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Microsoft to Give Away Developer Tools to Students

Posted by samzenpus on from the first-hit's-free dept.

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.""

26 of 555 comments (clear)

  1. Awesome by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It never really made sense to me how
    A) A student is supposed to afford these $9000 suites that we're supposed to be familiar with before we get a job that licenses it?
    B) I have to pay to develop for microsoft's OS..

  2. Re:Professional Tools by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Remember kids, professional tools take up lots of storage space.

    Well, once upon a time the GNU tools used to be installed more often from disks or tapes you bought from FSF than downloaded, because of what at the time were large file sizes. And the printed Emacs manual is a 600-page behemoth. So, it's not as if the Free Software movement has always remained free from claims of heftiness or outright bloat.

  3. Re:Almost Thar ... Stay on Target! by link5280 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    MS has a superior IDE with Visual Studio as compared to most, but I agree the underlying language is no different then any other.

    --
    Iraq billions
  4. Re:Professional Tools by sundarvenkata · · Score: 4, Interesting

    All the "First taste is free" comments apart, can some slashdotters recommend an equivalent in the open source software that is as mature and robust as the three said software listed in the page. A *real* development environment, designer tools and a server are given away free by a corporation and suddenly some geeks want to comment on how this is not what they want and Windows source would be the holy grail.

  5. Come Again? by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Having developed for years in Linux using various dev tools, I have to say that Microsoft's Visual Studio development environment is amazing compared to most open source tools I've had experience with. Wow. This comes as a shock to me. Especially since the person delivering this message to me has the /. name of cplusplus.

    Help me out here, I have a Pentium III 877Mhz processor machine with about a half gig of DDR ram that I purchased in 2000. It still runs fine. For some reason when I install Visual Studio on the Win XP partition, it does not work so well. As in, it is barely usable for small applications and hangs indefinitely for large projects I have. Yet when I write a C++ application in the Linux partition using a number of various open source editors that utilize GCC, it works quite well. I don't mean just VI or Emacs, I mean several things including Gnome and KDE graphical editors (like Glade & KDevelop).

    So tell me, what am I doing wrong? Several people have instructed me to buy a new computer but for some reason I do not think that I should have to buy a new computer every time a new version of Visual Studio comes out.
    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Come Again? by cplusplus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      True. VS is a hog. I've really only used Visual Studio 2007 and 2008 because I recently made the switch from Linux. I've talked to others who say versions previous to those are pretty buggy and unstable... which might be half your problem right there. When I posted, I wasn't considering the restrictions that might come from using older hardware with a new version of Visual Studio (like 2008) since I've always had a fairly up-to-date machine for development.

      --
      "False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
    2. Re:Come Again? by everphilski · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Linux won't run on my Windows Mobile enabled phone, but Windows Mobile will! What the fuck is wrong with linux?

      That pretty much sums up your post.

      Try comparing Glade or KDevelop to Visual Studio, even the free-for-all Express Edition, on a technical level and then we can talk. I develop for both Windows and Linux, but I got to say, I prefer both Microsoft's compiler and IDE.

    3. Re:Come Again? by RedK · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If more Developers were like the GP and had an older computer, maybe we would see less bloat in programs today.

      Your recommendation is appalling. His computer works fine. He needs a text editor and a compiler. Why should he upgrade his computer ? In the real world, we professionals like to spend our disposable income on something else than bigger and better text editing machines, seeing how most computers from the late 90s can still edit text like the best of the best.

      --
      "Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
      Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
    4. Re:Come Again? by everphilski · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm not a CS, I'm an aerospace engineer who writes a lot of code.

      I used to work on a missile simulation toolkit for the Army that targeted Windows and Linux and a few other minor platforms. It seemed like we always had to tweak it for different changes in GCC, not just major revisions from 3 to 4 but even point changes in 3 and 4. It was perfectly valid c++ code, compiled fine in Intel's compiler and MSVC++ under Windows (multiple releases), but GCC for some reason liked to whine.

      My second data point is personal experience on my master's thesis work. It was a a computationally intense code. I played around with code speed optimization under both GCC 4 and MSVC++ (Express), and found my code ran substantially faster on the same computer under MSVC++. It sounds counterintuitive if you believe everything about Windows and Linux, but I did my research and I do believe I was flipping the right optimization switches under GCC. Even unoptimized, MSVC under Windows was faster.

      I try my best to keep my code clean so it will compile anywhere (just today I ran some code under Linux that was born under Windows 4 months ago and never touched Linux, only required three edits, capitalization of include files...), so I'm not tied to a compiler, I just use what feels best based off of comparisons. What works well for me might very well not work for someone else. I do very specific kinds of code - generally very computationally intense though not very memory intense, no GUI's, etc.-

    5. Re:Come Again? by angulion · · Score: 2, Interesting

      And this just might be one of the reasons why so much software is slow as a dog.

      How can one expect the developer to have realistic views on how their program runs on the users machines if they have top-of-the-line computers while probably a majority of the users have a few years old box?

  6. Re:Smart by kellyb9 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It might be "like crack", but its what the big boys are using. There should have been peer pressure to use more MS products a long time ago in education. I know I'm asking for a -75 troll mod by saying this. However, coming from my own personal experience, we didn't touch any .net back in school, and now, i'm out in the "real" world and everywhere I look is MS (for the most part).

  7. Microsoft's Futile Freebies; Too Little, Too Late by indiejade · · Score: 1, Interesting

    About a decade too late, Microsoft is finally seeing the light.

    A recent article (registration required) in the New York Times discusses how the Redmond giant is now "giving students free access to its most sophisticated tools for writing software and making media-rich Web sites."

    Ha! I would definitely disagree on the "sophisticated" adjective. Are these noble motives? Hardly. But for non-technical types, this could easily be painted as a seeming variety of evangelical philanthropy. Truth-seekers might ask: does Microsoft really care about all those poor, starving students of the Universe? And if so, why does it care now instead of before; haven't computers been around quite awhile? If (past) actions speak louder than words, the obvious answer would be "Microsoft doesn't care." This futile freebie is far too little, far too late. The computing world got along just fine before there was a Microsoft, and it will continue to get along well whether or not Microsoft does. It could probably be easily proven that the legally-laden profit-seeking motives of the MSFT corporation have actually hindered progress, especially progress of technically-inclined students.

    One of the main problems with capitalism is that it is based on the assumption that every single action by every person everywhere has a monetary-based profit motive. If this were true, libraries would not exist. Indeed, in a purely profit-motivated society, freedom itself would not exist, as time itself would be handcuffed to the dollar sign; choice, the ability to research between or among alternatives, and a non time-constrained intuition are keys for progress.

    A related, but somewhat tangent aside: I cannot quantify the irritation I have with my Business 2.0 magazine subscription being replaced by the megacorporate-centric Fortune magazine. The latest two editions have been severely disappointing. Business 2.0 was about innovation, ideas, progression, change for the better. Fortune had "The $100 Billion Woman" Melinda Gates on the cover for January 2008 and some corporate greed investment propaganda on the cover for February of 2008. Evil real estate people. While I can respect "rich, powerful" women, I don't really aspire to go about having dollar signs attached to my "net worth".

    I sometimes wonder what direction my academic career might have taken if I'd discovered Free Open-Source Software sooner. My advocation of FOSS stands today stronger than before; it is indeed a particularly useful tool for students, teachers, professors, small-medium business owners and other efficient people of the world.

  8. Microsoft Business Model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Microsoft is presenting this as an additional tool to the developer arsenal. Which is fine, if I find myself forced to use Visual Studio for a project now I can only be grateful. But knowing the Microsoft executive mindset, I can assure you that this educational benefactor is nothing more than a facade for supplanting the open source software communities hold in the academic world. But that's dramatic, let me think this out.

    February 27th Microsoft will be unveiling their new open source movement with things such as Windows Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008. I won't go into details as you can already find them on google. All this coupled with the new Yahoo merger and it becomes apparent that the over-aggressive left hand is no longer speaking to the old school executive right hand. It's all rather disorienting to the consumer, which may help them in the end.

    However, the OSS community should be at ease right now. While the hype of this is allowing students (who were already Microsoft oriented in the first place) to download their software, there is confusion and misdirection internally at Microsoft. For the product marketing teams,developers, and project leaders this is a bittersweet victory. Not only that, but the dynamics of the OSS development process are really about to shine. Tested and proven versus hasty deadline shipments.

    They are up against a market that is not drawn to pretty themes and hype out of ignorance. This market inherently demands results.

  9. Just another sign of the Microsoft apocalypse by kjkeefe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I bet they are giving Visual Studio away to everyone within 2 years. They can feel their developer market share slip and they are not stupid.

    Having recently attended a top 5 CS department university, I can tell you that most students are developing in linux. Windows development (.NET to be specific) is only done by about 15% of students (my guess) and it is NEVER used in courses. Course projects that require UI's use Java. Otherwise, it is written in C, C++, Java, oCaml, Scheme, Perl, and PHP. I've taken upwards of 40 CS classes in the last 8 years and I have NEVER used Microsoft tools for coursework.

    --
    1, 2, 3, 4, 5... That's the combination on my luggage!
    1. Re:Just another sign of the Microsoft apocalypse by SnprBoB86 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I attend a Drexel university, which is a co-op school. We primarily use Linux and open source software in the CS department, so there are a lot of students who prefer Linux. Most students don't even realize they can get tons of MSDNAA stuff for free.

      However, a great deal of students go out on co-op and come back with skills in Visual Studio and Microsoft technologies. No one teaches these students how to use vim or emacs. These people were writing code in Eclipse or gedit before Visual Studio. You'd be hard pressed to convince them to switch away from Visual Studio after a 6 month co-op using it. It is far from perfect, but it is a great product and is used happily by many.

      The real issues stem from the close minded cultural and social attributes of most professors I know. Nearly every CS class I sit through includes the instructor making at least one Microsoft bashing comment. There isn't really so much as a preference for FOSS tools as there is social pressure and general ignorance of the MSDNAA and Express editions.

      --
      http://brandonbloom.name
    2. Re:Just another sign of the Microsoft apocalypse by nojomofo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's funny. The company I work for is a MS shop. But we're starting to do a lot of things on Linux and in Java. Why? Because MS tools just don't cut it. What MS got very very wrong about the stack that you mentioned: - Your IDE is tied to a particular runtime. Want to compile for a different runtime? Install another IDE, 4 GB worth. (Yes, they finally fixed that in VS 2008 - only about 10 years after eclipse was able to target any existing JRE). - Your web server version is explicitly tied to your OS. You want to upgrade to the newer web server? Upgrade your OS. MS doesn't care that it's incredibly disruptive. You need to upgrade your OS because it's end-of-lifed? Upgrade to newer version of IIS and deal with all of the pain involved. In short, MS has gone waaaaayyy too far with tying everything together. Life in the real world is much easier on other platforms - where you can mix and match. Need to upgrade the Linux kernel? Fine, you'll still be using the same version of Java/Apache/Tomcat/whatever. Some testing is required, but it doesn't stop your development cycle for a month while everything gets sorted out.

    3. Re:Just another sign of the Microsoft apocalypse by Skim123 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Varies tremendously by company.

      I agree wholeheartedly. I didn't mean to imply that every company in the real world uses Microsoft products, but the original poster was claiming that Microsoft was doing down because they were not reaching university students. I argue that there is very little correlation between the tools one uses in college and the tools companies in the real world use.

      Nor was I proposing that universities should teach Microsoft technologies. The tools used should depend on what the education is intended for. There is a big difference between computer science and software development, yet most universities have just one curriculum for both tracks. Excluding Microsoft products seems a bit silly if you are wanting to become a professional software developer.

      --

      I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.

  10. Re:Professional Tools by trolltalk.com · · Score: 4, Interesting

    can some slashdotters recommend an equivalent in the open source software that is as mature and robust as the three said software listed in the page.

    For me, its command-line prompt in bash to compile from, syntax-highlighting editor (vim or kate) to code with, and the lamp stack to deploy on. Make, grep, some perl-fu, svn if you want to have a repository - it might not be "integrated", but it IS a great development environment, and VERY customizable.

    The latest version of eclipse starts up fast enough if you have a couple of gigs of ram ... it just doesn't offer me what I want/need (yes, I know it can "sort of" handle c/c++, but I find it STILL gets in the way).

    --
    Kevin Smith on Prince
  11. Then you're a crap coder by Viol8 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "my grades literally dropped"

    If your ability to code depends on what IDE you're using then I think its fair to say you're probably no good at it. Perhaps you should consider doing an MBA instead.

  12. Re:Professional Tools by sgbett · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In my experience windows runs faster on vmware full stop. Whats *that* about?

    --
    Invaders must die
  13. Re:Professional Tools by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have had the pleasure? of working with both Eclipse and the .NET development tools for an extended period of time for each.

    Whereas Eclipse is a nice piece of software, I have found that .NET is superior for the type of development that I do - easier to use, has more features, designers, etc.

    That being said, .NET development tools also gobbles up my memory faster than anything else I have on my computer.

  14. Re:Professional Tools by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You seem to be implying that emacs is bloated. I remember thinking the same thing in the 90s when I had to download something like 12Mb to get it to run. While it is even larger now, it still doesn't come close to some other software:

    Emacs 2.2: 36Mb zipped. (http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/)
    Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition: 2.2Gb required disk space (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/products/bb894726.aspx)

    Granted, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the orders of magnitude difference between the two is amazing.

  15. Just an extra tool by Ougarou · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I just get the feeling that

    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.
    translates into

    Gates said: I don't want you to stop using pencils, I just want you to start writing on plastic.
  16. Re:Professional Tools by syousef · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I use Eclipse every day. It's still buggy. So buggy it's taken out about half a day's worth of file changes I did one day last year (wiping local history as well as actual file content). Luckily I did make a backup mid way through of some of the files so it only took about an hour to recover. I've learnt to close down the IDE nightly to avoid such things. The other thing about eclipse is that each new version seems to break old plugins like HibernateIDE for example. At work our team has stopped upgrading versions somewhere around 3.2 and are not moving to europa yet because of this. (We've also had issues moving between workspaces for minor revisions of the IDE).

    Eclipse is wonderful but it could be SO much better! This sort of crap just turns developers off it, and rightly so. We can't afford to sit on our hands and say how wonderful a product is when it has so many flaws unless we wish to perpetuate the "open source = buggy" meme.

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  17. Re:Professional Tools by huckamania · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ya mean they're both equally fast on your fast machine.

    I've used both on my slow laptop and eclipse takes far longer to do just about anything. I eventually ended up only using it to do testing* and did all my editing using something simple and fast. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't have finished the project without eclipse, but fast it wasn't.

    *A lot of the handset makers release modules for eclipse that include testing and emulation.

  18. Re:Professional Tools by cheater512 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Do you really think that Microsoft is giving away the software from the goodness of their heart?
    They are trying to lock the next generation in to using their tools.

    Wow they are giving away a server? But wait, Linux is already given away and its far more capable.
    Kdevelop and Eclipse spring to mind for IDEs.