Microsoft to Give Away Developer Tools to Students 555
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.""
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
But wait, there's more... (Score:3, Informative)
SQL Server 2005 Express
Microsoft Expression Studio
And Visual Studio 2005 and 2008
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:this feels wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Professional Tools (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is a "good" move on MS' part~ (Score:3, Informative)
Visual C++ not C++ (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Professional Tools (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Professional Tools (Score:4, Informative)
* free
* open source
* mature
* interactive ide (code completion, debugging, refactoring)
* supports multiple languages
* Eclipse Rich Client Platform
* easily customizable, modifiable, pluggable,
Re:Professional Tools (Score:3, Informative)
Please Enter Your International Student Identity Card Number [msdn.com]
Re:Professional Tools (Score:3, Informative)
You are talking about a package that includes Visual Studio Pro, SQL Server 2003, Windows Server 2005 and Windows Server 2008, etc.
That's a non-trivial download even over a high speed line.
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...
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:Professional Tools (Score:4, Informative)
-Are exaggerating and expect vim like start times out of a huge IDE
-Hate eclipse... because its cool to hate (everyone know Java and everything produced with it sucks)
-Have really old hardware ( this was done on a 2 year old laptop )
-Haven't tried eclipse in a long time... or ever
Re:Professional Tools (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Professional Tools (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Professional Tools (Score:3, Informative)
Re:As it happens... (Score:3, Informative)
Linux C++ Development better hands down (Score:5, Informative)
I wholeheartedly agree.
Yes, for C#, Visual Studio is amazing, but for C++, Linux is better.
I like KDevelop.
1) Solutions management is better - KDevelop is much better at managing multiple build targets, working with complicated builds, and more.
2) Source control is better - that's really for any Unix system. MS source control blows compared to what you get out of subversion, just because vss uses that stupid check out model.
3) Collaboration is better. If you want a genuine team suite type of thing, its pretty hard to top SourceForge.
4) Standards are better. If you are -really- into C++, the GNU compiler is simply better because it follows the standards. If I had a dollar for every time I ported something from VC to GCC, found that GCC rejected the code, did some research, and found that GCC actually did the right thing, I'd be pretty rich. On the flip side, I don't think I've ever run into a situation where GCC did something non-standards compliant that VC++ actually did do.
5) Performance coding is better. The whole point of C++ is to be doing systems programming. That means you need to consider architectural things like integer sizes, interfacing with assembly language, and good timer calls. On all of these fronts, Linux is better. The sizeof(int) is right on Linux and wrong on Windows for 64 bit platforms.. and the calling convention and stack situation in 64 bit Linux is just better. It's almost as if Microsoft chose their convention deliberately to not be like what the rest of the world was doing. Interfacing with assembly is better on Linux. It used to be in Windows that you could do inline assembly, but -not any more- in 64 bit land, so it becomes a push between AT&T syntax versus MS syntax. I prefer AT&T assembler syntax just because it seems cleaner. Finally, gettimeofday() works really well on Linux, whereas Windows gives you a mishmash of calls... the basic SYSTEMTIME call stinks, then there is QueryPerformanceCounter, and whatever new one they through into Vista. Enough already. And I'll toss in that dealing with UTF8 is probably faster than doing UTF16 all the time, especially if you writing quick and dirty code to be hosted on western european and American servers.
6) Code is more accurate. Everyone deals with temporal data lately and that means time zone conversions. On Windows these do not work and cannot work because the OS does not consider historic time zone transitions, while Linux does.
7) There is no COM on Linux. A few years ago, I would have argued this to be a disadvantage for Linux, but, having seen the disaster that resulted from COM, I'd have to say that Linux sticking to a basic C style call for the vast majority of its services turned out to be a pretty good plan.
Really, I'd almost have to say that people who say Microsoft is better for C++ haven't really programmed in C++ enough to know what they are talking about. If C++ on Windows was that good, the world would not be beating down the doors to C#...
'Nuff said.
Re:Just another sign of the Microsoft apocalypse (Score:2, Informative)
I've been using VS2005 for 3 years now, so I'm familiar with it's main features. My favorite, which I have yet to find an equivalent is the debugger. It's great for tracking down the "horrible" bugs that would normally take hours of development time (like memory trashing caused by a third-party function you're using that overwrites a pointer...). Without being able to break on a specific memory location being changed, and stepping through code, watching variables change before my eyes, the time to fix it would have went up by at least a factor of two.
Bugs are inevitable, no matter how great a coder you think you are. If a CS student has never needed to fix a bug like this, they likely never programmed anything more complex than Djikstra's algorithm. Once you've worked on a team project with at least 10,000 lines of code, you'll see the importance of a great debugger (and dev-environment).
In addition, if you end up getting your hands on VisualAssistX, coding will be a breeze. It allows you to type less and think more, which results in better code overall, and faster development time.
Re:Professional Tools (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Professional Tools (Score:2, Informative)
code completion
^p
jump-to-declaration
^]
project-wide renames:
vim *.[ch]
I've used IDE's in the past, but not any more. I'm way more productive with vim and supporting tools. Also, extremely important, is that the toolset mindset leads to a far better understanding of the process. A lot of click-click IDE users have only a marginal understanding of what is going on.
I write space qualified software, so generally I have time to think about what I code. I don't see the point in code completion. If I don't know what some class is doing, I'd much rather read the documentation than just browsing through the list of methods. It might save a few seconds once in a while, but that's about it.
Re:Professional Tools (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't want to waste time fooling around with the various plugins and don't mind being a bit behind in versions, EasyEclipse [easyeclipse.org] is a great package set. Choose which "distribution" you want based on the tasks you'll do with it, and you get a well-tested set of plugins that do the functions you need.
I've moved on from it since I've gotten more used to which tools I actually need, but it's awesome for those just starting with Eclipse.