[weavie]

Well, they're not taking that away from you. You can still get started with the basics. But even node apps can get big.

It's the debugging story I'm really digging here. Being able to just set a breakpoint and hit f5 is real exciting as opposed to having to type "debugger" in your code and then sit around for ages. It's a shame I do all my node work on a Mac.

I'm guessing this won't be available for VS express?

[jules]

Just like Python tools for VS it probably won't work with VS express, but it probably will work with the freely available VS shell (that is just the bare Visual Studio IDE without any existing language support in it). So you can get the whole package for free, but obviously only this node.js plugin will be open source.

[int_19h]

Unfortunately, it won't work with Visual Studio Shell. The problem is that NTVS relies on the JavaScript language service that comes in the box in VS (for web projects and Win8 Store apps) for syntax highlighting and code completion, and that support is not present in Shell. That said, we're trying to come up with something here similar to the free PTVS package, so stay tuned!

Here's the work item that tracks this: https://nodejstools.codeplex.com/workitem/520

[smortaz]

jules, PTVS is actually available as a standalone PTVS+VS package. That's basically "Python Express" built using the VS Shells.

NTVS Express is a great idea, and I've opened a ticket for it already in case anyone wants to upvote: https://nodejstools.codeplex.com/workitem/520

thx

[w0rd-driven]

WebMatrix 3 makes a decent free Node/PHP IDE. It isn't as polished as this looks to be and nothing really beats VS proper as it were but it makes a pretty convincing run at being second place behind VS Express and at least supports a basic idea of plugins/extensions.