While demoscene stuff is seriously impressive most are using a shit load of DirectX to do what they do in such a small size. They are not bare metal demos.
"The development environment coders will use is based on Windows 7 and fully integrated with Visual Studio 2010 and 2012, allowing developers to debug PS4 code just like PC code. Tools will include C and C++ front ends that are largely compatible with most standard compilers, and various binary utilities, including CPU and GPU analyzers that can run in real time alongside games. Development houses will also be able to distribute tool and version updates to multiple dev kits more easily through a tool integrated into Windows Explorer."
There is a massive difference between just bundling your additional software with your operating system and integrating (for no technical reason) your software with the operating system so that using an alternative is extremely difficult if not impossible (for the average user).
While I do believe that Microsoft should be able to include whatever it wants with Windows I want to be able to replace those parts with alternatives with zero friction.
Imagine if the US and the EU had not taken Microsoft up on this? We would still be using a god awful web browser which would have more than likely stalled the web from growing the way it has over the past decade and therefore not allowing a lot of the amazing web services we have today to exist. The same with media players. Look how crappy WMP is still compared to things like VLC. Or god forbid we would still have to buy things like CyberLink PowerDVD to play back DVDs because they are "allowed" by Microsoft to replace the built in media player for things.
Forcing Microsoft to split things up has done wonders for the IT world and while a lot of people see the huge fines as pointless they are very much not.
In the 90s Microsoft used its power to stall the growth of the web by several years. It was not until Firefox (and more recently Chrome) came along that Microsoft pulled its thumb from its ass and started to improve Internet Explorer much like it was not until Linux really got a hold in the server space in the early 2000s that Microsoft started to improve its server operating systems.
The same can be said for many parts of the IT world. Databases for example. Pressure from MySQL and PostgrSQL undoubtedly forced Microsoft to improve SQL Server (who remembers how god awful SQL 2000 was?). Even programming languages like Java and Python, etc. pushed Microsoft to make better languages (C#, F#) and platforms (.NET) and give away free tools (Visual Studio Express).
They had to as they had made the entry level to developing for the Windows platform (client and server) too expensive for individuals so they were going with the free tools as that was the only route someone could take if they wanted to get into development.
That is why we now have individual targeted tools for people to start with (the Express line as mentioned) so that Microsoft does not lose everyone to the free alternatives.
Pretty much the only product line that has survived the old Microsoft ways is the Office line because even with OpenOffice businesses couldn't make the jump for compatibility reasons (another awful thing about Microsoft).
Things are starting to change with things like Google Docs (mainly for small businesses) however I hope to see more competition in the next decade as with HTML5 it will be possible to provide a solid Office replacement as a web app.
The key for the enterprise in my opinion is the ability to offer this internally rather than an externally hosted solution like Google Docs though. Time will tell if I am right but I would bet that I am.
Hell even for Windows development I still use Linux with a Windows VM for Visual Studio. Windows 8 runs really smooth in VMware Workstation even on my 4 year old Core 2 Duo
For just a general surf the internet machine sure Linux has a lot of power that just isn't needed (and a lot of the time a lot of hassle to get it working right) and Windows does a good enough job. However I really dislike Windows for development. Perhaps I am just spoilt by the Linux (and GNU) world of tools but Windows to me is a real hassle to get working "right" for a developer machine.
Honestly I don't have an issue with Firefox/Chrome for the rapid version number increases. A browser is the most updated (or should be) bit of software on your computer. Honestly I don't even think of the version of Firefox or Chrome these days. They are just "Firefox" and "Chrome". This is much better for general users IMHO as it just means they use "Firefox" and not "Firefox 4.1.2" or whatever. A consistent update schedule makes a public version number pointless and it has, at least in my experience, made extension developers better at building extensions that don't break because I have upgraded from version 15 to 16 like we had back in the Firefox v2/3/4 years.
At the end of the day when the version number isn't really known to the end user it makes little difference if you bump up the major version number or the minor.
Also I love how quickly we get new features now. Firefox has improved more in the past year than it did in the past several years before the shift to a 6 week release cycle. It isn't suited to all software I admit but for a browser it is perfect. None of this "This site only works with Firefox XX or Chrome XX". Thank god!
> at least in my experience, made extension developers better at building extensions that don't break because I have upgraded from version 15 to 16 like we had back in the Firefox v2/3/4 years.
This is more caused by Firefox stopping to break the compatibility all the time. The plugin API in Firefox used to be just the internals, exposed to JS, so everytime something changed, it broke extensions. These days, they stopped doing that quite as often plus they published the Jetpack SDK which promises a stable API at the cost of less possibilities to change the browsers behaviour.
Unless I am doing very heavy weight development work all of my dev envs are in VMware Worktstation virtual machines. So flexible to work with and I can archive off the whole devenv with the project once complete knowing I can just load it back up in a few minutes if I need to in the future. Bliss.
Same here. So if my tower blows up for whatever reason, I can be up and running by installing VMware and loading my basic environment image from a backup. Pull down the latest code and I'm good to go.
