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Microsoft Launches Visual Studio Express, VS 2005 Beta

Posted by simoniker on from the express-to-impress dept.

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."

3 of 541 comments (clear)

  1. Re:MFC not included - again by torpor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You don't ----neeeeeeeeed----- MFC, and in fact I would advise you to stay the hell away from it.

    Use wxWidgets, or some other framework instead. For fun, why not try something like ClanLib...

    MFC is godawful. Once you've tried a few of the other frameworks that allow you to write cross-platform GUI code for Windows, I doubt you'll disagree with me ...

    --
    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  2. Re:how about some free cigarettes? by tehcyder · · Score: 5, Insightful
    So it would be better if all software was incredibly expensive and difficult to use in order to discourage all those "people who don't know what they're doing"?

    Or was that a joke?

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  3. Re:Sweet! by DrXym · · Score: 5, Insightful
    DevStudio is fairly good and certainly better than anything on Linux for C++ work but I wouldn't call it excellent.

    Particularly for .NET development, it is missing many features that have been standard in Java IDEs such as JBuilder or Eclipse for some time. For example the ability to debug two apps at once (for client / server etc.), or to rename a class and all references to it throughout a file. Not to mention it's biggest flaw - DevStudio is intractably bound to developing apps that run with MS technology.

    But even for Windows work, by far and away the most annoying 'feature' of DevStudio is the retarded context sensitive help. I've lost count of the number of times that I've hit F1 over something in a Win32 C++ project to be taken to a help page for Windows CE. I'm not sure what context it seems to be using, but it has nothing to do with what I'm doing.

    Still, it's clear from these 'express' editions that MS is worried by the number of free alternative IDEs that are springing up - in particular Eclipse. After all, if students learn to programme using Eclipse, it means MS is completely frozen out the picture. After all Eclipse is primarily for developing Java apps (bad for .NET) and is cross-platform (bad for Windows). A few years down the line those students will be driving the market and a huge slice of potential MS revenue flies out the window.