How Microsoft Is Wooing College Kids To Write Apps For Windows 8 187
SquarePixel writes "Bloomberg has an interesting story about Microsoft's efforts to simultaneously woo younger workers and to get more apps into its Windows Store. Quoting: 'Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, designed Windows 8 for touch-screen technology included in the company's first tablet, Surface, and other devices coming this year. To gain share in tablets, a market expected by DisplaySearch to reach $66.4 billion in 2012, Microsoft needs enough apps to challenge the more than 200,000 available for iPad. Using student recruits is one way Microsoft can woo app developers who are used to building programs for mobile phones and tablets, where the company has little and no share, respectively. Luring programmers before graduation is particularly critical for recruitment in the U.S., which lags behind countries such as India and China in its ability to crank out qualified engineers.'"
Re:Technet + Dreamspark (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm the college kid, with the macbook pro, in the computer science class.
Surprisingly macbooks are becoming more popular yet our teachers still insist on using MS products and languages. I know in the *real* world there are a lot of MS jobs etc, but there are also a lot of cross platform jobs too (i'm a php developer, dont judge). Drives me nuts when I have to spin up a VM just to use a program thats Windows specific because the requirements for the project/program/lesson are for a windows machine. Some teachers are willing to accept alternatives, but not all.
Qualified Engineers (Score:0, Interesting)
I've worked with hundreds of Indians over the years, I would not even call most of them compent much less qualified!
Re:Visual Studio (Score:5, Interesting)
So effectively what Microsoft has given the world for free is something that barely gets the job done -- and given that model, I would say it would definitely appeal to the same demographic they're advertising Windows 8 development to: college students.
As a college student I take great offense at the thought that pile of kludge is aimed at me. I have only met one person (in meatspace, all others I view with suspicion that it might be Balmer just trolling forums) that tried the windows 8 prerelease and liked it. (before that i thought he was a bit odd anyway but that just cemented it.)
better than nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was 13/14 and used win9x and wanted to learn to program, there was no visual studio express at all. Only paid tools costing hundreds of dollars.
So you know what I did?
Switched to Linux.
Even today, I have no idea how to write a Windows program (managed to write a DLL I needed a few years ago though.. using Visual studio express C++).. but I've been writing Linux/BSD software in C for 15 years.
Point is, Visual Studio express may be crap.. but if they had it 15 years ago.. I'm sure I would have learned to program in Windows instead. Might never have switched to Linux at all.
So IMO, it's a smart/critical piece of software from MS. It's a bit much to expect people who are learning to program to immediately spend hundreds of dollars.