I don't get it either. There was already a VS2012, and changing to VS2013 for a few months seems like a decision driven by some weird force. Waiting to release for another 3 months would not have killed anyone.
Not really. I (tried) WinRT development when the Surface first came out. The API is pretty bare and lacks a lot of frameworks and general tools that you take for granted in iOS/Android land.
Expanding the API, at least in that direction, is probably a great thing.
An API is like a platform or a mini-platform. 5,000 of them makes no sense. Do they mean 5,000 new API function calls in the Windows platform or something? Although that would be insanely large too. I don't get it.
The only appearance of 5,000 I can find is the following one in the Visual Studio 2013 Preview announcement [1].
»In that context, we have our Build 2013 developer conference this week in San Francisco, where approximately 5000 developers have gathered in person (with many thousands more watching virtually) from around the world to discuss the next generation of software development with platforms and tools from Microsoft.«
Maybe someone just confused developers and APIs...
I don't know where this horrible practice originated, but this usually means 5000 function calls, yes. I often hear people say "do {this website] have APIs" too, with plurals.
A single function call specification is an API; and the union of two APIs is an API. So it's perfectly cromulent to say "We added 5000 new APIs to the WinRT API", as bizarre and confusing as it sounds, though AIUI only Microsoft routinely refers to single function signatures as APIs -- perhaps to make their products sound more impressive.
That URL would have me believe that it's a third party add-on, pytools, that has support VS2013. Am I misunderstanding, or does VS2013 actually support python natively?
bskap is correct. It's developed by Microsoft as a free & open source extension to VS. You can use the VS "Shell" with PTVS to create a fully functional and free Python IDE. Support is via the forums on codeplex. The good part is that it's monitored directly by the devs on the team.
Yesterday i had to explain to some people i work with what Microsoft is, they dont know it, and dont understand it, they are used to android these days. And find the whole thing confusing why pay for it ?.. its hard to justify or explain..
I'm sorry but I can't parse "5000 new APIs", I start bleeding out of my nose. This is spam and incredibly shoddy journalism, even by engadget standards. Flagged.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 89.8 ms ] threadI'm not complaining as I get it on MSDN under my subscription.
Expanding the API, at least in that direction, is probably a great thing.
An API is like a platform or a mini-platform. 5,000 of them makes no sense. Do they mean 5,000 new API function calls in the Windows platform or something? Although that would be insanely large too. I don't get it.
More likely they're just sloppily enumerating function endpoints.
»In that context, we have our Build 2013 developer conference this week in San Francisco, where approximately 5000 developers have gathered in person (with many thousands more watching virtually) from around the world to discuss the next generation of software development with platforms and tools from Microsoft.«
Maybe someone just confused developers and APIs...
[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2013/06/26/visual-...
I was worried for a minute there.
I don't know any product that could even reach 5000 API calls. Win32 isn't anywhere near that even after 20+ years.
I think Apple meant new methods, classes and possibly even the options that you could pass as arguments.
Whatever it means I don't think that more is necessarily better and I hope no one has adding APIs as a performance metric!
> "Lion offers over 3,000 new APIs covering a range of new technologies and capabilities."
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20130425175054/https://developer....
A single function call specification is an API; and the union of two APIs is an API. So it's perfectly cromulent to say "We added 5000 new APIs to the WinRT API", as bizarre and confusing as it sounds, though AIUI only Microsoft routinely refers to single function signatures as APIs -- perhaps to make their products sound more impressive.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2013/06/26/announcing...
'Managed return value inspection' is a nice enhancement too.
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/2013-downloads
Yesterday i had to explain to some people i work with what Microsoft is, they dont know it, and dont understand it, they are used to android these days. And find the whole thing confusing why pay for it ?.. its hard to justify or explain..