Because it takes time. Even with coding agents, to add the capability. Then, there is the question on whether Rust developers who like to engage with Microsoft tools, would really consider Visual Studio as their IDE, instead of something like VS Code, VS Code Agent Mode, GitHub Copilot App, or GitHub Copilot CLI with simpler editors.
I'd be curious to know whether Rust developers believe Visual Studio is the right place for Microsoft to invest Rust specific coding capabilities.
There's two ways to approach this — build tooling for existing Rust developers to get them to adopt the Microsoft stack, or build tooling for existing Microsoft stack developers to get them to adopt Rust.
I'd argue that the former is less important than the latter, and my understanding is that Visual Studio is still the IDE for Windows-centric development, so for those MS-first developers, Rust missing from VS means Rust is poorly supported, end of story.
It would have to be the 2nd option. Who in their right mind would voluntarily choose Windows as their dev env? It will have to be those who are already there.
Most people don't have a choice. Corporate IT has choosen what I run my machine on. I have used a native linux machine, but since my email is still on outlook, everybody uses teams, and all the non-code documents are on windows I end up having to have a windows machine. Linux in a VM under windows ends up being the easiest workflow (though I'm just starting to try WSL and so far it is looking good)
Outlook and Teams are both web apps, or at least they were when I last used them. Even if you download the "native" app it's just Electron. I haven't had trouble using either of them on Linux.
This kind of stuff is why its hard to have good conversations about tooling. Windows is the best place for many kinds of software dev, but perhaps not the kind you are doing.
When it is not the mandated option, under what circumstances is Windows the best choice for software dev? The only domain I can think of is gaming, and Valve is seemingly coming up fast to eat Microsoft's lunch in the next few years.
As mentioned: gaming, most of enterprise dev, graphics/gpu/cad, desktop, certain classes of embedded. Broadly speaking, outside of hacker/web/creative culture, the default is windows.
Regardless of how evil gigantic companies can be, or what the ideal world should look like: from a pure usability perspective, windows is top of the list.
If I got 5$ every time a linux/mac enthousiasts has to tell me they just cannot run something, and proposing a myriad of workarounds to stick to their ideology, I could buy an apple vision pro and let it collect dust in the corner of my basement.
Valve is certainly increasing the viability of Linux as a platform for gaming, but I can't see developers targeting Wine or Linux for a major game over Windows directly. Not for a decade, if ever.
Plenty of us do, so far Valve has failed to make native builds for Linux appealing for game studios, even though they already have to deal with similar APIs on Android, iDevices and PS/Switch.
Visual Studio brings a lot to the table for C++ development. Specifically the Debugger, although IntelliSense also often succeeds at queries that stump clangd.
If they can replicate that capability, I think it can be a draw.
I was a mac / Linux guy before my current gig, but Visual Studio is so much more capable than XCode that I basically only use the Windows machine except to debug mac-specific issues. Less so, now, admittedly, that the malware scanner process is literally always pegging a CPU core.
in Windows, some teams/people use it others don't. Historically it hasn't worked well with some of the internal build/test/etc stuff, that's mostly changed in recent years.
Because it takes time. Even with coding agents, to add the capability. Then, there is the question on whether Rust developers who like to engage with Microsoft tools, would really consider Visual Studio as their IDE, instead of something like VS Code, VS Code Agent Mode, GitHub Copilot App, or GitHub Copilot CLI with simpler editors.
I'd be curious to know whether Rust developers believe Visual Studio is the right place for Microsoft to invest Rust specific coding capabilities.
There's two ways to approach this — build tooling for existing Rust developers to get them to adopt the Microsoft stack, or build tooling for existing Microsoft stack developers to get them to adopt Rust.
I'd argue that the former is less important than the latter, and my understanding is that Visual Studio is still the IDE for Windows-centric development, so for those MS-first developers, Rust missing from VS means Rust is poorly supported, end of story.
It would have to be the 2nd option. Who in their right mind would voluntarily choose Windows as their dev env? It will have to be those who are already there.
Most people don't have a choice. Corporate IT has choosen what I run my machine on. I have used a native linux machine, but since my email is still on outlook, everybody uses teams, and all the non-code documents are on windows I end up having to have a windows machine. Linux in a VM under windows ends up being the easiest workflow (though I'm just starting to try WSL and so far it is looking good)
> (though I'm just starting to try WSL and so far it is looking good)
WSL is really nice, as is Windows Terminal. I particularly love its fonts (but that's probably just me).
Did they ever fix terminal performance?
Mostly, yes. They didn't really apologize for the abuse they sent towards Muratori but they did essentially wind up with the architecture he proposed.
I think just running cmd still uses much less memory but Terminal is much, much faster than it was.
Outlook and Teams are both web apps, or at least they were when I last used them. Even if you download the "native" app it's just Electron. I haven't had trouble using either of them on Linux.
Outlook is native. There is the new web version that it says don't use (yet)
Which sends your login data straight to microsoft
This kind of stuff is why its hard to have good conversations about tooling. Windows is the best place for many kinds of software dev, but perhaps not the kind you are doing.
When it is not the mandated option, under what circumstances is Windows the best choice for software dev? The only domain I can think of is gaming, and Valve is seemingly coming up fast to eat Microsoft's lunch in the next few years.
As mentioned: gaming, most of enterprise dev, graphics/gpu/cad, desktop, certain classes of embedded. Broadly speaking, outside of hacker/web/creative culture, the default is windows.
Regardless of how evil gigantic companies can be, or what the ideal world should look like: from a pure usability perspective, windows is top of the list.
If I got 5$ every time a linux/mac enthousiasts has to tell me they just cannot run something, and proposing a myriad of workarounds to stick to their ideology, I could buy an apple vision pro and let it collect dust in the corner of my basement.
Game development, graphics programming and GUI tooling.
The alternative being macOS, if Apple actually had competitive prices for all kinds of world economies.
Valve is certainly increasing the viability of Linux as a platform for gaming, but I can't see developers targeting Wine or Linux for a major game over Windows directly. Not for a decade, if ever.
Plenty of us do, so far Valve has failed to make native builds for Linux appealing for game studios, even though they already have to deal with similar APIs on Android, iDevices and PS/Switch.
Visual Studio brings a lot to the table for C++ development. Specifically the Debugger, although IntelliSense also often succeeds at queries that stump clangd.
If they can replicate that capability, I think it can be a draw.
I was a mac / Linux guy before my current gig, but Visual Studio is so much more capable than XCode that I basically only use the Windows machine except to debug mac-specific issues. Less so, now, admittedly, that the malware scanner process is literally always pegging a CPU core.
Visual Studio does have a really nice C++ debugger - one would imagine the C++ debugging capabilities should translate to Rust.
Hot code reloading, and incremental linking would be great, given the build times.
> Because it takes time.
That's an excuse, not the reason.
IntelliJ RustRover has been around for years.
Similarly, VS Code has had Rust plugins written by the community in their spare time years ago.
> Even with coding agents
Because of coding agents? :D
Microsoft doesn’t use Visual Studio internally for many of its products such as Windows.
This is a shocking news to me. Can you elaborate with sources?
in Windows, some teams/people use it others don't. Historically it hasn't worked well with some of the internal build/test/etc stuff, that's mostly changed in recent years.
Given how long it took visual studio to get 64bit support, I wouldn't hold your breath!
( Edit: I should probably inform the layperson: It was Visual Studio 2022 )
It's only tier-1 for internal Microsoft use.
And for all we know, it might be officially supported in their internal builds of Visual Studio.
Because it is already supported in VS Code.
I don't think this is a hot take, but I'm predicting Microsoft will gradually phase out Visual Studio in favor of VS Code.
Agreed but I think you need to pry Visual Studio from VB.NET developers' cold dead hands.
C++ developers, too. I suppose they're splitting out the real powerful stuff (Debugger, LSP) for VSCode's consumption.
It is, with extensions (using rust-analyzer of course). I don't know what's the status inside Microsoft.