Is a Windows dev environment worth it?

Question

I recently moved from Linux development to Windows development. And how many Linux enthusiasts I have, I have to say - C # is a beautiful language, Visual Studio is awesome, and now that I have bought a trackball for myself, my wrist has stopped hurting from using the mouse.

But there is one thing that I cannot overcome: cost. Windows 7, Visual Studio, SQL Server, Expression Blend, ViEmu, Telerik, MSDN - we are talking about thousands for each project developer! You definitely get something for your money - my question is, is it worth it? [Not every developer needs all of the above tools, but have you ever heard of compiling C # code without Visual Studio? I worked on fairly large software projects on Linux without having to pay for any development tool.]

Now, obviously, if you are already a Windows store, it does not pay for retraining all your developers. And if you want to develop a desktop application for Windows, you simply cannot do this on Linux. But if you are starting a new web application project and you can hire developers who are experts in any languages ​​you want, would you choose Windows as your development platform, despite the high cost? And if so, why?

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UPDATE: I was not going to start any arguments. And I got some valuable ideas from the answers / comments:

• The cost of setting up a development environment on Windows does not have to be that big.
• The cost of the dev environment is just a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the developers themselves. (This does not help small startup or freelance programmers).

Answer 1

The cost of the tools is tiny compared to the cost of the developers themselves. For example, most of the tools mentioned are included in Visual Studio Professional with MSDN , which runs approximately $ 800 per year.

So the real question is whether you get any benefit from this value. It's harder to answer, and I suspect it depends on your developers and what type of software you are developing. Thus, it is impossible to give a complete answer. However, from the point of view of the employer, there is hardly a difference between the two to notice.

Answer 2

Microsoft offers many express editions of Visual Studio and SQL Server that are free and can even be used commercially. In programs such as DreamSpark, students can download, for example. Visual Studio 2010 Professional (full version!) Is free, so it’s not said that you have to pay hundreds of thousands to develop Windows applications.

Other IDEs, such as SharpDevelop, are also available for free, but they are not as impressive as Visual Studio. However, even with express releases, it can be very productive.

The MSDN library is also free. I can’t say whether Telerik controls its costs, because I never felt the need to use them.

Answer 3

The cost may not be as high as you think (depending on many factors). There is a BizSpark program, and express versions of Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc. are also available.

Answer 4

If Windows 7 is on the side, you can use Visual Studio Express, SQL Server Express to build your applications. Of course, this version has fewer features than the "big" ones, but it has a compiler, IntelliSense and many other things that make a solid option.

Since you mentioned Blend, I think you're interested in working with WPF, I don't think the Mono alternative is completely mature.

Answer 5

Since 2002, I have been a full-time developer of desktop and web applications .NET / C #, as well as a list of expensive products that you list, the only one I have ever paid for as a professional developer is Visual Studio .

The cost of the current version of Windows is almost inseparable from the cost of a new PC. SQL Server Express is free and absolutely sufficient for almost all development-related database needs. No need and do not use Expression Blend. ViEmu? It is no coincidence that I will pay for something as terrible as vi. I managed to do without any use of anything from Telerik.

Buying a copy of Visual Studio is far from an extraordinary investment in tools when you evaluate performance gains.

Answer 6

Well, it always depends on the specifics of your projects, but to the extent that this is not so, it may not be for a web application. There are many people who can code HTML / CSS, Javascript, SQL, and at least one of PHP, Python or Perl, so developers should be quite numerous. There is a whole bunch of frameworks, libraries and free code for everyone, and you can use them all in any combination that you like, without dollars down, without dollars a month.

As for the IDE, if you plan to hire web application developers and web applications that are uncomfortable working outside of the IDE, you're probably looking for the wrong place for developers. If you can't live without an IDE, then Eclipse is fine, if you have a pretty good developer, but I have to say that the best ninja codes I've come across use emacs or vim!

It is also nice to write code on a system with unlimited virtual desktops and the right command line. Having said that, I heard that MS has made some progress in these latest versions, so now they can be more aligned. I would not want to run a large project on Windows without making sure that there are good builds or tail equivalents, grep, systemtap / dtrace, etc.

It's funny, although the last web application I needed to do was mainly on Windows, as it is based on Flash. The IDE outbreak was a pure pain, but, fortunately, most of the donkeys were in the classes, so I used the large version of Notepad ++ for this, in any case, which is not particularly relevant to our discussion about the value of MS tools, so I will move around together!...

Upstairs, if you work on Windows after working on Linux, be sure to install Kat-Mouse and the Always On Top program, such as tables, tables, or you can quickly shut down your development machine!

Answer 7

Here you mix two questions.

If I were proposing a new project (for myself), would I go for the Windows platform?

How is the goal? Yes. How is the development of a platform? No.

If I chose a new project (for myself), would I choose C # as my language?

Yes. Most likely. The Mono project has a large set of tools that you can use to create Desktop, Silverlight, and web applications. Web applications run inside Apache, so you can use all of the common Open Source tools.

If you do everything right, you can even use Mono for Linux for Windows target clients for your desktop application (using the available Windows.Forms subset, which includes Mono).

If I chose a new project (for the company), would I choose the Windows platform?

Yes. The resulting performance is worth the extra cost. Microsoft also has several programs, such as BizSpark , that aim to reduce the cost of entry into development on the Windows platform.

Answer 8

I think this is a great question! Mostly because you asked about it without being judgmental. Here are some thoughts from me:

Visual Studio and all the tools are pretty good. It is quite expensive, but there are programs from Microsoft that can help with these costs. For example, in a small store, you can consider a TechNet subscription. Or one of Microsoft's many small business support programs, such as BizSpark .

Many .Net developers you hire will request or require Visual Studio for a good reason! They used it for many years, and it’s convenient for them. So be prepared for this. Not everyone will be like that, but most of them will be like that. They know their tools and use their tools.

This suggests that C # and .Net development is still text :) I personally use VIM for my .Net development, because I felt that many tools in Visual Studio were just bothering me. I had some problems with this, I am still using Visual Studio for a while, because I have something that I need. This is a great resource I use: C # with Vim Blog Posts

So, I would say try both ways and be open :) this is a great language and a lot of fun to try.

Answer 9

To answer this question, which is worth a +1 from me, in recent years, the Microsoft developer stack has declined in price with the advent of Express editions, since after Visual Studio 2003 we are talking about Visual Studio 2005, this is where Express editions began to appear so that increase the penetration of Visual Studio into a wider audience, using the version of barebones, which gave a wider audience a much greater appreciation of the study of Visual Studio and reflected in professional trading.

Now you can sign up for Dreamspark if you are a student, and use the professional version if your student ID is verified. Likewise, for businesses using BizSpark for businesses that want to deploy the Microsoft platform on the Internet.

Your question is more or less focused on additional features outside of Visual Studio. Please note: I'm not talking about MSDN (in fact, this is an extremely important part, since it is the pearl of the minefield of knowledge, knows how, etc., which is now freely available), which boils down to this - use only tools to do the work at first ! There is no point for a professional developer starting to use these additional services, since they are unlikely to have real value, and not just that they hit their wallet and bank account very hard, which is all the more useless!

Those articles that you are talking about, such additional services as Telerik, etc., allow you to get one point directly, I’m sure that he can add a beautiful face to your application, but who needs it? As long as you use the Visual tools to create the interface, add event handlers, add logic, test and debug it, you will understand that these additional functions are not really worth it, even end users will not care if it has a nice an eye-catching shade of the interface if end users do the job simply and efficiently.

Now, over the past few years, we have seen how Mono’s strength is growing and complying with .NET 2 standards, I’m not a Mono preacher, I’ve seen it and tried it, of course, you can combine the application for using Mono running on Linux, possibly the server interface, which interacts with MySQL, which conveys the results to simple forms of Windows, let me emphasize the words, you, as a developer, would have the choice and freedom . Perhaps work on this as part-time outside of working hours to research and learn. Of course, WinForms is somewhat reasonable in Linux, but just do not rely on Win API calls, as this will lead to undefined appearance and unexpected behavior in the context of the GUI application, if these are pure WinForms without DllImports, it is likely that it will work under Mono.

Of course, you are not necessarily tied to the Visual Studio platform, when SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop, Mono for Windows are available at your disposal, you need to think for a long time and see if this is at the end of all this, without harm, in using the version of Visual Studio Express for this, or even use SharpDevelop.

Simply put, explore your options while you use only the tools to do the job !

Answer 10

I will do my best to be objective here. Let it start with the background. I sometimes do VBA and VB Script, but this is pretty rare. I did not work with the older MS dev stack, but I worked with it a few years ago. Since then I have made the transition to working with PHP and Ruby on Rails. I am doing this from Windows because this is what I am familiar with. I talked to TON about the people who have been doing business with Ruby on Rails and PHP over the last couple of years, and one thing that strikes me as a template is the fact that I rarely see C # or VB (.net) developers on the street. When I do this, it is usually the one who is not so good. Perhaps this is a regional thing. Maybe .NET people live inside 9-5 development caves and only go out at certain times of the year. I do not know why this is so, but it is. The fact that .NET people, especially the good ones, is hard to find, is a cost that no one has yet discussed in this thread. Someone really mentioned that people who are dependent on an IDE for development may not be the best people who support this somewhat random hypothesis.

Do not get me wrong - I do not support PHP or Ruby on Rails, as all this is all. All I say here is that people are expensive. If you work with tools that are preferred by people who may not always be the sharpest in the city, then the benefits of the tools may be less important in general. If you have a large team, the additional costs of a toolbox can be better spent on a more competitive bonus or salary for people on the team. Again, this confirms the idea that you want the best team you can get in the first place.

All of this assumes that you have a choice of what you are doing from the very beginning. If you do not, there are really good tools offered by the MS dev community that are very useful. There are also tools like VMWare Server that balance the Windows / Linux partition. A smart team armed with good tools will succeed.

Answer 11

The debate about the quality of the result aside, it will be much easier for you to fill out the developer’s position on a new start by people who are used to working with VS, unlike developers who work great on Linux.

Answer 12

The cost of creating a computer for developing Windows is not so great in the grand scheme of things. Let's say it costs $ 10,000 (maybe too high) (to get all the software compared to $ 0 for an open source installation (assuming the cost of the equipment is the same). I would say that your choice would be depend a lot more on the developers you are. If your project manager is familiar with Windows and prefers Windows, don't you spend an extra forty or fifty thousand dollars (assuming a team of four or five people) gets something that suits him? Compared their salary and other employment costs 50 thousand dollars -.. it's not so much Obviously, this change if you do not have money to invest.

Answer 13

• The cost of setting up a development environment in Windows is not provided. to be so big.
• The cost of the dev environment is just a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the developers themselves. (This does not help a small startup or freelance programmer, though).

You get there, but I don’t think you really have a photo:

* 1 Visual Studio Express editions are free for commercial development. VS Express can be called "Express", but they are better than an IDE than anything I could find in the Open Source community (at least for my needs). There are also many other free tools, so you can work with several limitations of express releases (for example, source control is not integrated, but it is also easy to set up a Git repository in project folders)

If you want to continue working with the open source IDE for C # on Windows, you can use SharpDevelop or MonoDevelop (there is a version of Windows), but I believe that they are both inferior to VS Express editions. (I didn’t check at that time, though, everything could have changed).

Thus, actually creating a basic Windows development environment is not cheap, it's free.

I regularly work on small projects in C #. Express editions fulfilled my needs pretty well, and now I'm reviewing full versions using BizSpark https://www.microsoft.com/BizSpark/Startup/Signup.aspx

* 2 Here you are missing BizSpark. BizSpark is Microsoft's launch initiative. If your launch is less than 3 years, generating less than a million dollars in revenue and privately, Microsoft will provide you with downloads of the full Windows development environment, including almost all (VS Pro, all versions of SQL, premium MSDN, Vista, XP, Windows Server, Ms office, SDK ... and they even drop some free technical support). It lasts 3 years. When you exit the program, you need to pay $ 100, and you will receive everything except a subscription. (In addition, the license for non-dev products is for use only as part of the dev process, and not for normal use)

In other words, if you are a small startup, you get everything, and when you exit the program, it will cost you $ 100.

Windows development is not an expensive proposition, and the tools are great. Microsoft may be a lot of things, but stupid is not one of them. They know that their business depends mainly on the development ecosystem, and they greatly simplify development for Windows.