Are Malls Over? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/03/are-malls-over.html <comment><USER2> Forcing shopping activity and gathering into indoor brutalist buildings is dying, shopping centers are not. Look at union sq, 4th st, walnut creek, and many others in the sf bay. All are stronger than ever by offering very high end retail mixed with high quality independent offerings and unique chef- driven eateries.

What people have abandoned is indoor, stale, sunlight less, copycat malls with the same awful pizza and Chinese chains and the same terrible jewelry stores.

People want shopping centers to reflect regional and local character, be in town centers, and offer high quality unique options with a few staples. Get rid of the huge parking lots and add a grocer.

However tacitly this article is pointing to a possible larger problem in the Midwest where cold weather, and permanently depressed economy and a talent drain is leaving them without the tools to build interesting gathering places. This is a far larger and sadder issue.

<comment><USER3> In Europe, malls are still constructed in many places and they have the advantage of being built a few decades after many of the US malls.

Where I live summers are a bit too warm and winters a bit too cold to make outdoor shopping joyful. Also, streets are noisy and full of aggressive drivers and the sidewalks are full of holes and broken tiles. So in the last few years this 1.5M population city has seen the construction of 10 shopping malls, most of which are actually really nice "gathering places" as you put it and most of which seem to thrive.

One advantage from most of the US malls that I have been to is that cars are parked under the malls, not around them, that most of the malls are built near subway or tram stops and that they somehow fit nicely into the surrounding architecture.

Often the malls are built in the city center and usually in a very nice quality. Usually the malls have one major supermarket chain in the basement that acts as an anchor store and usually they have a cinema and a food court in the top floor that offers not just the usual fast food but often also some decent food.

I really enjoy shopping in a mall and until someone fixes the problem of waiting and paying for delivery I don't see online shopping making malls obsolete.

<comment><USER4> A few years ago I went to a mall in Stuttgart. The interesting thing was I could have been in any mall in America. The layout, architecture, parking garage, etc., was right out of the US, and even the advertising was all in English. It's like eating at McDonald's in Tokyo. What's the point?

<comment><USER5> _What 's the point?_

To quote Pulp fiction "It's the little differences". I love going to malls and supermarkets when I'm in a new country or city. Sure they're 95% the same, but those other 5% are often unique for the area and quite telling.

<comment><USER4> I lived in Germany around 1970 when there were no malls or McDonald's there. What was fun was even department stores were palpably different than in the US. Everything was different, and that made it much more fun. Even the grocery stores were way, way different (I sure loved the German cheese selection!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If only there was some way to organically grow outdoor shopping areas, in central, easy to reach locations, with a distributed ownership structure ensuring that no single entity can ruin the whole area. Maybe some historically significant structures (town halls, parks, etc.) could even add a sense of civitas to the whole thing.

We could call these things something catchy... like "downtowns".

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't be as profitable as "The Downtown™ by Westfield"

<comment><USER8> It would be if they also invested in the residential real estate around it. If you only focus on commercial properties, you're ignoring the value you are adding to other real estate investments in the area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't go to them much anymore, but every time I do, I notice what a strange place it is. The stores are mostly bad, the food is of course terrible, very limited natural light, the list goes on. I can't imagine what "experience" we all thought we were enjoying in these grayboxes for so many years. True, there is a human need to congregate. But why do it in there?

\--

There is a reluctance among posters here to consider a "yes" to the question in the title. Which seems strange and perhaps self-conscious. Consider:

"Mall traffic, for a number of years, has been slowing down. Whether it continues to decline somewhat over time, I think that's realistic to assume."

People from companies as large as the Gap rarely get more explicit than that when talking about dying aspects of their business. The writing is on the wall, folks.

<comment><USER10> _I can 't imagine what "experience" we all thought we were enjoying in these grayboxes for so many years._

The indoor shopping mall was, initially, a huge convenience. You could drive to one place, park once (usually for free), and visit a variety of shops in climate-controlled comfort (nice in rainy/winter seasons or hot summers). Most people found this preferable to driving all over town or even to a central downtown or shopping district, hunting and paying to park on the street or in a remote garage, and having to walk from shop to shop outdoors. As malls got bigger and bigger, though, the shops became more and more specialized and less interesting to most shoppers. Walking vast distances between the one or two shops you want to visit just recreated the original problem.

Young people used to like to hang out at malls because it was something to do. There was usually a video game arcade and movie theatres, offering entertainment you could not get at home. You could browse shops with friends, and catch up on gossip. Before mobile phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc. you actually had to stay in touch face-to-face and meeting at the mall was easy.

So malls are dying because a) most of them are too big and b) most of the social and entertainment opportunities have been replaced by technology.

<comment><USER11> I thought the experience of malls were essentially like that of casinos, in that they were designed so you would lose track of time and buy/gamble more?

<comment><USER12> The allure was that you knew you could look at one store, and then another, without having to drive across town.

Now that we order online, comparison shop online, etc, why would I want to walk through Sears vs JC Penney? (for example) The internet ate the convenience aspect of the malls, and left only the social aspect or the Shopping Experience itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Instead of "reinventing malls", how about "reinventing" what's left of the downtown shopping district in cities and towns?

I think the only way to compete with online shopping and with Wal-Mart, is with an experience that goes beyond efficient commerce. Some people, some of the time, will gravitate toward an authentic in-person social environment that is interesting overall, and which happens to include interesting shops.

This also tends to make the place more interesting for tourists, which at least up to a point can have a beneficial impact

<comment><USER14> You get it. We need to fix a lot of American mass transit infrastructure though to make this feasible. Getting into the city is not easy or cheap in many places in the United States. And we cannot just rely on the cheap trick of using parking garages and highways to get people into the city anymore - that's part of what killed cities in the first place.

<comment><USER10> Mass transit is OK for commuters who can tolerate the homeless-shelter-on- wheels aspect of it, but not good for shoppers, since it limits your per-trip purchases to what you can carry.

<comment><USER15> In Kentucky (and probably the midwest in general), mass transit effectively does not exist.

<comment><USER10> I'm in the midwest and I agree. You need a certain critical mass of population density and enough common destinations for mass transit to work. From what I can tell, this is a lot higher than the population needed to sustain a mall.

Our town does have a bus system but most of them drive around empty or nearly so most of the time. We also have a decent indoor mall and several outdoor "big box store" shopping centers which all seem to be surviving if not thriving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This again? I remember reading malls were over 15 years ago and yet all of the malls in my corner of Los Angeles are still open and thriving. All have been renovated at least once since the first batch of "malls are over" articles many years back. Some have converted a bit of their indoor space to outdoor (such as Del Amo in Torrance, which was one of the largest in the United States). Some have converted from outdoor then back to partially indoor when they realized that shoppers don't like being cold.

Yes, retailers face heated competition from the likes of Amazon, and yes I am not the typical mall demographic. But the malls I know—assuming they have a spectrum of trendy retailers—tend to be just as busy as ever when I have reason to visit. I hate the crowded parking lots as much as I ever did.

If they're stuck in the 1990s with Sbarro, Foot Locker, and JC Penney, yeah, they're probably suffering. But that's just not keeping current with consumer demand and isn't really an indictment of the model in general.

<comment><USER17> I think the malls in LA and Southern California in general have done a good job in reinventing themselves as destinations rather than merely shopping centers. Especially for teens. Downtown Disney is a good example.

A lot of those outdoor destinations even seem centered around a movie theater now, which one might predict is also on the decline - though every time I've visited these places, they seem pretty packed. (At least, on weekends.)

<comment><USER18> Our local movie theatre (suburb of London) does much more than just show the latest blockbusters these days. They have special, low priced, early morning showings for families with kids, late night 18+ showings for movies with lower ratings, autism friendly showings, showings with subtitles, a lot of movies that previously wouldn't be shown much here (Bollywood movies in particular), and of course the 3D movies are helping them, as well as showing live transmissions of operas and plays from various locations around the world and a variety of other events. They've also put in two rows of larger, comfier seats in all their screens, that goes for a higher price, and I expect to see more of that... The theatres too are reinventing themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> NYTimes had an article a few days ago[1] about Sbarro's bankruptcy that touched on this topic - basically, Sbarro bet big on shopping mall food courts, and that bet has not paid off.

But the more interesting part is at the end - as shopping malls become less desirable, rents will go down. This could lead to a radical reinvention of what a mall looks and feels like. So malls _as we know them_ might be dead, but "the mall" isn't done yet.

[1] [http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/this-is-the- rea...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/this-is-the-real-reason- sbarro-is-in-bankruptcy/)

<comment><USER20> Rents may well go down, and many malls may live a second life as anything from indoor paintball arena ( [http://www.specialopspaintball.com/forum/index.php?showtopic...](http://www.specialopspaintball.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=151375) ), megachurch ( [http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/report-megachurch- in-...](http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/report-megachurch-in-boynton- beach-mall-could-be-a/nL4GK/) ) to a secure datacenter ( [http://www.lifelinedatacenters.com/data- center/indianapolis%...](http://www.lifelinedatacenters.com/data- center/indianapolis%E2%80%99-emergency-operations-center-anchors-former-dead- mall-turned-data-center/) ) , but will anyone build new malls? I mean carriage houses have been renovated into everything from B & Bs to pubs to studios, but the carriage house is still dead.

If no one is willing to spend the money to seriously build a new mall then the mall is dead. It will still be part of the landscape for a while, just as you can see the remains of failed fast food chains, nuclear weapon launch sites, and pre-bussing decentralized high schools, but that is just reuse.

<comment><USER18> Lots of places in the world malls are still being built at a rapid pace. London, for example, is seeing an ongoing stream of enlargment, redevelopment and new mall developments. For an example local to me, the Australian developer/mall operator Westfields has formed a joint venture with another developer to combine two local malls and redevelop them into one huge mall, which make Westfields 3rd huge mall in London:

[http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/croydon-westfield- set-...](http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/croydon-westfield-set-to-go- ahead-after-planners-support-1bn-scheme-8963792.html)

Maybe large parts of the US just has too many/too large ones, given how many of them were developed pre-online shopping. And a problem with malls is of course that population shifts are far harder to accommodate when such a large area is operated as one unit. If the mall owner does not actively manage changes due to changes in the surrounding area, it can easily become obsolete as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Or you know they could try to promote more mixed use properties, which is what most people actually want.

It's very clear that city centers are growing everywhere because that's what young people are gravitating towards. It's a lifestyle thing and if they don't consider the lifestyle people aspire to in their future plans, they are going to go bankrupt again.

Take a look at SF for an example. Many people would love to live in the few blocks surrounding the commercial areas of the Mission, the Haight (upper and lower), North Beach, Union Street, Hayes Valley, etc. Those areas are desirable because they are supremely convenient. They are the "modern mall" because they are also the "timeless mall", i.e. the mall that naturally forms when people decide where they want to shop instead of corporate overseers. It's a pattern that exists everywhere in the world in big modern cities to small towns designed before the advent of the car.

Betting on mixed use buildings creates "captive demand", since your commercial store customers conveniently live right upstairs. And they are happy to live in such buildings because they provide the ultimate access by foot to food, bars, supermarkets and other businesses that enrich their lifestyle.

There are a few thing they need to do to make such mixed use properties desirable.

* Mixed use properties need authentic business with unique identity instead of franchises (e.g. a building with a starbucks and a moe's underneath it isn't as desirable as one with a neighborhood coffee shop and a local burrito joint). * The deals struck by commercial owner's associations (COAs) need to consider the needs of the HOA which is often formed after the COA for any mixed use property. Any property (like the Beacon in SF) where the COA has unfair deals that prejudice the residents of a building often end up in litigation that suppresses the value of the the property in the building causing the building to move to having more renters than owners.

Unfortunately many of the new building projects in SF don't take this into account. There are a ton of new projects going up south of the ballpark. All those properties will be filled because of the extremely limited stock of housing, but they are not going to be desirable places to live because of how few of those properties are designed to be mixed use, which is what will make that area feel like a neighborhood instead of a vertical suburb that you need to leave in order to visit a commercial center.

</comment><comment><USER21> Basically my feeling is that malls are "over" for people who are too poor to shop anywhere but the deep discount world of Walmart. If we get minimum wage raised to a high enough place that they can actually pay for anything more than the barest minimum to pay rent and eat and whatnot, then they'll have the funds to start shopping at places that actually have nice things and well-paid employees.

I live in Seattle. There's a lot of malls, shopping districts, and other kinds of collections of shops. There's also a lot of money in the town, to support all these stores of all sizes.

Malls are dying all over because money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. People who want their malls to thrive should be campaigning for a living wage for everyone (or eve better, a basic income) - because all those people will have enough money to happily buy all their pretty trinkets.

</comment><comment><USER22> One of the more interesting solutions to malls is transforming them into office space, one good example is Rackspace converting the Windsor mall into their HQ - [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rack...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rackspace- revitalizes-a-defunct-mall-into-an-unorthodox-tech-campus.html?_r=0)

It's easy when you have 3,200 employees that you need under one roof, but malls would work great for for 20-500 employee businesses as well. The larger companies would take the spots used by anchor stores and of course the smaller companies could subdivide or take the smaller stores.

There's plenty of parking, they're located in the suburbs where many people live - and the food courts can even stay open, those employees have to eat lunch somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is really an important question as malls are usually massive holders of lots of valuable real estate in many towns.

Where I live, there are...maybe around a dozen proper stereotypical malls within an hour drive. Of those, the two malls I literally grew up in have had very different trajectories.

The one next to my highschool is a veritable empty shell. I think it sits at 40% occupancy, with entire wings boarded up, lights turned off and otherwise abandoned. When I was in High School it was the city center, so bustling and full of people it was often hard to walk in a straight line. I'd leave school and go to the mall instead of taking the bus home, mill around in the arcade for a bit, eat some cheap Chinese food in the food court, bum around in Radio Shack or the electronics section at JC Penny or just hang around with friends mallrats style. It seemed like it would stay this way forever.

But some key demographic shifts happened in the 2000s and the entire city changed, leaving the mall a grotesque enlarged gangrenous tumor hanging off of the attached Walmart. Strangely, the arcade that was there, then closed, is back open again and one of the few signs of life in the entire place.

I've thought a lot about what happened, and the basic conclusion is that it had to do with the housing boom and bust. In the 2000s as the housing market was exploding, people who had lived in this older city suddenly found out their houses had doubled in value. They sold them off and turned the equity into a down payment on a new house in new suburbs. Those new suburbs came complete with new malls (the two new malls near the new suburb I live in are pretty jam packed all the time) and everybody left.

So who bought those old houses? The people who were working on building the new suburbs. In this case largely immigrant workers from Hispanic countries. They needed the cheapest possible housing, and these older areas, though now much more expensive, were still lower cost than the new suburbs.

Because of the higher housing costs and the lower pay these new immigrants had, expensive mall shopping just wasn't on their regular agenda. Better bargains were the draw and Walmart boomed, outgrew their original store and struck an agreement with the mall for cheap property and rent if they could become the new anchor at the mall. If you drive a circle around the mall these days, the parking lot outside of the Walmart is packed to the gills, there are maybe 2 dozen cars in any other lot at the mall combined. A walk through the mall tells the same story, Walmart is buzzing with activity, but right outside the doors, nobody goes anywhere else.

To give you an idea what a huge shift this is and that I'm not imagining it, when I graduated, my highschool was something like 85% White, and 3% Hispanic. In 2012 it was less than 30% white, and 42% Hispanic. For comparison, the demographics of the entire region are 55.41% White and 16.3% Hispanic.

The other mall, in another nearby town, is doing well. It's a larger mall, and the demographics of the area didn't really change all that much. It's not quite as busy as it used to be, the anchor stores seem to be the most empty, but it seems to be getting along fine.

Now in the 2000s, two new malls sprung up in the newly built suburbs. One, a traditional all under one roof enclosed 1.4 million sq ft mall. It's new and pleasant and does pretty well. It's not packed at all times, but business is obviously doing well enough there. The other is an open air discount outlet mall and it's packed, shoulder to shoulder, at all times. I bet if I were to go there right now I'd have trouble finding parking. It's booming, and there's talk of them expanding the property to a sister mall across the main town thoroughfare with a connecting pedestrian tunnel.

There's also a pair of high-end luxury malls in another nearby town that have been through all of this pretty much without hiccup. A time traveler from 1998 to today wouldn't notice much difference except for the fashion.

So yes, I think some malls _are_ dead or dying. That much is clear. But I think the reasons for it are more than just Amazon. There's still lots of services I get from my local malls. I don't go every week, but the 3 or 4 times I do go I inevitably walk out with a few hundred dollars worth of clothes and other goods. And looking at the other people there, the demographics span from young to old, I don't think Amazon has quite replaced the kind of buying where you _have_ to go see the product.

Some stores have caught on to this, and have a seamless exchange program from their online stores. They _know_ that you'll end up buying something you don't like or can't fit into, so they let you bring it back to their physical store, because that's less hassle than shipping it back. They'll even time online sales to preceed in-store sales a bit, so when you come to the store to return the ill-fitting item, why don't you browse the 50% of sale they're offering right now?

 _edit_

Thinking about this more, I think a similar effect can be seen in the midwest. As agriculture labor shifted to much cheaper migrant workers and automation, the people who used to live in these places year round either became less affluent, or moved away. Either way the local malls had a smaller pool of eligible customers and they die off.

<comment><USER24> I think you hit the nail on the head and this is really region specific.

There was a mall next to me when I was growing up and it was dingy, just poorly maintained. Then the area became hot, Whole Foods moved in. Then Target. Then a bevy of smaller upscale retailers. Now that dingy mall is unrecognizable and filled to the brim. Not a single vacancy. Not a single open parking spot either.

Malls aren't dying. Some malls are, but that has nothing to do with the mall paradigm and has more to do with the local population. A mall can't get up and move. It's like a tree. It is where it is and it either thrives or dies.

<comment><USER25> > Malls aren't dying. Some malls are, but that has nothing to do with the mall > paradigm and has more to do with the local population. A mall can't get up > and move. It's like a tree. It is where it is and it either thrives or dies.

I would argue this is exactly why malls are dying, that they can't keep up with more and more rapidly evolving socio-economic trends and shifting demographics across geographies. Another byproduct of globalization and technology-driven streamlining of commerce

<comment><USER26> Ehhh... it really depends on where the mall is located. Back home (podunk Rockford IL) malls are indeed dying. They are dilapidated and/or ghost towns. Ten years ago this was not the case.

Where I currently live (La Jolla CA) the opposite is true. Of course, the malls are filled with stores like Saks, Nordstrom, a Tesla show floor, etc. These places are packed. I know I'm not going to buy a $1200+ jacket online any time soon, so I go to the mall for high end stuff.

<comment><USER27> Houston is a weird mix of both, perhaps as a result of its impressive sprawl. There are dozens of abandoned malls, and dozens of thriving ones. Perhaps land is so cheap that it's just easier to build a new one than to renovate an older one. Gives a weird feeling: by the numbers Houston's economy is booming, but experientially it feels sort of post-industrial, with abandoned properties dotting the landscape.

<comment><USER28> Houston still weirds me out this way. I stayed in a warehouse near Dynamo for a year or so, in one direction it was a dystopian hell hole and in the other a booming-soon-to-be-hip area. I think that our lack of zoning laws makes this cycle even stranger compared to the rest of the country.

<comment><USER29> Thunderdome?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reminds me of this op-ed from 1995

"...how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month?"

[http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be- nirva...](http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be- nirvana-185306)

<comment><USER31> LOL, that's good for a chuckle... at least as long as Newsweek is able to keep the lights on :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Maybe it's because I live in Palo Alto, but it seems, at least here, that there is a hollowing out of the middle end of the spectrum. On the low end, there are still the Target's and the Walmart's, and on the high end you have things like Stanford Shopping Center, Union Square, Santa Row, etc. The middle has taken a real beating though, as has the low middle. I'm not sure who shops at JC Penny, Sears, or even K-Mart for that matter.

<comment><USER10> K-mart's problem is that their merchandise is no better than what Wal-Mart carries, their selection is worse, and the shopping experience in their stores is, in my experience, worse than at Wal-Mart as hard as that may be to believe.

Target seems to be a step above Wal-Mart/K-Mart, and I'm guessing that has been a big part of JC-Pennys' and Sears' problem. The local JC Penny's here has gone, and going to Sears feels like stepping into the 1970s, the store literally has not had a serious rennovation since then. Target stores are new, bright and well-organized and reasonably pleasant to visit.

<comment><USER32> I definitely agree. I think Target has positioned themselves as the low end place you go to shop if you don't want to be associated with the crowd that shops at Walmart. I'm not sure anyone even knew that that segment existed.

You can see this playing out in the airlines as well. JetBlue/Virgin America/EasyJet are all low cost alternatives to the majors, but more upscale than RyanAir, Allegiant or Southwest. Actually, in many cases they're even nicer than the majors, but they can't offer great connections or as comprehensive business travel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Obligatory: No, they're not.

More relevant to HN: The comments so far suggest that many of us are pretty far removed from not only the demographics that use malls, but also the people who run them and the shop owners and managers that are their tenants. It's important to remember, though, that this doesn't mean they don't exist or that they're somehow wrong.

Many malls are still successful, and to suggest that because some are closing the model is dead is baseless.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think the American model of malls may be over. The model where there are crazy numbers of huge malls everywhere, even in relatively small populations. But malls are still hugely popular.

In Canada, where we have a lot less malls, they seem to be growing more popular. With renovations and extensions being built to attract and accommodate more shoppers. But there aren't that many major malls here, and they stick to major population areas. I'm always surprised the size of malls in small towns when I visit the US. Northwood, Ohio has a population of 5,000. That doesn't seem like it could sustain a mall the size described, even if you include the surrounding area and assume there's no other malls in the area.

I think the model will change, but malls will stay around for a long time. You'll have larger malls servicing more population, rather than malls for every town.

</comment><comment><USER35> I sure hope not. Some of my fondest memories when I was growing up in the States was visiting stores like JC Penny, the random Electronics store or Jack's Joke Shop with my parents, then swinging by the food court and eating some Sbarros pizza.

When I come back home, I would like to take my son to the mall as well and spend the morning just browsing around and buying trinkets. It's fun!

Amazon may be cheaper but come on, going to the mall is not all about shopping, it's about the experience!

<comment><USER36> What about if you did all that, but in your city center? I'd argue that that would have been a better experience than the mall.

<comment><USER37> I live in Southern California suburbia. The nearest true city center is an hour metro train ride away, while the nearest mall is a ten minute drive. For me (and millions of others here) the malls are more convenient.

<comment><USER11> there are more "open air" shopping plazas here in socal than I can count, which I think is the reason indoor malls are a dying breed here: our weather isn't bad enough to warrant indoor shopping + the population/foot traffic here in California is growing and highly congested compared to other states.

<comment><USER37> Agreed. Some very popular malls in socal are of the open-air variety. I was replying to the parent, who mentioned "city center".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> In Vancouver two malls (Oakridge and Brentwood) are being redeveloped, pivoting away from their car oriented, suburban roots and becoming the anchor of transit oriented complete communities. In 2010 Oakridge got a transit connection for the Olympics which has helped it stay relevant. Now the city is taking advantage of the connection to build a transit oriented community around the site, doing away with outside parking, adding several towers, planning for surrounding mid rises, and turning the roof of the mall into a park. Nearby Burnaby is doing this same with their mall, which has had a rapid transit connection since 2001.

[http://www.straight.com/news/608306/vancouver-approves- oakri...](http://www.straight.com/news/608306/vancouver-approves-oakridge- centre-redevelopment-plan)

<comment><USER39> There's also a lot of office office space going in at Brentwood and Oakridge. In short, they're shifting from "shopping area to which people drive" to "miniature downtowns connected by rapid transit". (Arguably Metrotown was the first of these, although it was a bit too early to benefit from the condoization shift.)

I think we're going to see a lot more developments like Burnaby's "SOLO District" \-- underground parking, 10 acres of ground floor retail, ~7 acres of park space on the roof of the retail space, 1-2 acres of 6-storey office space, and 2-3 acres of 30-50 storey residential space. If you're lucky, you could live, work, and shop without leaving the building -- and if you do need to go somewhere, the skytrain is right across the street, so you probably won't need to drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Yes. They were a horrible substitute for public spaces anyway. Now the malls aren't the only alternative to teenagers wandering the streets engaging in aimless vandalism; they can stare into screens 12 hours a day, yet still shop and gossip (and engage in aimless vandalism.) Also, Amazon.com doesn't have to pay taxes, because Internet, so that's accelerating the decline of all physical retail. Malls weren't doing great before Amazon - deadmalls is nearly a dead site, it's been around so long.

The only good places for malls are cute little cities that attract a lot of small town tourists, and places with a lot of people too old to understand the internet but rich enough to not have to work.

</comment><comment><USER41> If US malls want to survive they need to start copying international malls, which are a lot more upscale, better looking (new or significantly renovated) and above all offer a much better mix between entertainment (movie theaters etc) and food (actual restaurants you would WANT to go to instead of chain/fast-food places) as well as stores. The problem with many malls is that they are copy cats of each other. Uninspiring 'practical' architecture, inedible food, the exact same stores at every mall, not much to do besides shopping and having a fast-foody coffee.

<comment><USER42> U.S. malls do tend to have movie theaters. But they aren't going to pay high rent to get into a mall if there is open commercial land anywhere nearby.

It's a similar thing with decent restaurants, they don't necessarily gain much from the association.

I saw a thing in a local paper that the bankrupt mall should 'bring in' good stores. Of course this is backwards, the stores mentioned in the comment have no interest in running a store in a run down mall in a small market.

<comment><USER41> Very true actually. It's just sad that malls had to get all the way to the state of being run-down. What I suggested should have been down 10 or even more years ago. Right now I'd agree with you that many malls have to work hard to find tenants who'd be unwilling to be associated with a mall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Yes and no.

Crappy malls are dying. Decent malls in more affluent areas are diversifying their experiences and thriving. In some places, indoor malls make a lot of sense. I live in Minnesota (home of the original indoor mall, Southdale). It's cold here a good chunk of the year, and an indoor mall isn't a half bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER44> I have fond memories of hanging out in malls when I was a kid, but my fondest memories are about things that I don't find in malls anymore. Arcades, toy stores, book stores, hobby shops, electronics, music shops, etc. Those things still exist but it seems like there's a lot less of them now.

When I go to malls now it seems like nothing but designer clothing stores. I swear there used to be a lot more diversity in the the types of stores you'd find. I'm not sure if this is a real trend or just the haze of childhood memories.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'd like to mention three malls that don't purely fit the "greybox" model and may point to a likely future for malls in general.

\- West Edmonton Mall (Edmonton, AB). In one sense, it is the mother of all greybox malls, surrounded by an asphalt moat. But: it's accessible via local transit, and it's very much in the model of an artificial downtown: it contains hotels, apartments, a hockey rink, an aquarium, and a variety of other things not in the simple greybox mall. This is because it gets really freaking cold in Edmonton in the winter and it's nice to go "outside" without going "outside"; and the diversity of stuff that's there keeps it more alive than at, say, Woodfield (outside Chicago, IL). The food court felt less like a food court and more like a street that had a bunch of little food shops on it. Basically, they've adapted "downtown" to the needs of their climate.

\- The Ala Moana Mall (Honolulu, HI). I mention this mostly to contrast the previous one. It's laid out like a greybox mall, but since it's Honolulu, they just skip the whole "roof" thing on the central ways. So it's really more like a pedestrian street with a lot of shops on it. Also, it contains (or is adjacent to?) some non-shop things, and it's well-connected by transit. EDIT to add: There are outdoor malls other places, too, and they're sort of in vogue right now. What makes this one different is how well-adapted it is to its surroundings.

\- Providence Place Mall (Providence, RI). Built much more recently (1999 or so), it does include a parking deck but isn't surrounded by asphalt in all directions. It's got entrances that are right off a relatively walkable street, with a couple transit connections (and it's about two blocks from the main central transit station). Internally, it feels _nothing_ like a classic greybox mall: it's five stories with shops on both sides, and lots of windows give it plenty of natural light. It felt much more like a part of downtown than an alternative to it.

So basically, it's possible to set up your mall in such a way that it steers clear of the major problems plaguing malls; and there's certainly reason to think that reinvention rather than abandonment is the mall's likeliest future.

<comment><USER10> Combining residential spaces with malls is an interesting idea. There are a lot of builing codes that now require ground-floor retail on any residential buildings over a certain number of floors, but I've never seen or thought about revitalizing malls by adding a residential component. One downside would be that the parking starts to get taken up by residents rather than shoppers.

<comment><USER46> Which is why you combine shopping, residential spaces, and transit hubs so that owning a car becomes optional rather than required.

For a bonus you add employment spaces so that people can live, work, and shop in their communities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Come to Singapore. There's places where there are 7 or more malls all right next to each other and more being built. Kuala Lumpur seems to have lots of shopping centers being built and many of them get full as in the there's no parking left.

<comment><USER48> Probably the climate? I'd imagine in summer Singapore and KL are ferociously humid and hot?

<comment><USER49> Even outdoor malls in Singapore have air conditioning [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke_Quay](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke_Quay)

<comment><USER41> That's not a mall. It's a collection of restaurants (mostly for tourists). Not a single shop there.

<comment><USER49> The point isn't that Clarke Quay itself is a mall (even though the owners, CapitaMall Trust themselves call it a mall...) but that the weather doesn't have to be an obstacle for outdoor shopping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> When I was a wee lad, my Grandmother used to spend days with me while my parents were working, and after say, a morning in the park, we'd go to the mall and get lunch at the restaurant in JC Penney's.

It was run by a gentleman of Greek descent, whom my Grandmother knew, as she seemed to know everyone, and served brunch, lunch, dinner, like any other small cafe. I would routinely get a hot dog, served on toasted white bread. It was tremendous.

I miss those days, and the subsequent teen years of the nineties spent mall- ratting with my friends, hitting the record store, book store, the arcade (don't get me started on the demise of the video game arcade) people- watching...

Times change, and I assume, so will these structures, whether it be to fade into irrelevance or transform into something vibrant and communal again.

</comment><comment><USER51> The malls around me are doing just fine. My friends and I find them to be a fine place to go occasionally. I've always found them to be a nice place to be around. I don't really get the complaints about them in this thread. That law of headlines thing applies here.

</comment><comment><USER22> Malls are on life support.

Our local mall has 3 anchor stores: Macys, JC Penny, and Sears. Two of those three have reported sales increases in the last quarter but it's a mystery on how Sears stays in business.

The other popular stores are all gone - American Eagle, The Gap, etc. Instead, new tenants have replaced them which make the place look like an indoor flea market.

Also enhancing the flea market look are the kiosks of people reselling things from cell phone cases to cheap sunglasses and worse jewelry than the mall jewelry stores, which are half gone as well. There's even a store that's almost like a 7-11, they sell candy bars and bottles of soda and chips.

<comment><USER52> Those anchor stores are on life support. New channel anchors: American Girl, Apple Stores, etc, etc. What is dead is price-based stores the internet has replaced.

<comment><USER53> I think Betteridge's law of headlines applies to this article. I live in Indy where the (billionaire) Simon's live, who own Simon Property Group. Their stock is currently @ 161, up 100 points over 5 years ago. Their stock has just been upgraded: [http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140312006497/en/Fitc...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140312006497/en/Fitch- Upgrades-Simon-Property-Groups-IDR-Outlook#.UyXX1q1dWJU)

I used to live between two of their major malls for years. I could barely leave my apartment for 2 months before xmas due to traffic. They just spent millions remodeling their high end mall adding capacity and additional room for high end stores like Sacks and Restoration Hardware.

Non generic crap malls are fine. Junk stores that have generic brand cheapish clothes and the like (JCPenny) are being replaced by Amazon, but overall malls are doing fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The demographics have changed around the first- and second-generation malls enough that many of them are no longer viable. Since they're huge properties, they tend to rot slowly. They're finally dying. There's probably some fundamental challenges wrt online shopping, and preference for more "natural" environments, but there are plenty of malls that are doing very well, especially the more upscale ones.

Just because not every mall is succeeding, it doesn't mean the whole category is doomed. (Not that I actually like them, but enough people certainly do.)

</comment><comment><USER55> What do malls offer that regular shops do not (besides lots of stores being located closely together, but thanks to Yelp and local transportation, that doesn't seem like too big of a benefit).

UPDATE:

So I am from NYC, and I have lived in urban areas my entire life. Finding the right stores so that I could make immediate purchases has never been an issue for me, but based on early comments, I clearly have a myopic view.

I can see how a mall could potentially offer an "urban" experience (meaning that food, stores, people are all conveniently located in a nearby area) in a non-urban area.

<comment><USER56> A mall is a gathering place for many people of various age types. One does not simply go to the mall to shop. Sometimes it is to socialize.

<comment><USER55> Nice. So how can we recreate the gathering place in an era where the mall as a shopping center is no longer necessary or successful?

<comment><USER57> I think the direction to take would be to focus on the things that online stores can't provide. Clothes fitting, product repair, demo products to look at and play with, etc. Apple stores seem to do this quite well: they don't have hundreds of products on the shelves (online stores will always have you beat there), everything is nicely spaced out and you are free to walk around and play with the products. If you need advice or want to buy, you can talk to a sales rep. If you need something repaired, they do that too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Not in Australia. We've probably had over $2 billion in re-development and upgrades integer biggest six shopping centres around the city I live in over the last three years... The one a ten minute drive from my house is wrapping up a two year, $450 million upgrade this half of the year. Pretty crazy, but they are doing pretty well making them places where you might actually want to be, which is important now online shopping has meant they are no longer places you need to go.

</comment><comment><USER59> Half the problem is that every single mall where I live has basically the same shops. I find that often new malls seem to be built largely as speculative investments by property developers, rather than to fulfill an actual need. All that happens is that that the new mall is either a disaster, or gradually replaces an older one, simply because the demand doesn't exist for yet another collection of the same chain stores.

</comment><comment><USER60> The US is lucky to have its malls. TFA mentions growth coming from Asia, where pretty much every new development - and there are a lot - is a luxury mall that positions itself as an 'integrated' destination i.e. retail, entertainment, lifestyle, office space and residential. The problem is worst in Hong Kong where MTR Corporation, which owns the underground network, also owns the land that its stations sit underneath. It makes more money from the malls it builds on top of them than from running public transit.

The luxury part is a problem too in that Chanel, Gucci etc are given free/low- cost storefronts to up the image of the mall which not only raises prices for normal tenants but means they put their goods prices up too so they look like a serious alternative to the luxury brands. Chinese malls in particular have a lot of made-up Chinese-owned store brands with foreign sounding names, selling utter rubbish at wildly inflated prices.

I wish the 'high end' here was JC Penney or Sears. And forget a reasonably priced Kung Pao chicken; I hope you enjoy chicken feet and birds nest.

<comment><USER61> > Chinese malls in particular have a lot of made-up Chinese-owned store brands > with foreign sounding names, selling utter rubbish at wildly inflated > prices.

I find this comical whenever I see it in China - especially brand names with western geographies on their merchandise. "California 1973", "Cambridge".

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I enjoy two things about going to my local mall...things that I can't get from online retailers: instant gratification and ceremony.

1\. Instant gratification....If I'm excited about a new product, I can get up immediately and travel to the store, find and pick up the item. Sure, this entails an effort of its own, but at least I'm taking action instead of waiting for a package to come.

2\. Ceremony: You may not appreciate this unless you're a videogame buff, too, but there was nothing like waiting in line for GTA5. It was truly ceremonial... High school students, construction workers, businessmen, etc., all stood with me because we were so excited to tear off the packaging of that game. The store even hosted a party featuring competitions and prizes.

Will malls survive? I don't know....the prices, selection and convenience of Amazon are hard to beat. But my advice is to capitalize on the instant gratification and the ceremonial aspects of shopping in-person. Online retailers haven't yet found a way to duplicate this IMHO.

<comment><USER63> What you describe as "ceremony" I take to mean socialization, that you are shopping with the public in a market atmosphere and I think that's something absolutely intrinsic in all human cultures and isn't going anywhere. The mall is the perfect style of market for shopping for clothes, media, fast food, housewares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> one thing missing in these predictions is the fact that we are still social animals. It certainly is convenient to buy online, but teenagers, busy parents (where they can amuse there little ones in play areas or Santa) and people (increasingly) seeking relief from the heat (as in socal), gather at malls, and engage in both planned and impulse buys by just being there. I'm not saying malls are good, or efficient, or will survive in current form, but, there's a reason why Barnes and Noble has converted into a coffee shop with books - people like to hang. We may see malls take on more experiential offerings to make up for underutilized retail space.

Additionally, I know that best buy and guitar center will price match any price I show from an online retailer on my phone (this is so not obvious, but just ask). Just knowing that, I will occaisonally go to the mall or physical shop to actually look at things & try them out.

</comment><comment><USER65> No. Come on silly question. They are still alive and well in many cities. Even in SF, where you are suppose to order a single dental floss through google shopping express to be part of the cool crowd. Going to the mall allows you to quickly search many stores at once, which will be a need for some time.

</comment><comment><USER66> The city I live in now only has 2 traditional style malls left. When I moved here numerous years ago it had 7 malls, all of which were accessible by bus. That is a major change and there has been no new malls built. The buildings just stand there like relics of a time gone past. Retail and restaurants have moved into existing strip malls that had space available due to businesses folding. Back where I grew up it is the same story.

I miss the tradition malls because some had unique and good food places. As well as arcades, movie theaters, and places to hang out. Malls that are thriving do so because there is enough population around to support the businesses and they have new stores coming in to fill out the empty spaces.

</comment><comment><USER67> I find "indoor" malls are great for working on code. Even in bad weather you can take a break and stretch your legs, do some window shopping and then get back down to work. It's nice to have a predictable environment like that. Also malls tend to have high, airy ceilings. I'm no architect but I find large open spaces to be pleasant, for lack of a better word, especially for cerebral work. IKEA is a great place to work on code too. Free coffee.

</comment><comment><USER55> How does the profit hierarchy work in a mall? Do the owners of the real estate see a larger margin than they would if owning an aggregate of locations outside of the mall?

</comment><comment><USER68> I feel like the article was trying to make the point "traditional malls from the 80's are dying" but didn't do a good job at that (the title for example). So that's leading to a lot of comments saying "Well some malls are flourishing and some are dying" I suspect the flourishing ones are the newer malls that have a lot of unique features you can't get online (food/cinema/furniture)

</comment><comment><USER69> The thing I found most surprising about this article

>Internet sales reached six per cent of total retail spending in the fourth quarter of 2013

I thought that would be a bit higher.

<comment><USER70> Remember that the fashion industry has revenue that absolutely _dwarfs_ the tech industry. It's so far beyond that it's not even funny. People can't go naked, they need clothes, and most of the time they prefer to try them on, see how they look and fit, then purchase in person.

Then there's food which is even larger. The online ordering of groceries is a drop in the bucket. You want fresh food, you're going to have to go and hand pick it.

Not surprisingly Wal-Mart has a foot in both camps.

<comment><USER71> Does the fashion industry really "dwarf" the tech industry?

Random googling tells me that the global fashion industry does about $1.2 trillion in revenue per year. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and IBM together do a bit over $400 billion per year, so about a third of that, and that's only four (albeit large) tech companies. I'd be surprised if you couldn't more than triple that number after you accounted for all the other tech companies in the world.

<comment><USER70> That's still a fraction of the fashion industry. It's long-tail from there.

<comment><USER71> Samsung's electronics division does almost $200 billion/year. Foxconn does $120 billion. Hitachi is also about $120 billion. HP is about $110 billion. Amazon is $75 billion. Intel is $50 billion. Need I go on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I don't care for shopping in general, but malls are far from dead. I had to pick my daughter up from a modeling gig at the mall yesterday - I literally could not find a parking space. There were people waiting in nearly every row for someone - anyone - to pull out. It's the middle of March and it was as bad as Christmas.

<comment><USER14> Some malls are thriving, but many are dead. In the city I grew up in I can name at least two that are dead or close to dead. On the other hand if you go just outside the city then there are two that are still going strong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I can't even remember the last time I set foot in a mall. I think it was to try on a suit, but even trying on clothes will be virtualized with augmented reality. Other than being a destination place to hang out, I don't see much utility in malls.

<comment><USER74> Augmented reality won't tell me that two pairs of pants, from the same store, that say they are 30 inches long at the waist, are really 29 and 31. Different colors mean different suppliers and different results.

The technology that will tell us if some pants are a good fit or not is still nowhere near where it need to be.

Many other stores will die quickly though.

<comment><USER46> Actually technology will make sure that your pants fit just perfectly from the 1000s of measurement taken by the full body scanner in the retail store you ordered them from.

The future of retail will be where it is fully integrated into the manufacturing chain to enable just in time manufacturing and delivery of the perfect item with the cost savings from such automation passed onto the consumer due to competition.

<comment><USER75> No.

It won't tell you if the fabric is too itchy/uncomfortable, just one example.

<comment><USER46> You try the fabric on at the same time you get the laser measurements done. Stores aren't going away, just the way they will work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> The Atlanta metro area has 17 malls. A third are struggling and a third are thriving.

<comment><USER22> Is that based on the average income of the area they are located?

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I think the best model so far is the mixed development: offices, residences, and commercial stores all in one. That's what you see in developing countries.

</comment><comment><USER78> I only went to the local mall to go to the movie theater, which was located inside the mall. Then the movie theater shut down, so now I never go to the mall.

</comment><comment><USER79> Hopefully, they're toxic environments that showcase the worst aspects of the industrial revolution.

</comment><comment><USER80> Yep, can't remember the last time I bought something from a mall. Maybe 5 years ago or more.

</comment><comment><USER81> What's with all the hate for brutalist architecture in this thread?

</comment><comment><USER82> I hope they're dying - malls are miserable places to spend time.

<comment><USER52> As opposed to the DMV, the post office, the ER waiting room and other paragons of bureaucracy?

<comment><USER82> How are shopping malls paragons of bureaucracy? Paragons of shallow consumerism, if anything... and while the DMV et all are surely dehumanizing and Kafkaesque, the mall is a special and unique sort of revolting to me. But different strokes...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Malls as shopping centers may be over, but those who transmute into amusement parks will survive.

I rarely go to the mall for shopping, but I go many times a week for a walk, a fancy dinner, or just to meet people.

<comment><USER84> When I bought a house just outside route 495, I had to plan grocery shopping carefully or I'd be stuck with no pizza delivery and a can of beans in the pantry. Now I have a new shopping center with a BJs, a supermarket, and soon a Cabelas so I can shoot all the food I won't be able to buy after Immanent Collapse ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404923)) about 12 minutes away, door to door.

Clearly there was demand. The supermarket is often packed, even though it isn't as big or nice as the Wegmans that opened a bit farther away. There are malls even farther out that appear to be prospering, including some old ones that are less seedy than they used to be.

Curiously, there is still a lot of empty office space off 495. The newly built then mostly evacuated Sun campus off Route 3 is still very slack. So people out here are making and spending money, but not filling up the old Digital and HP buildings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Can't imagine my life without malls. Haha!

</comment><comment><USER86> I think the time to turn these all into public mural projects and community spaces has finally come.</comment>


Visual Studio 14 Preview - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2014/06/03/first-preview-of-visual-studio-quot-14-quot-available-now.aspx <comment><USER2> At this point I really have no idea how much of the awesomeness I see in Visual Studio is coming from ReSharper and how much is actually Visual Studio itself. In the past, it was nearly 100% R#. Now it seems more like 50/50.

The only way I ever find out is through blog posts like this where they announce "new" features that I'd already been using for six years such as the "introduce variable" and "extract method" refractors mentioned here. Evidently that was ReSharper.

Makes me think I should go read up on what's new in R#. I bet there's a bunch more cool stuff that I'd never learn about until VS.NET 2020 if left to my own devices.

<comment><USER3> Extract Method dates back to at least VS 2010 however introduce variable is new.

<comment><USER4> Looks like VS 2005 had it:

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/yez2fsct(v=vs.80).as...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/yez2fsct\(v=vs.80\).aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> According to [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/csharpfaq/archive/2014/06/03/visual-...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/csharpfaq/archive/2014/06/03/visual- studio-14-ctp-now-available.aspx) it's also gonna have ?. operator! Woohoo

<comment><USER6> I'm on the fence about this. From the example, `myObject?.Items?.[0]?.DoSomething()`.

If myObject, Items or Items[0] returns null, what do I do next? Null check to find out which one?

<comment><USER7> It's often the case that if something along the way is null, breaking the reference chain, it's acceptable to treat it as if that last value were null. E.g., looking up a preference that enables some optional behavior on a module, but the module itself is also optional and might not be loaded.

I really can't even count the number of times that I've done a series of null checks on a reference chain just to do one thing if I reached the final value and another thing if I never got there or got null - It's pretty rare that I'll care about an intermediate null, and if I do I've usually checked it earlier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks interesting.

I'm hoping they move CodeLens from being a VS Ultimate only feature to the lower editions (Premium maybe?) in '14' as it looks really powerful but the pricing on Ultimate is pretty far outside of most developers' reasonable expense range.

Seems there is significant demand on this but the UserVoice ticket was closed in April this year.

[https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual- stud...](https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual- studio/suggestions/4150271-make-codelens-available-outside-of-ultimate)

<comment><USER9> Have you seen the Bizspark program?[1]

I never really understand the argument against Microsoft software being out of the range of reasonable expenses.

Certainly for all the corporates I have worked at, Ultimate is well within their budget.

But Ultimate really comes with all the bells and whistles. If money really is an issue, and you find you _must_ "Collect and analyse runtime diagnostic data from production systems" or "Reliably capture and reproduce bugs found during manual and exploratory testing to eliminate "no repro" bugs" then there are better tools out there.

I've worked for a long time with Premium[2] and never felt like I was missing features...

[1] [http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/faqs.aspx](http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/faqs.aspx) [2] [http://www.microway.com.au/microsoft/visual- studio-2013-comp...](http://www.microway.com.au/microsoft/visual- studio-2013-compare-editions.php)

<comment><USER8> I think it's more that CodeLens appears to be far less of a niche feature than the others exclusive to Ultimate, which has people up in arms a bit because it looks universally useful to all developers (but not useful enough on its own to justify the extra $10K or so if you're not using other Ultimate features).

We have MSDN access here, but that only offers Premium, not Ultimate.

So yeah, I run Premium day-to-day also, but I definitely feel like I would benefit from CodeLens in my dev workflow (especially with the upcoming Git integration in VS2013 Update 3).

<comment><USER9> CodeLens - Yes, I see, you make a fair point...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has Microsoft stated whether they intend to keep the WinXP-compatible toolchain around? I imagine they won't now that XP is officially discontinued.

Then again, Windows Server 2003 is still hanging around until next year, so maybe they won't ditch that compiler just yet.

<comment><USER11> I think so because Windows XP POS has support until 2019 and businesses still need to develop POS apps for their embedded POS systems. Even if the consumer XP has dropped support the POS version of XP has not yet.

Too many ATMs and POS systems that still run XP, give them until 2019 to switch to Windows 8 POS systems.

<comment><USER12> I don't think they are going to keep XP support for that reason alone though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Visual Studio's naming scheme is pretty strange. They'll release this version in 2015 and the Visual Studio DLLs were previously on version 12.

So it'd have made sense to name it Visual Studio 2015 or Visual Studio 13, but they opted for 14.

<comment><USER13> 14 is not the public (marketing) name, it's our internal version number. The currently shipping version, as you note, is version 12 (internally), but is called Visual Studio 2013 on the box. There is not necessarily a relationship between the version number that is used internally and the version number as described my marketing.

I don't think we've made any public statements about "why 14", but I'm sure that you can draw your own conclusions as to why we jumped from 12 to 14 without a 13 in the middle.

(ObDisclaimer: I work on the Visual Studio TFS team.)

<comment><USER14> I really like visual studio as an IDE, but I find myself really liking some of the things in 14. vNext, removing the cruft from my current stack, Rosyln at it's least simplifying the difference between my intelisense and actual compile.

But as you are on the TFS team I feel you are a good person to ask, are there many improvements from a TFS source control perspective? It still feels 'clunky' if I want to commit and run a specific build it's laborious. Oh and lets not even ask why my visual studio online builds, with their paid azure account haven't built anything in the last 5 hours :(

I do like the ecosystem, I like an IDE that lets me do everything in one place, that is extensible enough to ensure I can od everything I need there. But the current interactions, maybe tonights downtime has made me angry, are rather disappointing.

<comment><USER13> From a version control perspective, we're investing heavily in Git right now, which brings a DVCS ecosystem into Team Foundation Server. This means that you can choose between using a checkout/edit/checkin model (TFVC "server workspaces"), a much more relaxed edit/merge/commit model (TFVC "local workspaces") or a DVCS (Git). I hope that wasn't too marketing speak-y.

Anyway, sorry things feel clunky. I would definitely suggest moving from a server workspace to a local workspace if you haven't already and don't need some of the guarantees it makes about locking files for checkout and such. An edit/merge/commit system isn't nearly as chatty with the server and is much more pleasant to use on a daily basis.

<comment><USER15> local workspaces are hopelessly broken for repositories of any real size. They're slow, you get local store conflicts when running multiple copies of VS, etc. Server workspaces are a pretty poor solution if you have remote workers on poor connections.

So far Git integration seems good, but I have only used it on some smaller projects.

Here's a moaning email I sent to a few devs I work with in April re: TFS:

"...In the office it's slightly better, but TFS is still slow. This is just the tip of the iceberg with TFS though.

Open TFS explorer - 20-30 seconds

Open a folder in TFS explorer - 20-30 seconds

Rename a file - forget it, go and get a coffee

Add a file - forget it, go and get a coffee

Delete a file - forget it, go and get two coffees

Edit a file - Often I see "Waiting for a required operation to complete..." \-- see below

Then when you add into the mix that I'm on Virgin media who are the shittest internet provider on earth and who clearly do traffic-shaping on VPN connections; and they constantly drop my VPN connection, which will cause TFS to lock-up -- you might start to see why I'm going slightly insane.

Yet when I work on a pet open-source project with Git everything is sweetness. It seems like the Visual Studio team just started again with their Git integration. It doesn't even have to reload projects when you sync and a project file has changed, it just happily merges it in.

Ultimately even if we host TFS on the best server known to man, I won't ever get over the fact that Virgin media are going to be constantly fucking me over. So a local-store makes much more sense. TFS has a local-store mode, but (incredibly!) its performance is worse than the server version. It seems to be because our store is too large for it (over 100,000 files).

I think it just goes to show how awful TFS is if they can't even create a local database which can manage 100,000 files.

I see this error all the time (on VS 2012 and VS 2013):

[Picture of the 'Waiting for required operation to complete dialog']..."

Sorry if I'm bitching about your work, but it seems the Git integration is the only real game in town right now. It really is very impressive compared to the other options.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately I can't really provide advice for your local workspace troubles as I work on the Git side of things.

I'm sorry to hear about your performance troubles with local workspaces: 100,000 files in a local workspace should not be at the upper limits, I wouldn't think. Many people 'round these parts were using local workspaces for their VS 2013 development: my working folder mappings appear to be 25 GB and 120,000 files for VS 2013. Concurrency and locking, of course, could affect that, but I'm still surprised.

I trust you're not doing anything wacky like trying to put your working folders on USB sticks or SMB mounts, so I would recommend either opening a question on the MSDN support forum or (better) opening a support ticket. Our support engineers are really quite good and might be able to assist, or at least understand why you're seeing this performance with local workspaces.

(I regret that we cannot fix your internet provider.)

<comment><USER15> Heh, thanks for the response :) I realise you can't do anything for me, I just thought I'd give you a sense of the frustration of the local-workspace route. The fact it's slower and less reliable than the server-workspace approach is pretty crazy.

> I trust you're not doing anything wacky like trying to put your working > folders on USB sticks or SMB mounts

Nothing crazy, repository is sitting on an SSD drive.

If you're working on the Git side, then all I can say is: great job! I'm hoping to move our source repository over Git soon... I can't handle staying with server/local workspaces much longer, but as with all things like this it's about finding the right moment for the team to switch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't use VS 2013 because the GUI crashes frequently. For example, tasks like creating a new project through the wizard crash. I would like MS to fix these issues before moving on items like C++14 support.

<comment><USER17> Personally haven't had any of such problems actually on none of my machines and I can't wait until they get certain C++14 features in (generic lambdas! user-defined literals!) as they will make my life as a C++ programmer not only easier but also more fun. Seriously, working with variadic templates etc makes me feel like some wizard in control of Mordor. Bring it on!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Roslyn stuff is going to be really awesome. It will be interesting to see what types of refactoring and code analysis tools the community creates.

<comment><USER19> Kind of wish F# was in scope for the Roslyn project

<comment><USER20> F# is already a bootstraped compiler, which was the main driver behind Roslyn.

<comment><USER21> Yet still no automated refactoring. F# team likes to develop the language and the compiler but they have no interest in practical tools.

<comment><USER20> I guess it is a matter of resources and internal priorities.

They do however work in some tooling support

[http://fsprojects.github.io/VisualFSharpPowerTools/](http://fsprojects.github.io/VisualFSharpPowerTools/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems to mostly be a packaging of features we already knew about, but it's nice to see them trying to keep with the faster release cycle.

<comment><USER23> The release schedule's been that way since ~2012: [http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/release-archive- vso.a...](http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/release-archive-vso.aspx)

Both as a user and a Microsoft employee, I'm happy to have minimal secrets and surprises when it comes to dev features. Early info and access usually means better software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What a pity that you cannot install it side by side with other version of Visual Studio. Well that means I will have to setup a VM for it :D

<comment><USER25> I don't think it's that you can't install it side by side, they simply don't recommend it while this is in beta just in case.

"Given that this is a very early build, please install in a test environment with no earlier versions of Visual Studio installed."

I had a brief moment of panic thinking that this version wouldn't co-exist with others after reading your post. :)

<comment> squeaky-clean From the actual download link

>"Installing a CTP release will place a computer in an unsupported state. For that reason, we recommend only installing CTP releases in a virtual machine, or on a computer that is available for reformatting.

>Currently, Visual Studio "14" CTPs have known compatibility issues with previous releases of Visual Studio and should not be installed side-by-side on the same computer."

I don't know how serious that statement is, or maybe it's just a big blanket clause. But it seems like they really, really think you shouldn't install them together.

<comment><USER26> I think they always say that for the Betas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can't wait for the new runtime dlls

<comment><USER28> lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> From the one screenshot that shows window decorations, it looks like they're keeping those broken where they don't match the rest of your windows and don't change color to indicate active vs inactive?

I have multiple monitors and tend to have several programs open. I like knowing where my input focus is.

<comment><USER30> Chrome of active and inactive VS windows looks different in all VS versions. In 2013 the difference is just in the caption color, but it is there.

<comment><USER29> This is not the case for the one I have installed here at work, which is Professional 2012.

<comment><USER31> I have both 2012 and 2013 on my machine, 2013 changes caption color, could not see anything on 2012 change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am annoyed by this. Vs 2013 is riddled with bugs but they are busy doing the next version?

<comment><USER32> Despite the down votes I stand by what I said. I would be far more impressed with a stable version of vs 2013 than a preview of 2014. There are too many glitches to document here, but I am using it every day and constantly finding bugs, some of which I have reported via Connect, some I can't be bothered with.

<comment><USER33> You deserve the down votes because all you've added is emotion with zero content.

Why haven't you mentioned a single specific bug? If there are too many, tell us about the ones that you think are show-stoppers.

<comment><USER32> I don't have much time, but firstly :

[http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/8...](http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/800178/cannot- load-mymodel-edmx-specified-cast-is-not-valid-when-clicking-edmx-file-in- project)

2\. I use ctl-shift-f a lot where I double click the matches and it takes you to the code windows. That always stops working after a few hours.

3\. Web service in a solution no longer spin up automatically. I have to start them manually everytime I open VS. Combined with point 2 is extra annoyance.

4\. Connecting to Azure via Server Explorer -> Windows Azure -> Connect to Windows Azure requires me to first go do some other random thing otherwise I get a non-nondescript 'network error'

5\. I upgraded to update 2 and it quietly turned a number of crucial references to 'Copy local = false', which didn't stop the app working on my machine because I had the sdk installed of the relevant library, it only broke on test machines.

6\. Not that I use it much, but yesterday I noticed the WPF designer randomly stops me from changing simple properties such as margins. It works for some properties and not the others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Any hope of a Win8/Metro version?

<comment><USER35> Why would you want a Metro version? (I'm really curious, not just hating on Metro.)

<comment><USER34> I like metro better, with its full-screen/tiled modality, and find it really frustrating as well as unaesthetic to have to switch back and forth to the desktop. If Microsoft's own apps won't make the switch, it seems like they'll never manage to get rid of the desktop.

<comment><USER36> I think the complexity of software development warrants a pass on the switch to Metro. There are so many things going on that _can 't_ be simplified that it's not worth it.

Also, Microsoft doesn't want to kill the desktop. Enterprise uses the desktop, so it's staying for the foreseeable future. Full stop.

<comment><USER34> Is there any reason applications with complex functionality can't be written in Metro? And if Microsoft isn't trying to kill the desktop, why does it exist as a separate world in Windows 8 severed from the main Metro UI?

<comment><USER36> Metro exists separate from desktop because they couldn't figure out how to make the desktop work on a touch-centric interface like tablets and phones, and because desktop apps are bound to x86, which precludes many phones and tablets because of battery life reasons.

<comment><USER34> But why have the schism on desktop devices?

I don't want to run Visual Studio on my phone. But if I get say a Surface Pro device, I'd like to not have to switch back and forth between two totally different worlds all the time, without giving up modern amenities like resolution independence, etc.

<comment><USER11> That is why people want to stick with XP/7 instead of 8.X because they don't like the Modern GUI (It was called Metro until Microsoft was sued over the name) and feel like it is a giant step backward to the 1992 MS-DOS days of AOL for DOS or the old Prodigy of everything in small Windows that you cannot even re-size or have any 'visual clues' how they work like the Desktop and Start Menu of the Classic Windows has.

For example 'visual clues' in the Classic Windows have minimize and maximize buttons and the "X" button means close. These Modern GUI Windows, where are the 'visual clues'? It breaks the way Windows is supposed to work.

You have to drag the mouse to the bottom or top right side of the screen to access the 'Charms Bar' to do stuff in it, and Windows-C as a shortcut. I tried the touchscreen and it is a nightmare trying to make the correct type of swipe. Sometimes it does things you don't want it to do.

Plus a lot of desktop apps cannot be converted to Modern GUI mode because it lacks the gadgets the desktop has to make things easier to use. The Visual Studio IDE for example has so many tool icons and toolbars that not all of it will fit in a Modern GUI screen. It would need a major rewrite of the GUI, and force all developers to relearn all of their Visual Studio skills.

Remember when Office 2007 made that Ribbon bar? It was worse than Clippy the Office Assistant type of annoying.

Many compared Modern GUI to New Coke, the Classic Version was always better. If not for Desktop mode I could not use my Windows 8.1 Pro device.

<comment><USER37> I find the ribbon to be very usable

<comment><USER38> I found it usable for 90% of the use cases but that last 10% is incredibly frustrating. It's been a long time since I've used Office so I can't conjure up an example but I remember trying to do something with tables that was fairly straight forward in Office 2003 it was nearly impossible in 2007.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Pretty absurd still no C99 and C11. Luckily Windows continues to slip in relevance.

<comment><USER40> Sorry, but what is missing from C99 in MSVC?

VS2013 introduced a lot of C99 (enough to compile FFmpeg), VS2013 update 2 introduced more C99 (compiling almost x264 and a bit further VLC). This update adds some of the biggest issues, related to printf and scanf formats, and fixes more C99 reported bugs.

From the VC++ blog: "Most of the remaining C99 library features are implemented."

I love to hate Microsoft like the next guy, but they've done a lot on C99 lately.

<comment><USER41> Probably variable length arrays and flexible array members, at least. Could be wrong.

<comment><USER40> VLA will not be in VS, since it is now optional in C11.

Flexible array member, I haven't checked yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "Visual Studio "14" also supports APIs that come from NuGet with their own analyzers, squiggling issues in your code as you type and offering you automatic fixes, all powered by the .NET Compiler Platform."

So, now there's new stuff that will keep me from typing into the IDE without hanging up and causing delays.

<comment><USER23> The new anaylzers use async, so it's happening in the background as you work. For example, symbol analyzers take an action delegate with a cancellation token: [http://source.roslyn.codeplex.com/#Microsoft.CodeAnalysis/Di...](http://source.roslyn.codeplex.com/#Microsoft.CodeAnalysis/DiagnosticAnalyzer/ISymbolAnalyzer.cs#8a4c8fc0813cd443)</comment></comment>


Things Every Programmer Should Know - Trey-Jackson http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/97_Things_Every_Programmer_Should_Know

<comment><AUTHOR> in case you missed it, the actual things:

[http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Contri...](http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Contributions_Appearing_in_the_Book)</comment>


Ask HN: Adsense, how long after launch should we wait before signing up? - <AUTHOR>

I only ask because we tried to get an account setup right before launch and they rejected the application. Any ideas what they're looking for? <comment><USER2> Well, they want a site to actually be there. In that aspect, it should certainly be at launch or shortly thereafter. I don't believe there's a further waiting time involved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we aren't sure if they want to see some measurable traffic or not first.</comment></comment>


How India's banks killed the future of commerce - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cleartrip.com/journal/2011/2/14/how-indias-banks-killed-the-future-of-commerce.html

<comment><USER3> India has a lot of public policy mishaps such as this. It seems that the people making these rules oftentimes don't do adequate research regarding what's feasible for such a large developing, and rapidly changing country.

A couple of other examples: There was recently a rule to limit SMS spam by limiting each cell phone to receive a max of 100 texts per day, there still is a rule where you can't entering the country twice within a certain number of days without getting prior permission, IIT students were arbitrarily limited in the number of hours they could spend online because some administrator thought they should get out more, etc.

<comment><USER4> India is generally conservative about financial issues.

In this case, it puts them on the wrong side. But their conservative approach also shielded India from the banking crisis experienced by US etc.

From [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/business/global/26reddy.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/business/global/26reddy.html)

 _"If America had a central bank chief like Y. V. Reddy, the U.S. economy would not have been such a mess," Joseph E. Stiglitz, the economist and Nobel laureate, has said._

<comment><USER5> I'm quite willing to be convinced that a conservative monetary system has shielded some countries from certain isssues, but some economist saying so doesn't make it so, not even if he's a famous economist. So some background on the mechanics would be nice.

<comment><USER4> Not sure if you read the NYT article but it goes into some detail.

<comment><USER5> I guess it depends on the interpretation of "some", but it only broadly says what he did (mostly keeping the market shielded off from international influences it seems, not quite what other countries should emulate - <USER2> what would happen if T-bonds weren't available to international buyers, or if Americans couldn't freely invest world-wide). It has no details on the economic landscape in India (for example, I have no idea about the housing market there) and it certainly doesn't address the question what effect a looser regime would have had in the light of the economic issues of 2008/09.

Now it's an NYT article, on the guy itself and not so much on the economic issues, so for the article, it's fine. But the claim that India was shielded from more economic woes because of this guy is a claim that cannot be backed up with just what is in this article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Notice how they made the post on Feb 14, but show only data for Feb 1. Is it really surprising that the first day with the new system saw fewer transactions? Making claims that this move "permanently hobbles India's mobile commerce" based on evidence like this is surely unwarranted.

I really think 3D secure is a good move. All it requires is entering your internet banking password at the time of making the transaction. Is this really so bad for usability?

<comment><USER7> NO - 3D secure is not good for the customers.

the system has no safeguards for vulnerabilities like man-in-the-middle,etc. attacks. Yet it gives credit card companies, the right to deny chargebacks to customers (whose credit card was stolen/hacked) because they can now wash their hands off the matter ("hey only the customer knew the second password... he must have been careless with it, not us")

<comment><USER8> Man-in-the-middle attack are made less likely because the 3DSecure page where the user is asked to enter a password also contains challenge question that was originally added by the user at the time of setting up 3DSecure for his/her account. The user should be able to recognize that this is not the bank's website when the challenge question is not his/her own.

<comment><USER5> The monkey could also fetch the secret question from the 3DSecure page and show it to the user, right? Or am I missing something here? How will adding more information to the login page make it more resistant against mitm?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of the law that existed up until recently in south korea mandating that all financial transactions had to be encrypted using ActiveX. Yes. You read that right. It is as mad as it sounds.

[http://www.kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s#003...](http://www.kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s#003095)

</comment><comment><USER10> India's systems are generally not designed for the "new entrants" and most of the incumbents design the system with walled gardens to protect themselves.

For a startup like us who have a web based software like basecamp, there is no way we can charge subscription services. Infact no payment gateway exists for us to take credit card payments from Indian customers.

Thanks to PayPal, we can serve international customers much easily. I have a lot of anger against the people who run India's large services as if its an entitlement, without caring for the new entrants.

</comment><comment><USER11> One reason Government has to come up with restrictions like that is because banks and credit card companies do not protect the consumer in case of card theft unlike here in the US where the customer is liable for only the first $50.

All the fraudulent charges are the customers responsibility.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have stopped using credit cards online for over a year, prefer online banking based payments, because it is one username and 2 passwords(authentication, transaction)

I dont like 2 factor authentication, especially with mobile/sms, when I am abroad or travelling, I still can do my transaction

<comment><USER13> Online banking based payments work just fine for local Indian sites, but I haven't found a way to pay US based businesses without a credit card. The only use I've had for using a credit card has been to pay for AWS and Linode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is nothing. Every time somebody finds an easier way of doing things, the government and the babucracy finds a way of muscling in and making it as bad as all the earlier options. Some of it is not bad, but others are nuts. I should start a list.

\- Vehicles registered in one state cant be used for too long in another state

\- Banks have insane policies

\- Online electronic tax filing requires that you complete the process in paper format as well. To complete the electronic process you have to send it in by normal snail mail as well. And you cant get acknowledgments.

\- Universities don't recognize each other between states

-

<comment><USER15> > Vehicles registered in one state cant be used for too long in another state

They can, if you stay for over 6 months you have to pay road tax for the state in which you are residing.

> Universities don't recognize each other between states

Universities are recognized by the Central government not by the states, all recognized universities remain recognized throughout India. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Grants_Commission_%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Grants_Commission_%28India%29))

<comment><USER14> Welcome to India, experience teaches you more than what the documents tell you. Given the downvotes, I need to explain.

Vehicles why do you even need to pay across multiple states, pay once, get it to run across India. I don't see a justification for state by state rules on how you use your vehicle. Instead you get cop-stopped, you get questioned, and let off by the usual methods, you know which.

Yes, universities are recognized, but I know from experience that some state universities do not recognize courses from the University of Delhi. Been there and lost 2 years fighting the system, the bitterness doesn't go away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In India, _e-Governance = e-Redtape_

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems to me like it was the government that started the whole mess.

<comment><USER18> It usually is :) but cleartrip might just be right here to blame the banks. Asking for more secure authentication is a good idea, particularly in India where on more than one occasion, I've had to stop people from writing down my credit card number for "the record".

That transaction volumes decreased on the /first/ day 3-D secure (and now, the one-time password) was implemented is hardly surprising, but I think once customers get used to it it would have returned back to normal.

<comment><USER19> I agree with your point I have found it hard to prevent merchants from writing down credit card numbers(!!!) and these additional layers of security are needed for the market. On the contrary, though I am a regular user of credit / debit cards for online transactions in India - atleast 3-5 times a month, I have found it really hard to use my credit card from the beginning of the month since they introduced the one-time-password.

I have not been able to use my credit card even once since this was introduced due to various reasons - the SMS service that banks are supposed to deliver One-Time-Password is not sent promptly or I do not have a way to get password to authorize even an IVR transaction in time.

It might all work out after initial issues are resolved but so far I find this to be a pain.

<comment><USER18> I believe the banks do offer an alternative to go online and generate an OTP.

Of course, this does defeat the purpose of an IVR transaction :)

For what it's worth, I'm optimistic: the banks might listen to customer complaints and actually do something about it. I admit that I have no idea what they could do: AFAIK there's no way a telco could even guarantee that a SMS is delivered immediately after it is sent

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I feel this is a good thing!

If you are stupid enough to fail to use and understand the new system, they you wont be able to purchase it.

And thus they will end up avoiding huge credit card debt's like poor Americans.

Also hardly anyone buys from Amazon and only pathetic people buy from apple iTunes.</comment>