone is presumably imminent in its demise - I presume MS will be focussing on Metro Phones from now on.

I think the point of the oroginal comment was the dropping of support for writing desktop apps - no C++ but presumably no Visual Basic either.

Jibz:
Yes, like Carol says, my reason for posting about this was mainly that it looks like the native C/C++ compilers will no longer be available, which I think is a sad development.

I am not terribly fussed what UI toolkit is the future of programming at the moment, it seems like there is a new one every six months.

But I think having the native Visual C++ compiler available gave them some free goodwill from for instance the open source programmers. If you have to pay to get hold of the compiler now, they may be less likely to support VC++.

phitsc:
I find it a shame that MS doesn't want to provide a free up-to-date version of their C++ compiler any more. I think it's a step in the wrong direction.

I'm also not happy with their VS pricing policy. 6k$ for Premium and 13k$ for Ultimate are insane. I think MS should provide Pro for free (or sub-100$), and lower the prices for Premium and Ultimate substantially. After all, VS is the main tool to write software for their OS (which I would expect is what they still make most money with).

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