KVR :: DSP and Plug-in Development » VS11 Express will only produce Metro apps [View Original Topic]
There are 38 posts in this topic.

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Distorque - Fri May 25, 2012 7:37 pm

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http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/no-cost-desktop-software-development-is-dead-on-windows-8/



Computers. Aren't. Smartphones.

Sorry if it's too OT, but WTF Microsoft? The whole article is pretty horrifying. Microsoft and Google are moving to the Apple model of giving developers and users as little control as possible, for the sake of minimalism, control, and easiness. I guess hobby developers will just have to stick to Windows 7, XP, and Unix if Metro is going to be this pervasive. I'm personally hoping and expecting that Windows 8 will be a flop, but this is still really alarming.



Sure there are other IDEs and compilers, but who knows how far Microsoft will take this? They obviously don't respect free development and I wouldn't be surprised to see more crackdowns on it.

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Jeff McClintock - Fri May 25, 2012 11:48 pm

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Yeah, Windows 8 Metro also has no MIDI support, and no 3rd party plugin support. So no VST plugins. No external MIDI keyboards.

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Xenakios - Fri May 25, 2012 11:59 pm

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Well that isn't likely to matter as it's extremely unlikely anyone would be doing a DAW application for Metro anyway. (Old style desktop apps done with win32 etc will still work on Windows 8.)

But the Visual Studio 2011/compilers stuff...Sigh...Extremely disappointing and has made me think about a future without Windows...A likely scenario is that I will keep on using Windows 7 as long as possible and then switch to using and developing for OS-X. (Though I don't especially like OS-X and Apple either...)

edit : People have of course mentioned elsewhere that Visual Studio and it's compiler are not the only way to program on Windows. While technically true, I've found mingw as a toolchain extremely frustrating and that's the only viable toolchain (ie, compiler, linker etc) alternative to the Visual Studio/Microsoft provided ones. For my IDE needs, I've already been using Qt Creator almost exclusively for the past 3 years or so.

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Richard_Synapse - Sat May 26, 2012 12:18 am

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I'm looking forward to the optimization improvements mentioned in the article. Downloading the beta right now to check that, hopefully it can be tested

Let's not forget Intel charges much more for its tools, and per-platform, so if MS ships proper compilers now, this is good news & could save us money.

Richard

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Xenakios - Sat May 26, 2012 12:25 am

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Nice to hear you have a business that can amortize the cost of the Visual Studio Professional (or better) purchase

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Richard_Synapse - Sat May 26, 2012 2:53 am

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I use the VS standard edition, which I think was $99. Pro edition seems pointless since it generates the same slow code. On OS X the differences aren't that huge between the free Apple stuff and IC++, but still significant.

Anyhow I tested the VS 11 beta briefly and now it seems the MS compiler finally generates faster code, closer to IC.

Richard

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aMUSEd - Sat May 26, 2012 3:00 am

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What's is a "METRO style" app? How is it different from a "desktop" app and how come there are now 2 separate types of app for Windows?

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antto - Sat May 26, 2012 3:07 am

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--msvs
++mingw

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AdmiralQuality - Sat May 26, 2012 11:20 am

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It dresses like a gay app, even though it's straight.

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bM3w - Sat May 26, 2012 11:57 am

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aMUSED was talking about METRO, not POLY-ANA

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AdmiralQuality - Sat May 26, 2012 12:44 pm

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Poly-Ana is definitely a girl. People catch me calling her "she" all the time.

I'll make a boy-synth someday. (It'll be stinkier.)

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Z1202 - Sat May 26, 2012 12:51 pm

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In Russian the word "polyana" means "a clearing in the woods" and has a feminine grammatical gender

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AdmiralQuality - Sat May 26, 2012 1:04 pm

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Yes, I've discovered this since naming her. (When I google for Admiral and Poly-Ana I get a few stories of various military figures growing up in communities named after glades. )

It's also apparently what they call large open holes in ice floes. (Spelled "polynyas").

But of course, it's a combination of a play on words, POLY(phonic)-ANA(log) synthesizer, as well as a reference to a literary character known for being excessively optimistic (which reminds me of Poly-Ana's can-do-anything voice architecture). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna#Influence

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Z1202 - Sat May 26, 2012 9:51 pm

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Although the spelling of the latter word using latin letters may look similar, in cyrillic it's not that close anymore, neither does it sound close, whereas the spelling of the former word is exact. But we are getting too much off topic, I wonder whether we should start a new thread for this discussion

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Distorque - Sun May 27, 2012 6:55 am

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Metro is the result of Microsoft trying to turn your computer into a smartphone. It's what they've replaced the Start menu with in Windows 8, but it's really a completely separate application environment. The design philosophy seems to be this:
- Make all applications run fullscreen, windowing is for geeks.
- Make any buttons or control areas unnecessarily big and square
- Make all of the apps work as if you have a touch screen, not a mouse
- Make advanced controls like "close program" annoyingly difficult to reach
- Make developers pay to make Metro software

The design might be good for tablets or phones, but not for desktops. It will probably be a mild annoyance for most users and hell for power users and developers.

Fortunately, you can still make normal applications for the desktop mode, but you still can't opt out of using Metro if you have Windows 8, the system is built around Metro.

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rola - Sun May 27, 2012 9:04 am

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To close a program click top of screen and pull down

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Distorque - Sun May 27, 2012 9:55 am

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Yes, but to any Windows user that's counter-intuitive. It's also not obvious from the interface, unlike the red x button. Instead of making things immediately available for you, they make you go to a unmarked area to find the control, then you have to use a gesture to use it. For a touch screen device that makes sense, but it seems lazy not to give mouse users a simpler, more obvious way of closing applications. And when all of the applications run fullscreen or splitscreen, you need to learn the location and method of using all of the controls that are just button clicks on Windows 7 (closing, changing windows, accessing menus, moving applications, etc.)

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Meffy - Sun May 27, 2012 10:21 am

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I will not be smug about using Delphi and C++ Builder... I will not be-

Oops. *blush* Heh.

More seriously, any dev who's tired of playing footsie with MS development tools might want to look into Embarcadero's offerings. They're what Visual C++ ought to have been, except more and better by far. They're truly VISUAL like Visual Basic, but not language-lame like VB. Genuinely a pleasure to use.

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Xenakios - Sun May 27, 2012 10:52 am

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The Embarcadero stuff is expensive to purchase (so equally useless for open source/hobbyists/low volume businesses as Visual Studio will now become) and might not work with 3rd party binary libraries. They also don't have a very convincing track record about 64 bit and OS-X support. I would stay away from their stuff, no matter how convenient it might be and even if I had the money to buy it. I haven't really regretted ditching Delphi (it was version 7 or so, I think then) back in 2008 or so...I did live a fairly painful period for a couple of years trying to do Windows GUI programming with the win32 APIs etc...Fortunately the Qt framework's licensing was changed and they introduced the Qt Creator IDE, so I was able to switch into programming with those tools...

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Meffy - Sun May 27, 2012 10:56 am

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Expensive it is, especially for the Architect package. That does put the out of reach for hobby devs. But such luxury! Love it to bits. 64 bits, even, in the latest version. :-}

They do have a "Starter Edition" that's much cheaper, but I don't know what its limitations are with respect to audio development.

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cheppner - Sun May 27, 2012 11:03 am

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So you can't produce dlls with it? o.O
Or is it just that common window frameworks dont run in metro?

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rola - Sun May 27, 2012 12:41 pm

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Yes Metro apps are not designed for mouse operation. But it's good to have them available on your desktop PC if Windows8 becomes the dominating tablet OS. It will be so much easier to develop for than iOS. It's not like you're forced to use Metro apps.

They shouldn't have gotten rid of the start menu however.

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Meffy - Sun May 27, 2012 12:56 pm

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From what I can see, the objection is that devs using MS' free (?) compiler will be forced to make Metro apps, not that anyone will be forced to use them. Fine to give users options; not so fine to take options away from developers.

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Jeff McClintock - Sun May 27, 2012 1:18 pm

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ARM based Windows 8 machines won't have desktop mode at all, only Metro. To me it look like Microsoft is phasing out the 'desktop'. The new Microsoft App Store won't sell desktop apps, only Metro ones.
Considering how dam convenient app stores are, and how many users will see the app store as the only way to get software - is it going to be viable trying to sell desktop applications in the future???

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bM3w - Sun May 27, 2012 1:21 pm

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From what I can see VS10 Express is still free, still available and still continues to work for classic Desktop apps.

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Meffy - Sun May 27, 2012 1:30 pm

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Cool. As long as MS keep supporting it with bug fixes and such, and don't cripple it for use with new OSes. Regardless I don't like it when an OS maker forces devs to dance to its tune this way. Any OS maker.

I should emphasize that it doesn't affect me personally. I've not used MS development tools since the 1990s and haven't planned to return. :-} What I have works for me.

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Xenakios - Sun May 27, 2012 1:33 pm

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The VS2010 compiler unfortunately misses C++ language and code performance enhancements that would be available from the VS2011 compiler...That's what makes this so frustrating. (As a side note, using C++11 on Mac OS-X isn't incredibly convenient either if the compiled stuff also has to run on pre-Lion OS-X versions.)

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Big Tick - Sun May 27, 2012 1:35 pm

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Sounds like a concerted push from both Apple and Microsoft, to get DAW users to switch to Linux.

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DuX - Sun May 27, 2012 2:15 pm

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May your words become reality.

Something is really happening, like monopolies becoming even more greedy, as greed can only give birth to more greed, and there's no end to it. Unless someone ["dictator" or corporation as a whole] dies. It's the worst drug beside power, and sex is also quite important, eh?

My hope is that all these monopolies will get what they deserve in the end, and the consumers can only profit from it, greatly, as they could finally forget about licensing your OS, and they would discover that they have so many choices of UI that one becomes spoiled... not restricted to just one UI that some consortium of psychotic corporate patients devised.

I mean "X" should be visible all the time, come on! Buttons for starting the apps should always be within reach, not buried within six menus and sub-menus. I mean, it's so logical... only corporate psycho-vampires and control freaks can make things so complicated, holy brown smelly stuff!

Cheers!

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thevinn - Sun May 27, 2012 2:44 pm

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I'm pretty sure this will finally fuel the rise of Linux desktops that are actually USABLE.

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jonnyG - Sun May 27, 2012 4:59 pm

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And low latency audio might fly out of my butt.

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cytone - Mon May 28, 2012 5:24 am

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It will be interesting to see how possible it will become to build the equivalent of a VST host and plugins in winrt. At the moment it is a non starter as it doesn't even support midi (ios did not either until 4.2). Looks like due to the sandboxing and limited background tasking the Reason 6.5 model might be the only choice where plugins are developed in the hosts format.
One thing that makes you think is how long the OS has had a bad security model. A vst plugin unbeknown to the user can access any file on the system and the network connection. For the typical user winrt is much safer - everything sandboxed, nothing trusted and apps have to ask permission to resources.

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Jeff McClintock - Mon May 28, 2012 1:00 pm

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Note that metro applications can't be extended after installation. i.e. you can't add plugins to an app later. All plugins must ship with the original application. This makes 3rd part plugins difficult (not impossible... but painfull).

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Wild Hades - Mon May 28, 2012 1:26 pm

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Just installed VS11 on a virtual machine and made some tests.
I've imported my VS2010 VST projects without issues (apart of the lack of the Windows 7.1 SDK) and built them with the new "v110" toolset. Everything is fine, but I had to disable the GUI library (VSTGUI 4), as it won't compile because of the lack of the gdi32.h header...

I'm not seeing any performance improvement anyway, building in release configuration I notice exactly the same CPU usage as the VS 2010 version compiled with the same flags.
I can't test the new "Advanced Vector Extensions" feature (AVX), as it should work on Sandy Bridge processors only, in fact the plug-in causes an error during scan if I compile it with that feature active (I'm using a first generation Intel Core i7).

Keep in mind that I've toyed with it just a few minutes, I may be missing something.

I'm using the Express version.

Anyone else tried it with VST projects?

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stratum - Thu May 31, 2012 1:04 am

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I can see where this goes. Windows 9:One button per full screen.

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Distorque - Fri Jun 08, 2012 12:49 pm

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Well, they relented for VS12:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/microsoft-extends-visual-studio-express-2012-desktop-apps-195242

To be honest, I'd be using Ubuntu now if there was more application support for it. The fact that VSTs and many applications I use are Windows-only has held me back. I am perfectly happy with the Ubuntu desktop.

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mkdr - Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:29 pm

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Same here. To me it feels like there's a huge need for a dedicated DAW OS. Something based on Linux and what all manufacturers would support. All i'd need would be Elicenser + Cubase, as it seems vst are already working. Better yet if everything was native + winevst for the ones that arent.


Btw. I've thought of going fully virtual.. running 7 + Cubase + vst's inside a virtualmachine in Linux. But there isn't proper support for Asio and multiple i/o.

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dalor - Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:37 pm

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I'm glad I experienced the years where computer programs could run free. Seems like TRON wasn't so much of a fantasy after all. No App escapes the Master Microsoft Control Program. NO APP!

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There are 38 posts in this topic.