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Microsoft to Give Away Developer Tools to Students
Posted by
samzenpus
on Tuesday February 19, @11:53AM
from the first-hit's-free dept.
from the first-hit's-free dept.
beuges writes "The Associated Press is reporting that Microsoft will make full versions of their development tools available to students.
"The Redmond-based software maker said late Monday it will let students download Visual Studio Professional Edition, a software development environment; Expression Studio, which includes graphic design and Web site and hybrid Web-desktop programming tools; and XNA Game Studio 2.0, a video game development program. Gates said students will want to try Microsoft's tools because they're more powerful than the open-source combination of Linux-based operating systems, the Apache Web server, the MySQL database and the PHP scripting language used to make complex Web sites.
But Gates said giving away Microsoft software isn't intended to turn students against open source software entirely. Rather, he hopes it will just add one more tool to their belt.""
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Professional Tools (Score:5, Informative)
That kind of cracked me up. Remember kids, professional tools take up lots of storage space. If it's not big, it's not 'professional'.
Also - this is not open to any student in the countries listed. There is a list of about 42 schools in the US that are plugged into their student verification system. In Belgium it is 2 schools, China 3 schools, etc.
Re:Professional Tools (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, once upon a time the GNU tools used to be installed more often from disks or tapes you bought from FSF than downloaded, because of what at the time were large file sizes. And the printed Emacs manual [amazon.com] is a 600-page behemoth. So, it's not as if the Free Software movement has always remained free from claims of heftiness or outright bloat.
Re:Professional Tools (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Professional Tools (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Professional Tools (Score:5, Interesting)
For me, its command-line prompt in bash to compile from, syntax-highlighting editor (vim or kate) to code with, and the lamp stack to deploy on. Make, grep, some perl-fu, svn if you want to have a repository - it might not be "integrated", but it IS a great development environment, and VERY customizable.
The latest version of eclipse starts up fast enough if you have a couple of gigs of ram ... it just doesn't offer me what I want/need (yes, I know it can "sort of" handle c/c++, but I find it STILL gets in the way).
Re:Professional Tools (Score:5, Informative)
When you use one IDE for all these languages, you only have to learn how to use one IDE. 'Nough said...
Almost Thar ... Stay on Target! (Score:5, Insightful)
But I don't quite agree with Gates here.
So this is all around good. I like it even though it's not open source, I think it will overall help Microsoft but may also clarify student's understandings of when to use what tools. I think the next step is for Microsoft to make another license that says you can use it for personal use but once you use it to make money (commercial) you need a commercial license. I don't find anything wrong with that business model. One step further and it could be released under a pseudo MSPL license and another step in the distant future might also entail an even more open state for their development tools. Who knows? All I know is that although this isn't perfect, it's a move in the right direction.
What would really be juicy for me to hear is what Ballmer's take is on this move. I think Gates is generally moving in the right direction but I get this sense that Steve Ballmer is pure evil. Is he seething over this move which to him might just look like lost revenue? Is he even pretending to see this the same way Gates does or is he still in the blind rage "I will f*cking kill ____" mode? I think there are rough times ahead when Gates leaves the scene altogether and I think we will see Ballmer say some pretty stupid things directly contradicting Gates' "just another tool for their belt" view on this.
even xml (Score:5, Insightful)
in fact, one might go as far as to say that even xml is useful. Sometimes. If it's used correctly.
Re:Just another sign of the Microsoft apocalypse (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just another sign of the Microsoft apocalypse (Score:5, Insightful)
As for VS2005/SQLServer2005/IIS6. I've used all three of those in a corporate setting and while I agree that VS2005 is a nice IDE and SQL Server 2005 is a decent DBMS, I would hardly consider IIS6 good. Compared to Apache (and hell, even Tomcat), IIS6 is a bag of crap that is only used because it is required for ASP.NET (and other MS tech) websites.
Re:Almost Thar ... Stay on Target! (Score:5, Insightful)
Come Again? (Score:5, Interesting)
Help me out here, I have a Pentium III 877Mhz processor machine with about a half gig of DDR ram that I purchased in 2000. It still runs fine. For some reason when I install Visual Studio on the Win XP partition, it does not work so well. As in, it is barely usable for small applications and hangs indefinitely for large projects I have. Yet when I write a C++ application in the Linux partition using a number of various open source editors that utilize GCC, it works quite well. I don't mean just VI or Emacs, I mean several things including Gnome and KDE graphical editors (like Glade & KDevelop).
So tell me, what am I doing wrong? Several people have instructed me to buy a new computer but for some reason I do not think that I should have to buy a new computer every time a new version of Visual Studio comes out.
Re:Come Again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Come Again? (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, any CPU released in the last few years + 2 gigs of memory (4 gigs better - splurge on the extra $40) will run VS fine.
Re:Come Again? (Score:5, Funny)
Your recommended specs for a glorified text editor made me snort milk out of my nose. I hadn't done that since the 1st grade. Thanks for bringing back the memories.
Re:Come Again? (Score:5, Interesting)
That pretty much sums up your post.
Try comparing Glade or KDevelop to Visual Studio, even the free-for-all Express Edition, on a technical level and then we can talk. I develop for both Windows and Linux, but I got to say, I prefer both Microsoft's compiler and IDE.
As it happens... (Score:5, Informative)
-jcr
Re:As it happens... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also since Apple in it's infinite 'wisdumb(tm)' choice to kill the java bridge for Cocoa, I have no need to even attempt to use Xcode anymore *shrug*. Oh well.
Re:As it happens... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the IDE is the best I've used TBH.
Smart (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Smart (Score:5, Insightful)
Languages and APIs are secondary. If you know how to write code, you can pick up either through its documentation in no time. It's not a University's job to teach you these. You can pretty much use any language on any platform to learn programming, since fundamentally, a Unix based C program is the same thing as a Windows based VB.net program. You have inputs, an interface, outputs and structures and algorithms. If you try to cram complicated APIs, you'll spend too much time on the actual API then on the parts of the program that are really what you're trying to teach. printf(); is as good as anyone needs to make an interface for educational purposes. You don't need a WinMain() and a WndProc() with a message loop to teach about sorting.
If you want to specifically learn how to code in a language with a specific API, go to a technical college. There you will learn how to do a GUI version of Hello World. You'll know squat about actual programming, but you'll know a language and an API and once someone has designed a program, you'll probably be able to implement it, as long as someone gives you complete algorithms.
This is the problem with students these days. They forgot they need to learn about programming before learning Languages and APIs. Like anything in life, the basics are more important, the specifics you can learn on your own once you have the basics mastered.
This is a "good" move on MS' part~ (Score:5, Funny)
But then I go home, and having thought of a great feature on the drive home, I FTP into my site, open with a text editor, (insert notepad/BBedit/eMacs/Vi here to taste), and write the code by hand. Even if that means copying an pasting, I... how shall I say this... ***still have to know what I'm doing***. Yeah, all you n00bs, you drag and drop those controls and use F4 to set the properties...Go 'head...
But the minute you have to do that with your ARMPIT, you are sunk. I took a written (the process of leaving graphite trails on paper) test for ASP.NET once... Unless you know what your are doing, you are screwed. Use whatever tools you want, whatever LAMP/.NET. But make sure you learn what you are doing, and not just doing.
Would be worried if it was true (Score:5, Insightful)
I heavily use MS tools (day job) and open source tools and Linux only tools. For argument sake lets say it costs me the same amount of dollars for all the applications/tools regardless of if it is MS or if it is open source -- I still prefer the open source tools. Obviously I don't prefer all the open source tools, there are plenty that I don't like. But those that I do like, I prefer them over their equivalent MS tools (or at least what MS would like to believe are the equivalents).
So this will likely just have the same IE/Netscape effect -- but who didn't see that coming.
Re:Source Code? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/Licensing/WindowsAcademic.mspx [microsoft.com], namely the kernel.
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/Licensing/researchkernel.mspx [microsoft.com]
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7614fe22-8a64-4dfb-aa0c-db53035f40a0&DisplayLang=en [microsoft.com]
The same is true of every SDK Microsoft every produced. You don't need Visual Studio to develop Windows apps.