Free Visual Studio Community 2013
It isn’t easy for EMBT to compete with this, for sure :/
“A full-Featured IDE – Free.
Start coding the app of your dreams for Windows, Android, and iOS.
– Designers, editors, debuggers, profilers – all packaged up in a single environment
– Code in C++, Python, HTML5, JavaScript, and of course C#, VB, and F#
– Extensive web support for ASP.NET, Node.js, and JavaScript
-Tools for Apache Cordova and Unity to reach even more platforms”
https://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-community-vs
yep 🙁
For open source development, the free VS2013 is just nothing shy of awesome. It has full 64bit support as well, unlike previous offerings.
hmmmmmmm 🙁
Thanks!
I found out about the community version about a month ago and was “wtf?! why would you want to use anything else to target windows?”
had fun with a pet project in it and it works great!
Asbjørn Heid afaik not only Open Source, you are free to use it for commercial development too in non enterprise companies with less than 5 developers.
For many years now the pricing of Delphi/RAD Studio have been way too high for any but those already locked in with legacy code.
Even the ordinary price for VS2013 Professional with MSDN is lower than the price of Delphi Professional. 🙁
Peter Söderman Yes, true, but if you’re doing commercial work a VS professional license shouldn’t be a big issue (at least in the west).
A free version is a big thing for open source, as it significantly lowers the entry barrier for users to start contributing.
On the project I’ve been heavily involved in, all the “user turned developer” contributions came from OSX and Linux before the free VS editions came out, yet 70% of our users were on Windows. Now we’re seeing a lot more contributions from the Windows users as well.
Interesting : Python, HTML5, JavaScript,
Asbjørn Heid I agree, and I know that we pay much less then list price for our licenses.
But even before the Community Edition there was the Express version. The major difference between them is that you can use add ons with Community, it’s in effect the same as the Professional version.
I’m just a bit sad that I can’t motivate the expense for the Delphi that I have used and liked since version 1, never used Turbo Pascal but got on the beta of Delphi.
Peter Söderman IIRC Express versions did not allow you to do commercial development. In any case it was as you said limited. In our case the biggest limitation was the hurdles you had to jump through to make it compile 64bit programs.
To be honest I don’t see how EMB can even begin to answer this move. I think they should just accept that the lone Delphi developer is gone for them. For small teams Delphi may still provide value, depending on needs.
Is there a way to code in Delphi in VS? (with working intellisense, of course)
Nedko Ivanov No. But you can get Oxygene which is at least a pascal derivative, and adds many new language features. Though not for free.
I’m confused. If this is from 2013, how come only now I read about this? I’m a C++ developer so really interested how this compares to C++ Builder. Especially creating forms, graphics speed and alternatives to VCL components. Any comparative research on this?
Ah, so this is just VS as part of a larger package? Obviously I looked into VS a few years ago (when EMB took over and bugs became the standard), but I found simple things like visual design still quite complicated. So unless they changed this, I’ll probably stick to C++ Builder. Thanks.
I remember I enjoyed programming in VS more than RAD. Not because of the language, but because of the IDE.
For the open source project I’ve been involved with, we used Qt. It’s not integrated into VS, so there’s a bit more manual work to be done hooking up the code with the UI layer.
On the other hand, Qt provides a powerful layout manager which makes it rather easy to design the UI’s. And Qt makes it very easy to deploy on Windows, Linux and OSX.
I haven’t tried Qt 5 yet so don’t know how the mobile offering is.
Tried Qt 5 as well but could easily crash the IDE, so quickly gave up. I want to concept and ease-of-use of RAD, the community aspect of Qt and the (assumed) stability of VS. There, is that too much too ask? 🙂
Using it for working with UnrealEngin4.
The C++ builder situation is more worse than the Delphi. Lesser documentation and samples. It’s only better than MFC project. However if you want better GUI developing experience, you can use C++ /CLI or C++ /CX.
C++ builder 32bit compiler is socks since it almost corresponding to very old standard. You can’t port open source project to CB easily. I hope XE8 32bit clang based compiler will change the situation.
Now VS support C++ to use android NDK to write android apps. This is good.
If you know C++ builder well, you will find since RAD2009, It’s not smoothly when you call Delphi new language featured API, like anonymous function, generic, parallel programming. Let’s say while Delphiers happily use anonymous functions, C++ builder devs get more codes to write and suffering pain. Same for Delphi generic container, you have to write pas codes , containing custom type, to your C++ projects.
Such language features and libraries are implemented in c++ 11, for example, Future (parallel), however you just can’t find in CB. So some CB programmers switch to Delphi, some use Qt with VC… If you ever compare Delphi codes and CB codes with the same projects, the only words you may say is WTF ugly and long codes it is.
I think finally EMBT will lose or give up the C++ market.
Wait a minute, I have Visual Studio Professional and I also installed the Community version. The CV is OK but there are limitations on particular aspects on what you can do.
You need to still spend money to get a real developers toolkit.
Rad Studio is offered as an Academic version (90 percent off list price) but does not include DataSnap (if you use that) or you can purchase the starter kit that is limited to the amount of money until you are forced to go with the full package.
EMBT will not give up the C++ portion but will continue to expand into different areas with the theme one tool many platforms. Visual Studio does not do that.
Richard Baroniunas Things are changing: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2014/11/12/cross-platform-mobile-development-with-visual-c.aspx
Though I haven’t see word if this will be included in the next community edition, so it may not be entirely bleak on that front.
Speaking of Unreal 4 Engine… that got me thinking, could EMB do something similar w.r.t. licensing for it’s AppMethod? Zero or little up-start cost, instead taking % of sales…
Simon Stuart You can build UE4 (or plugins, or…?) with C++ Builder? I don’t know what form the UE4 toolkit comes in or provides.
Sam Shaw I agree with all of that except the final line. I think / hope they’ll do the right thing and work on integration, to expose Delphi generics and anonymous method etc better. They have before, eg when dropping ATL in favor of the Delphi COM system, and what I’ve heard about the new XE8 32 bit compiler is very exciting. If it uses LLVM and supports modern C++ it might finally be close to par against MSVC and other compilers. Very exciting.
Isn’t AppMethod free, where you only pay deployment/run-time royalties?
David Schwartz Ah I didn’t check, I recalled it was a yearly “subscription” fee.
After actually checking, I see that there is a free aspect to it. It includes C++ language features, and you can only target Android platforms. Kinda limited compared to VS 2013.
At least this will make them rethink their business model, where you take away code writing features from IDE (or debugging). The value should be else where for high-end versions. Taking away the Code writing and/or Debugging is just giving bad user experience, and it will not boos sales (Or I don’t believe in that)