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by ZanyProgrammer 954 days ago
I assume they always kept it shitty as to not cannibalize VS Code, which does get a lot of use (obviously it's very popular). If you ever used it you'd see that it doesn't feel like normal Windows VS, and it doesn't really feel like a good native Mac app either.
3 comments
The_Colonel 954 days ago
> I assume they always kept it shitty as to not cannibalize VS Code,

What a strange take. Why wouldn't they rather not create it in the first place if they were so worried about cannibalizing their free product by ... another free product?

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dcgudeman 954 days ago
I agree it is strange take but unfortunately when you view everything through some sort of "big corp conspiracy" lense you end up with ideas like this. It's super common on hacker news. Tiresome but ever present.

The most logical explanation would be something like "they released this product because they were making a huge effort to get C# to be a truly cross platform language but the mac adoption remained low so they decided to retire this product and focus more on VS code which has massive adoption on mac"

But that would be too aligned with most developers priorities so it is not even on the radar for most people.

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babypuncher 954 days ago
This is because it wasn't originally a visual studio product. This is just the name they gave Xamarin Studio after the company was acquired by Microsoft.
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theandrewbailey 954 days ago
What? Isn't Visual Studio a paid product (aside from the Community edition)? VS Code is free, so if anything, they would keep VS Code as the shitty product.
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babypuncher 954 days ago
Visual Studio for Mac was also free. It also wasn't developed in house, it's just Xamarin Studio with a new name.

I think they are killing it for two reasons:

* Cross-platform .NET development on VS Code has gotten very good.

* JetBrains Rider is even better, especially for professionals, and becoming very hard to compete with.

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LoganDark 954 days ago
> if anything, they would keep VS Code as the shitty product.

Getting VS Code as popular as it is today was the strategy. For that, it needed to not be shitty.

The enshittification only began after they took over the market

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