back to article Microsoft under fire again from open-source .NET devs: Hot Reload feature pulled for sake of Visual Studio sales

Microsoft has enraged the open-source .NET community by removing flagship functionality from open-source .NET to bolster the appeal of Visual Studio, not least against its cross-platform cousin Visual Studio Code. The two key pieces in this latest unrest are this pull request in the open-source .NET SDK repository on GitHub, …

  1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    tl;dr Microsoft says fuck you devs.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well, so the obvious has finally been established on a very consistent pattern.

    They did not really change. They just realized that there's no cloud service without open source support.

    Now, same goes for most of the other cloud behemoths, so whatever. It's not like Google's AOSP or Chromium are really that committed to openness, or Amazon's forks entirely born out of a thirst for some good old Extend, Embrace, Extinguish, are due to their absolute commitment to the cause.

    Still, if anyone out there expected anything other than tacit acknowledgement, they are sure to be disappointed now.

    As they should. Hopefully that'll bring awareness to the ones naive enough to waste their time contributing to these project.

  4. Peter-Waterman1

    Same old Msft

    Satya Nadella was rising in the ranks during the Ballmer era, in fact, he was a senior exec. When he took over as the man, they polished him up, branded him as the all-new face of the new, softer, Microsoft. The reality is the culture is the same as it always has been, focused on keeping their Windows monopoly protected at the expense of their customers while pretending they are the good guys. Just look at what licencing changes they are pushing recently - removing MSDN rights from other clouds, removing Windows Bring your own licence from other clouds, changing SQL licencing on other clouds, stopping you run office on other clouds, increasing SPLA licencing costs for other clouds. Now they are starting to renege on their promise of open-source...Same old Microsoft and more fool you if you believe their PR bullshit.

  5. ecofeco Silver badge

    Zombiesoft

    MS is a company that by all logical reason should not exist, yet does.

    Every single product in their history has been bad to problematic at best. As has been their support.

    It is obviously a zombie the way it eats brains and shambles along.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Zombiesoft

      "Every single product in their history has been bad to problematic at best."

      Not quite. FORTRAN for CP/M was fine. Of course, that was a few years ago.

      1. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: Zombiesoft

        Even serial killers can be nice sometimes.

  6. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Meh

    Solution

    Try a proper programming language supported on all platforms rather than a noddy language which can be changed at the whim of MS' marketing department.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Solution

      Agreed. And ironically, you don't even need to change language.

      CSharp.NET is basically just Java. Built off that same old crusty VM Alef / Limbo architecture goodness from Plan 9.

    2. adamXpeter

      Re: Solution

      May I suggest Java? Nicely done by Oracle :D

      1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Solution

        Nicely done by Oracle :D

        You forgot the sarcasm icon.

        Let's have a drink to James Gosling

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Feels like a similar approach was applied to Homebrew (brew.sh) over the years by the MS project leader. Loads of useful features such as X11 support has been removed for various "good" reasons, discussions being shut down. Example: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/issues/31510

  8. captain veg Silver badge

    correct me if I'm wrong...

    ... but wasn't this functionality in classic Visual Basic since version 1?

    -A.

    1. IamAProton

      Re: correct me if I'm wrong...

      I remember it was working in VB6. Hit a breakpoint, fix the code, keep going.

      They reintroduced it years ago, but I've never been able to use it (= the 'out of the box experience' sucks).

      Now I hit a breakpoint, I forget debugger iss running, I change the code, VS asks me if I want to edit or stop, I say, "Edit, why not?" and It doesn't work so I restart the debugger.

      That's with the .net framework that works (not the core), I assume in the .net core is equally bad.

  9. G40

    At best maladroit PR, at worst, who knows.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you have to ask whether Microsoft in "truly committed" to OSS, you haven't been paying attention to their lineage and history.

    They are only interested in OSS when it supports the profit models. If it cuts revenue, it doesn't happen.

  11. F.Domestica

    One of the "fun" things about dealing with Microsquish is that they're really bad at getting everyone to agree ob a shared strategy. I have seen situations where, eg, the rep from the browser group was working hard to promote an idea while the rep from the database group was apparently there to throw up roadblocks. A coherent message and consistent policy may be too much to hope for at any moment, never mind from week to week. Ditto learning from past mistakes; that too requires that they talk to each other (if not to the developers).

    So this doesn't _have_ to be malicious. But that doesn't make it much less of an issue.

    I am using .net right now under protest, because the tooling I want to use is biased toward it. Otherwise, especially given that it seems to be "cast in Jello", I'd have continued to avoid/ignore it.

    Dot NOT?

    1. Smartypantz

      Always thought of it as ".NJET" :-)

  12. adamXpeter

    Hello, dear MS haters

    It is back: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/net-hot-reload-support-via-cli/

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Hello, dear MS haters

      It's always a good sign when your roadmap depends on enough Twitter users getting their pitchforks out.

      1. Citizen of Nowhere

        Re: Hello, dear MS haters

        And yet, so many roadmaps these days depend on precisely that, MSFT or otherwise.

  13. IamAProton

    We made a mistake in executing on our decision [because we thought we could get away with it]

    I'm developing in the MS world for more than a decade.

    Usually with MS the "development experience" has always been good. I understand they are a business and they have to keep getting new devs on board; in the past it was basic/access/vb, everybody is a developer! (and we are still paying the price now, just look at what kind of garbage software is running in any sizeable company), recently they shifted into the opensource-(nothing wrong with it)-hipster-kids-pleasing mode and the whole .net core has been very disappointing. Version after version with breaking changes, even between 'point' releases. And what's worse is that everybody seems super excited to jump on it, like a new update for an app, doesn't matter if it's objectively worse.

    I've managed to stay almost entirely out of it (still have to deal with application written by others...) and still targeting .net 4.8 if I'm sure the application is going to be needed for just few years. Good job MS.

    The .net framework is(was?) good to build applications quickly, without getting lost into managing memory and other tedious things and so far it worked well,

    I don't care if it's 10% slower than C++. One of its winning features was consistency: I've updated dozens of applications going through version after version without an issue, now try to update .net core 2.0 to 2.1 or, god forbid, 3.1. A fucking headache, worse then the infamous DLL-hell.

    I am a "MS developer" but I use Linux since few years. I'm loyal to stuff-that-works; If MS manages to piss off the new kids that feels manly because they have to use command line (because the tooling is missing) it could be a problem in the long run.

    PostgreSQL? Never thought about it since recently. Now it's running on my dev pc ;-)

    As a senior developer (=my opinion matters when company has to spend money, in case MS is reading) I am trying not to get too tied to MS (avoid all the cloudy MS specific things).

    I recommend them to get their shit together quickly before it's too late.

    1. Fat Guy In A Little Coat

      Re: We made a mistake in executing on our decision [because we thought we could get away with it]

      All of this.

      Other than cross platform capabilities, I haven't seen anything in which Core is better than Framework.

      And the real reason they pushed that is to boost Azure usage.

  14. chuBb.

    Unsurprised at the climb down, my gut always said it would be reinstated in the 2022.1 update because they learnt lessons from shipping ef migrations without a ui.. . The whole justification sounded much more like "can't schedule a working ui before rtm" than "mwahahahaha suckers premium feature only" truth is probably between those two though. Still a lot of 90s bulmerites in senior roles in redmond

    As for all the hoo Haa it's just young bloods finding out ms's lipservice to Foss is just that, and they will be first to complain about a "janky workflow" with initial release. Then be shocked to discover ms build is its own dsl, and its always quicker to write a batch file and invoke it during build than to let vs handle it...

  15. adamXpeter

    It is restored

    https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/net-hot-reload-support-via-cli/

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Hot Reload feature pulled for sake of Visual Studio sales"

    Except for the fact that they give away the community edition of Visual Studio for free, and the code has already been merged back into dotnet watch. But that doesn't make a great story I guess, much better to just bash Microsoft...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > Except for the fact that they give away the community edition of Visual Studio for free

      Are you quite sure about that? Free to individuals maybe but my $large-SI employer has signed up to some shit licensing deal whereby we're not allowed to install the community edition. I'm supposed to use the pukka VS. That's great except that my job title is not "developer" therefore I don't get VS automatically and so I need a project code to charge it against and get someone to raise a mandatory purchase order. That rather puts the kybosh on a quick proof of concept before committing to one way or another to something.

      It's not just MS: VMware are doing the same with VMware Studio where I now have to jump through hoops to get a licence. And since it's only a fiver a month or something silly, the internal cost of raising a PO is far more than that so it won't happen.

      1. bigtimehustler

        Yea, but you obviously don't want to make it happen either as otherwise you'd just install it on your home laptop, see if it meets requirements and then get the PO raised.

    2. jilocasin
      Facepalm

      Doesn't help....

      Microsoft may:

      "...give away the community edition of Visual Studio for free..."

      but last I checked it's a Windows only product.

      Mac users get the warmed over, rebranded Ximian Studio and Linux users are poop outta luck.

      Of course, .Net is supposedly open source. One doesn't usually strip working features just to give your proprietary product a leg up on the community.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Huh? What just happened?

    I think chuBb got it about right. We're seeing a lot of this "can't schedule...blah blah blah". "Resource constraints". etc. Same bs justification Mozilla gave for yanking the rug out from under PWAs in desktop Firefox. Still, as chu writes, there are those in Redmond who still think "embrace, extend, extinguish" was a fine strategy and so bear watching. In this case it looks like the reaction of the community was both rapid enough and loud enough to prevent Microsoft from "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory".

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Will Not Be Satisfied

    Until "Don't be Evil" appears in the code of conduct

  19. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    The real terror Microsoft is really worried about ....... and probably quite a few others too

    A denial from Microsoft will not change the shape and the flavour and the course of future developers event horizons which wrest leading control leverage out of the cold cruel hands of parasitic corporations and wannabe authoritarians ....

    In the very near future will that be somewhat reversed with Cloud developers presenting to ARM/silicon partners virtual requirements for chip designs to execute proprietary intellectual property via coded instruction sets which realise in a certain universally acceptable order, a very specific pre-ordained result. ....... https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2021/10/18/arms_virtual_hardware/#c_4351591

  20. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "We made a mistake in executing on our decision"

    The execution is being blamed, not the decision.

    Translation: We forgot that you have to take it gradually when trying to boil a frog.

  21. Adair Silver badge

    If .NET is truly open source...

    then presumably it may be time to stick a fork in it.

  22. Blackjack Silver badge

    Lesson learned, if you are using .NET think about start using something else.

  23. Zippy´s Sausage Factory
    Flame

    "is Microsoft serious about .NET being an open-source platform?"

    They're serious about people treating .NET as though it were as developer-friendly as an open-source platform, and they're serious about trying to get all the benefits that being open-source might grant them.

    But do they actually want it to be open-source? No, of course not. Anything that brings in more money, in the eyes of Microsoft's KPI-loving MBAs, is better than anything that brings in less money. And the first question any manager who's tasked with profits first, customers second is going to ask is "but... can't we charge money for that"?

    Also, what's the offs that the feature - that would, as open source, have been available in all versions of Visual Studio - will now likely be available only in the frighteningly expensive "Enterprise" version of Visual Studio?

    Rant over.

    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      "Open source" and "We've decided" does not fit well together. But literally, "Open source" just means "You can read the source code". Not to, you know, use it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Dont Confuse

        Open Source and Community Driven are not the same thing, unless you think that the author of a book wants your critique and suggestions as to how they could do the plot better, complaining that MS dont want your contributions is the same thing.

        Lots of Open Source Projects are Community Driven but not all

        Lots of Closed Source things are also community driven (just look at the online games that succeed and continue to succeed)

        If you can access the source your free to modify it (license depending), but the original source of the source is under no obligation to take or want your efforts. In .net's case i dont see community driven being a desirable thing at all (i dont care how a generic list is implemented for example just that it behaves the same between language versions) the only benefit i see from .net being open sourced is more eyes looking at it which theoretically improves security and makes it more likely the mistakes of the .net micro framework wont be repeated and alternative compilers may emerge that do a niche job better than the standard roslyn ones does, or do people think a lot of the ego driven cliquey dev efforts of the javascript based front end web lot is worth emulating?

  24. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    A Virtually Real Persecution ..... and/or Just Desserts Levelling Up the Playing Field ‽ .

    If .NET is truly open source... then presumably it may be time to stick a fork in it. ..... Adair

    That's another worry already well done and now prone to terrifying Microsoft because of what IT can do to/for Operating Systems Administrators/Special Operations Executives ....... and that be, some ambulance chasing lawyers types might insist, a suitable case for the award and reward of monumental punitive damages in a classy action prosecution exploring negligent proprietary intellectual property development in-house.

  25. Kev99 Silver badge

    I'm not a developer so pardon my ignorance. And personally, if .Net is coded as well as microsoft's other products I'd never touch it.

    So my curiosoty asks why couldn't a code pull those few hundred lines and drop them into whatever project they're working on? Isn't .net supposed to be "open source"?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You could, but it would require people to install and use your forked copy, not impossible just a non desirable solution for mass adoption.

      As i said above, open source is not the same as community driven, their are plenty of open source projects where the source is free, but the docs and support only exist if you pay a hefty fee, and good luck getting it up and running if you dont have time to pick apart the code to work out just what the magic config file value should be, yes is open source but thats not the same as making it useful or even wanting community contributions to its code base apart from reproducable bug reports.

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