Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft to Give Away Developer Tools to Students
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.""
Yeah, well when you only have a total of 5 programs that work on your system, you get desperate...
I'll help you out. Most developers I know don't mind buying a new computer every couple of years. I could give a shit if a DEVELOPMENT IDE runs on a 10 year old computer.
It's turtles all the way down!
You forgot to add one more feature: * Takes 15 minutes to start up
"Rather, he hopes it will just add one more tool to their belt."
Who is/are the tool/s? Are m$' warez the tools for the students, or are the students the tools for m$ income stream. I wonder if these $tudent$ think critically...
"But Gates said giving away Microsoft software isn't intended to turn students against open source software entirely."
Was this an editorial, or what Gates said? Either way, it's a fallacious/deceitful statement. Students who get hooked on ms warez will probably not be able to export their files (if there is a Student Professional Version File Format involved. These $tudent$ might find they can't easily export or convert their data and apps.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
It's turning potential programmers into sheepal. I was in a OS class with a fellow programming student and the teacher was doing an intro to Linux (don't ask what I was doing in there, it's complicated), and the student asks "But how can you program in Linux, I can't find Visual Studio". The teacher tried to explain that there are plenty of programming tools available besides Visual Studio, but the other student didn't believe him. I've worked with the kinds of morons this concept of click and drool programming produces and it's everything I can do not to beat these people senseless (well, more than they already are). I know it's not entirely the fault of Visual Studio, that it can be used for "Good" as well as "Evil", but Microsoft should put an IQ test of the form designer or something.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
I generally buy at least one generation behind - more bang for the buck. Then, after a few years, I slap some upgrades on it (ram, hd, video) and get at least another couple of years out of it. I have yet to have a box that hasn't given service for at least half a decade, from the pre-pc boxes, to the 286-20, the 386-40, the p200 (skipped the 486, since the 386-40 ran faster than the 486-66), the duron 1`400+, and now the athlon 2600+ ...
The duron is almost a decade old, and with a 256 meg video card, 1600x1200 monitor, a gig of ram, and a new firewire card, it runs fine. The 2600+ got its video and ram upgrades last fall, and will run fine for at least another year or three ... (though I did remove the 3rd monitor).
Of course it helps that I'm not running Windows, or I'd have to toss both those boxes in the trash ...
Kevin Smith on Prince
But hey, if you think Perl/C++/PHP code developed in 'vi' is hot shit, more power to you. Good luck in your entry level programmer's job. The rest of the world has moved on.