Microsoft Launches Visual Studio Express, VS 2005 Beta

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."

Comments

Just like the old DOS days

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that part of early MS-DOS's success was the fact that "debug" and qbasic came with it. Granted, they are primitive tools compared to today but it did hook a lot of early developers into that platform.

Isn't this false logic?

[nontrivial]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Microsoft on one hand selling customized and stripped versions of thier products (both Visual Studio Express here and XP Starter Edition in Thailand) and on the other hand railing against courts requiring them to do the exact same thing here and in Europe? Furthermore, didn't they say it would be impossible or at least extremely dificult to do what they are doign now in the US court they got out of?

Can you make a commercial product?

[gr8_phk]

Will the EULA allow development of commercial products? Lots of "hobby" or "student" projects end up for sale or as shareware. Will people making that switch then have to buy the real thing?

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...

[Zepalesque]

Or you can use this fine dot NET development enviornment.

Free

Not "free"

[GSV Ethics Gradient]

Note that the Beta is free but the final product won't be:

We have not announced pricing and licensing and will not do so until next calendar year. For the time being, we can tell you that the Express Editions will be low-cost and will continue to be easy to acquire.

So it will depend on the MS definition of "low-cost". I can't see any distribution limits like the old student editions that cannot be used to create commercial (or even free) software - are they hiding in there somewhere?

Re:Most important question:

[Merlin42]

Just tried in crossover office v3.0.1 and the installer fails with an extremely obtuse message:
Error:
A problem has been encountered while loading the setup
components. Cancelling setup.

Maybe they are trying to find an answer to XCode

[foidulus]

XCode is probably more analgous to this release than open source *nix tools. Apple distributes XCode free with Panther(and an updated version will come out with Tiger). It is free as in beer, but not open source. However, the panther release probably isn't as nice as Visual Studio, here is hoping they improve some stuff in 2.0...
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:

[nessus42]

I'm not a software dev but is it common for people to develop on a platform different than the one they are developing for?

I develop for Windows under Linux because I find Linux much easier to use than Windows. I do so using Python and Tkinter. Code written using these is typically quite portable.

|>oug

Here's how it really works

[His name cannot be s]

I'm suprised at how "expensive" people feel Visual Studio is.

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.

Finally, compliant with XHTL W3C standards!!!

[yopie]

From VS 2005 Documentation:
"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."