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Microsoft has decided that if you want to use these things to write desktop apps, you have to pay. The free Express tools will produce only two things: Metro-style applications for Windows 8, and websites.
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Redmond has decided not only that Visual Studio Express users should have the ability to develop Metro-style applications: they should have no other choice.
In practice, you'll probably have to pay even for Metro development. Windows 8 won't, in general, support side-loading of Metro-style applications. Developers won't be able to stick a Metro-style application that they wrote themselves onto their website and let people download it. Every application will have to go through the Windows store, and will be subject to Microsoft's approval. Submitting applications to the store will probably cost money, even for free applications; Microsoft charges Windows Phone developers $99 per year, and a similar pricing scheme is likely for Windows 8.
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It gets worse
Just to make doubly sure that nobody will dare try to produce desktop applications without paying Redmond for the privilege, Microsoft has gone a step further than crippling Visual Studio Express. The Windows SDK for Windows 7 includes a C++ compiler and all the requisite bits and pieces to develop Windows applications. You'd have to do a bit more work to get things set up than you do with Visual Studio, as it's a little barebones, but it's enough. But that won't be the case for Windows 8: the Windows SDK for windows 8 will not include a compiler toolchain at all, lest any sneaky developers try to cheat the system and use it to write desktop apps.
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for the company to completely rule out even the option of using its current tools for the free development of desktop applications, whether for hobbyists, beginners, or open source developers, is a huge step backward. It threatens to make Windows inaccessible to a large body of current and future programmers, and casts an ominous shadow over the entire desktop.
No-cost desktop software development is dead on Windows 8
[Ovu poruku je menjao Stefan Markic dana 25.05.2012. u 08:45 GMT+1]