[TomInAmsterdam]

ok technically not me but one of my team of developers wants to have a play around with WP (at last they are listening to me!) but has had some hurdles to get over to be able to start so I asked him to send me a list to see if anyone could help, below is his email:

These are difficulties:

• You need Windows 8 pro or greater to run emulator
• Visual Studio Express which is the free version of visual studio disables many things such as: Unit Testing and so you need crappy external components like NUnit which it is not that handy (price of visual studio: 600 euro)
• Documentation is still misleading because you hardly find what the things available on .NET library are but not available on .NET library for Mobile

But generally, C# and .NET are much nicer than Java and Objective-C and this could be a winning card.



We talked about running virtual machines with the developer test version of windows for 90 days but thats added hassle, it seems MS isnt making it as easy they could be to tempt developers!

[crash1989]

So what I understand from your issues is that you might have to pay too much money to get the services of Microsoft like Windows 8, Full Version of Visual Studio.

I suggest something like TechNet for Professionals or maybe dreamspark if you are students. If you want everything free I don't think you will find too much.

And you can't find libraries for .NET , what libraries are you guys looking for ?

Microsoft made it pretty easy for the likes of me (Android to WP) :) that said I have no idea what you guys intend to do so it might be a hassle.

Windows 8.1 RTM available for developers, VS2013 is on a slightly different timeline , November release I think although release candidates are available.

[Juro]

That stinks that they left unit testing off of the Express edition. I thought it was just add-ins like ReSharper that you'd be missing (which would be enough to drive me crazy).

You should check into BizSpark -- they give a lot of software & Azure credit, if you can qualify as a startup: BizSpark

And.....yes, Visual Studio is miles ahead of Eclipse or IntelliJ.....and C#/LINQ miles ahead of Android or anything in Java land.

[TomInAmsterdam]

Hi,

Well its more of having to go through a few hurdles and spend a bit of money before we can develop for WP, as I dont follow the dev channels much I didnt know it was this difficult, I have seen things such as cutting price of dev accounts etc but didnt know you still need things like Win8 Pro etc.

The WP stuff we are looking at are purely side/lab projects and not actually on our current roadmap although I can get the licenses we kinda want to start it all off as cheap as possible till we have something to show and maybe we can wedge it into the roadmap then ;)

I am a WP fan/user just not a developer, just seems MS could have made it cheaper & easier to get devs on board?

[crash1989]

Hi,

Well its more of having to go through a few hurdles and spend a bit of money before we can develop for WP, as I dont follow the dev channels much I didnt know it was this difficult, I have seen things such as cutting price of dev accounts etc but didnt know you still need things like Win8 Pro etc.

The WP stuff we are looking at are purely side/lab projects and not actually on our current roadmap although I can get the licenses we kinda want to start it all off as cheap as possible till we have something to show and maybe we can wedge it into the roadmap then ;)

I am a WP fan/user just not a developer, just seems MS could have made it cheaper & easier to get devs on board?

19$ license fee, Free SDK from Nokia and MSFT , Nokia Developer Program, DVLUP , App Campus, BizSpark. There is a lot of opportunity to get noticed and get stuff if you have the right idea