Microsoft Launches Visual Studio Express, VS 2005 Beta 541
An anonymous reader writes "At the TechEd Europe keynote today, Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1. With it, they also released a set of five 'Express Editions' of Visual Studio. These currently free applications offer a student and hobbyist-oriented version of Visual Studio, and are available in C#, C++, VB, Web Developer, and SQL flavors. Each download weighs in at right around 50MB and features tools, documentation, and starter kits. There's been multiple posts and more information on this announcement over at MSDN Blogs, too." Update: 06/29 13:57 GMT by S : A clarification from the Express FAQ: Although the Beta Express products are currently free to download: "We have not announced pricing and licensing and will not do so until next calendar year."
Difference between this and full version (Score:0, Interesting)
Glad I got the Boss to Shell Out (Score:1, Interesting)
Most important question: (Score:2, Interesting)
Nope, this is NOT a troll; the earlier versions of Microsoft Developer Studio didn't run under Linux, at least nut under Wine.
Since I've abandoned Windows, but must still develop software for it, I am really curious to know if this WILL run under Linux/Wine.
Just like the old DOS days (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't this false logic? (Score:3, Interesting)
Will this work with the Nokia Series 60 SDK? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been wanting to try out Nokia's free (GCC-based) SDK for Series 60 Symbian platforms, but it requires Visual Studio, which I'm not prepared to buy.
There was a website out there somewhere that explained how to set up the SDK on a Linux system, but it was quite a hassle. And the emulator (which is necessary for debugging) didn't run under Linux anyway.
Although I'd be disappointed to boot Windows once more after having used Linux exclusively for some time now, I'd really like to do some serious Series 60 development.
Perhaps it will soon be possible to combine Nokia's SDK with both ReactOS and this free Visual Studio version. At least I'd still be working on a mostly open-source development platform, then!
By the way, if anybody can give me some pointers on setting up the Nokia SDK without having to rely on Visual Studio (and if possible without having to use any Microsoft software) while still being able to use a debugger, then please let me know, even though this is blatently off-topic.
Can you make a commercial product? (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone should just download Eclipse and MinGW instead. If these aren't up to snuff then fix the problem - you're a software developer after all....
Or you can use this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Free [icsharpcode.net]
Not "free" (Score:3, Interesting)
Not really (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Most important question: (Score:2, Interesting)
Avalon/XAML (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Most important question: (Score:4, Interesting)
Error:
A problem has been encountered while loading the setup
components. Cancelling setup.
Maybe they are trying to find an answer to XCode (Score:4, Interesting)
However, you can release commercial code with XCode if you so desire. Although it doesn't have BASIC or C#, it does have support for Java, applescript, and more.
Feh, I still think I will stick with XCode.
Re:Most important question: (Score:3, Interesting)
|>oug
WINE compatibility (Score:2, Interesting)
On top of all this, I'm sure that since WINE is user space, you would not be able to crash your entire OS like you can still do with any Windows OS and messed up software.
Coincidental that this comes up... (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, I'll quite babling and just say that I think it's about time Microsoft did something like this. I've always been baffled that a Visual Studio suite runs upwards of $1000, and the lesser versions still can cost a few hundred. Right now I'm considering developing a database app to use as a MySQL front end for a small company I'm doing IS work for, and at first SharpDevelop was my only option (though it looks like I might stick with it; it's an incredible program) at least until a VB dev environment is COMPLETELY FREE. The only problem now is I have to decide whether to learn
Here's how it really works (Score:5, Interesting)
As a professional developer, I use both VS.net 2003 and Eclipse (3.0m9) almost every day.
Last year, I worked pretty close with an MS consultant on a project, and he let me in on a few things.
Microsoft only prices the software high so that people give them a percieved value. The consulting groups then turn around and hand out copies of VS.NET,SQL Server and Win2k3 like candy at halloween.
18 months or so ago, There was an article about MS giving away VS.NET CDs at some university, and people started asking about the licensing. The answer generally was "go ahead and use it"... Which illustrates MS's position on devloper tools. Get them into the hands of the users, don't worry about making money on them.
Another effect of this mentality, is the VS.NET installer has a spot for a product key, but it is disabled, thereby allowing anyone to install the product over and over.
Microsoft will likely price the Express editions at $100 +/- $50 , and then proceed to give them away in cereal boxes
My 2c+GST.
Re:RAD? (Score:2, Interesting)
I took an HCI course not too long ago at university, and _everyone_ (including us) who did prototyping with VB ended up using it for the final program. To be fair, this worked pretty well - but it was only for a lowly kiosk program. I'm sure it would have been much faster if we had rewritten the whole thing in C or C++.
But, yeah, VB is pretty damn good if you need to get something done in a hurry, or prototype rapidly.
-Erwos
Re:Glad I got the Boss to Shell Out (Score:3, Interesting)
While you are certainly entitled to your belief, I fear that you are wrong, by almost a order of magnitude.
An MSDN Universal subscription from Microsoft [microsoft.com] runs $2,799 (new subscription)... however they can be had for much less if you look on eBay [ebay.com] for instance.
If a Subscription was $375 I'd have one myself instead of using the stripped versions (and cheap) I have been using for side projects.
Re:RAD? (Score:2, Interesting)
In other news, vim is still free. (Score:3, Interesting)
Those without the time to understand the various quirks of the various new forms of VS may be glad of this update: at time of writing, vim [vim.org] is still free.
I do approve of C# and
Re:A smart move (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft are attempting to lock students in, probably even before they hit tertiary education.
While I don't deny that it's obvious that Microsoft are making their products available free or cheap because they want students to choose Microsoft rather than Linux, it's worth noting that one of the options on the registration page, under "what areas are you interested in", is "Linux interoperability".
That's right - Microsoft are collecting information on how many of the people downloading this tool care about whether their code will be portable to Linux. I don't know if that's at all significant, but it struck me as interesting.
Re:Express Projects not compatible with VS2003 Pro (Score:1, Interesting)
The reason they switched to an XML based file format is because of the new MSBuild build engine that ships with VS 2005. This allows developers to use the command line to build their projects in the same way that VS does, a huge improvement over previous versions.
Finally, compliant with XHTL W3C standards!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
"ASP.NET allows you to create Web pages that are compliant with XHTML 1.0 Transitional standards. XHTML is a W3C standard that defines HTML as an XML document. Creating Web pages that are compliant with XHTML standards guarantees that the elements in the pages are well formed. Because browsers are moving toward supporting XHTML, creating pages that conform to XHTML standards helps ensure that your pages will be compatible with browsers in the future. XHTML is also extensible, allowing the definition of new elements. Finally, an XHTML page is much easier to read programmatically for situations in which the Web page is processed by a computer, and the document can be manipulated using transformations. For more information about XHTML and the XHTML standards, see the W3C site at www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1."
Re:Visual Studio == Free (Score:3, Interesting)
I go to PSU. For a while students got a number of pieces of software (VS.NET, WinXP, Office, FrontPage, ec.) for free. I realize that our technology services fee was probably a bit higher because of it (and if not something else was), but on the other hand, not *that* many students got them, so the price to PSU was much less than just 40,000 * (educational price). Thus other students were significantly subsidizing my software cost.
And in turn I help to subsidize their athletic programs, or whatever, so it works both ways.
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)
If this isn't true for
PDF RTF HTML DOC... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:RAD? (Score:2, Interesting)
How is
Any more "human-readable" then Have you ever tried to write _clean_ code that spans a few lines? VB needs stupid _ at the EOL, and last I checked it is limited to 15 lines.Lets look at the Cache.Add Method of the .NET Framework
What is with all the ByVal, As and _ crap? Looking at VB and VB.Net code makes me want to pull out my eyes. It is just too verbose.Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's a link from O'Reilly on how to write an FTP Client in
http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2004/05/10
The documentation is profuse, clear, and comprehensive. There are very few things that don't exist that probably should when you go looking for them, but enough people have hunted for the same thing and have already crossed those hurdles for you. This means you get to spend more time focusing on getting the app to solve the real business problems you should be focusing on and less trying to mold it to do the basics of what you need.