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Microsoft launches free design and development software program for students

As Apple continues to see growth among youngsters, Microsoft sees the need to keep up with the demographic.  Microsoft Corp. announced on Monday that the software giant will offer free access of its development and design tools to as many as one billion students, whether they are in college or high school. 

The goal with the DreamSpark program is to reach out to students worldwide, as well as push technology innovation around the world. The software included in the DreamSparks program includes Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition, Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition, Expression Studio, XNA Game Studio 2.0, SQL Server Developer Edition, Windows Server Standard Edition, and its Web and graphic design toolset. 

So far, Microsoft is offering DreamSpark to more than 35 million college students in Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S reported PC World. Microsoft plans to broaden the program to Australia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Japan, Lithuania, Latvia, and Slovakia over the next six months.

"I've always believed in getting developers at as young an age as possible," said Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman, in an interview with Channel 8.  "These are the tools that people can build a career around or they can just build fun software for themselves. The basics of understanding how good architecture works, the data structures ... those have been the same for the last 30 years. Fundamentally, the skills of design, of knowing what good code looks like -- that is going to be valuable for at least the next three decades."

Currently, the DreamSparks program is available to students whose focus include technology, design, math, science, and engineering.

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cool but ....
By mforce on 2/20/2008 3:03:49 AM , Rating: 2
While I do understand Microsoft's reasons for doing this I don't really think they're doing it "for the kids". It's a clever thing to get people used to their products and developer tools. It's well known that once you write code with MS tools it's useless for anything other than Windows.
They do have a point however with youngsters learning the basics of coding and such. But I don't think people really need MS tools for that. Eclipse for instance is a much better IDE than Visual Studio in my opinion and Java is just as easy as C#. Mysql is good enough to learn SQL and database access.
I think it's important for people just getting into computing to realize that although MS would have you believe otherwise there are good alternatives out there ,you can write cross-platform software and use open source tools which have and will always be free.




RE: cool but ....
By Pirks on 2/20/08, Rating: 0
RE: cool but ....
By wordsworm on 2/20/08, Rating: 0
RE: cool but ....
By eye smite on 2/20/2008 8:37:19 AM , Rating: 4
He he, I'm just chuckling here, don't get sideways on me........does anyone remember the last time MS gave out free woftware and people kept signing up for a free copy of Office 2k7.......and even though they couldn't get it after the deadline MS put monitoring software on their systems anyway, you remember that? lol

I'm just leery of MS period from a long time back. <---------Still chuckling.


RE: cool but ....
By wordsworm on 2/20/08, Rating: 0
RE: cool but ....
By eye smite on 2/20/2008 12:04:07 PM , Rating: 4
Hehe tell me about it. I have both of those MS's and I think taking the shot everyday is more pleasant than dealing with new stuff from the corporation known as MS. :-)


RE: cool but ....
By kzrssk on 2/20/2008 6:42:25 PM , Rating: 1
Manual transmission is WAY easier than Linux. It was all they had before automatic transmissions, so it had to be easy enough for everyone to do. Computers have never been that way. You have to be smart enough for computers (and Linux), rather than the computers (and Linux) being dumb enough for you.


RE: cool but ....
By Pirks on 2/20/2008 11:50:07 AM , Rating: 4
Linux is not cheaper in the long run, especially if you run a large enterprise, 'cause you might pay some Redhat or IBM support people a lot more than you'd pay MS support. You just sound like another Penguin fanboy. And if you try to do real admin work both on the newest MS server 2008 and some modern Linux distro and compare them - you'll quickly feel the power and complexity of MS admin tools in 2008, especially their Power Shell thing. But who from Penguin fanboys does real work? None really. If you had experience with Mac, Windows and Linux like I do you wouldn't be spewing all this fanboyish bs here, believe me.

And all this funny bs about "cheaper" Linux hardware - muahahahaha, I heard soo much of this bs before that I'm not even going to discuss it. I wanna see some decent large enterprise datacenter built on your Linux "cheap" hardware, haha!


RE: cool but ....
By HighWing on 2/20/2008 12:01:40 PM , Rating: 2
I second this. Out of High school I started playing with Linux because it was free. However, when I came to my current position I was able to play with both and quickly found MS Server to be 10x better AND FASTER at doing complex LDAP administration. This year however, my business went to a Linux backend and we have had nothing but trouble all year long. Things that were never an issue with the MS server now become major bugs that can take hours or days to fix. Plus out of the box we have found a complete lack of support for many features we used to use and have been forced to find third party apps that don't work as well as what we had in box with MS.


RE: cool but ....
By Pirks on 2/20/08, Rating: 0
RE: cool but ....
By murphyslabrat on 2/20/2008 3:32:45 PM , Rating: 2
The bit about "cheaper linux hardware" is a reference to the fact that there are versions of Linux (Damn Small Linux) that can run on an old 486, or run on a Pentium II or III with a far smoother experience than with Windows XP.

Linux has its place. It is not God, but it is not Satan either.


RE: cool but ....
By Pirks on 2/20/2008 3:55:19 PM , Rating: 2
You can run older versions of Windows like Win98 on the older hardware as well, so this is moot point. There is not a lot of difference between Linux and Windows in that sense, both run great on old and cheap hardware, no matter what Linux and Mac fanboys are trying to spew around here.

Just pick a proper version of Windows or proper Linux distro, otherwise it's all the same stuff.

However, the real important thing I stressed in my original post here is that it's pretty stupid idea to develop commercial apps for Linux and mostly for Mac nowadays, because of their laughable market share and pathetic development tools, compared with latest .NET and VS offerings from MS. But open source free software development - sure, no problem, you're more than welcome. Use your gcc Luke, or whatever ;)


RE: cool but ....
By mforce on 2/20/2008 7:00:58 PM , Rating: 2
I'm sorry but you're just either biased or not too well informed which is a pity considering this a place where people should at least be well informed. You just can't use win98 anymore , there's really no support anymore for it, it's not very stable and probably has tons os security issues. You could if you really wanted to but there are special Linux distros that will do the job better IMO.

Now I'm not one of those people to say MS and Windows is crap. Altough I'm a Linux fan I'm using Windows right now to type this so don't get me wrong here.
But this was about development tools and I still feel you don't really need to use what MS provides you with. Of course Windows has a huge market share but there are still people out there that don't have or want windows. What are you going to to , tell them to install Windows to run you limited software or otherwise just go ahead and f*ck off ?

As for the tools themselves maybe you guys should really try and see how java works in Eclipse , try and learn all the features Eclipse has. I work in both Eclipse and Visual Studio 2008 and while VS is a lot faster it really lacks some features compared to Eclipse. Also why mysql probably won't be used in places where Oracle is needed it's goog enough to learn sql on. PHP is also an asy crossplatform language you can learn and it's fater than ASP , I can tell you because I converted a site from ASP to PHP.

I'm not saying Linux or Mac are the thing and such but please try and stay open minded and don't be ignorant. Sometimes some of you people sound like MS marketing agents , Windows has the marketshare , Linux is more expensive , Windows servers run better. Come on , get real.


RE: cool but ....
By Pirks on 2/20/2008 9:12:14 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
You just can't use win98 anymore , there's really no support anymore for it, it's not very stable and probably has tons os security issues.
If you gonna use that ancient museum 486 computer from your grandgrandma to run your beloved Linux on - then you should be prepared for all sorts of bugs and troubles anyway because the hardware is so old it's likely to fail before even Win98 fails. So this is moot point.
quote:
I still feel you don't really need to use what MS provides you with.
And I still feel that if MS provides me with a superior dev platform in a form of .NET and VS combined, I must be a fool not to use that platform for Windows software development.
quote:
What are you going to to , tell them to install Windows to run you limited software or otherwise just go ahead and f*ck off ?
Well, what do you think gaming studios or many other major software shops like Adobe tell the Linux fans when asked to port this and that to Linux? Okay, they're not telling you Linux guys to f... off, they tell you to buzz off 'cause they are polite. I'm not such a polite guy as them, hence... you guessed what my my answer would be, now didn't you? :-) Just look around and see what software development shops often tell Linux users and you get the idea. Maybe I'll be polite as well, but I can't promise! Depends on my mood.

Yeah, you right that Linux can be used to learn this and that in programming, but learning Windows coding skills guarantees you a decent job 'cause Windows is absolutely EVERYWHERE, which unfortunately can't be said about learning Linux or Mac coding. Hence my point about wasting your time on Linux or Mac. Unless you're a big open source fan and really willing to donate all your free time to comminity and make world better place etc etc. In this case yes, Linux is a perfect platform to hone your coding skills on. Well, for Apple fanatics the answer is obvious as well.

You think I'm ignorant because you didn't understand my point about difference between commercial software development and open source software development. Linux or Mac is not too bad for developing open source stuff, but it's a joke for developing complex high-end commercial apps (Mac has a couple of exceptions in some narrow markets like NLE apps). There's no market to sell this stuff, 'cause Linux market share (and Mac market share too) is a joke.


RE: cool but ....
By murphyslabrat on 2/27/2008 10:21:42 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
but it's a joke for developing complex high-end commercial apps

You are right, there is not much of a market there, as it is a mere %15 of the total PC market. However, using libraries like MonoDevelop, it becomes quite feasible

quote:
And I still feel that if MS provides me with a superior dev platform in a form of .NET and VS combined, I must be a fool not to use that platform for Windows software development.

Meh, it's a matter of opinions. Mono is a better alternative to .Net, as it provides not only equivalent functionality, but a wider customer-base as well. And VS? Try some other IDEs, a lot of them are quite good.

The bottom line is that Linux is not quite ready for mass distribution, but it is ready for someone interested in software development. You definitely need to try it before you denounce it, pure and simple.


RE: cool but ....
By kzrssk on 2/20/2008 6:39:02 PM , Rating: 2
They DO offer 2008. If you go to the downloads page, you can get both 2005 and 2008.


RE: cool but ....
By InternetGeek on 2/20/2008 4:10:00 AM , Rating: 2
You can actually get the express version of vs.net for free. WIth vs.net 2005 pro you can do a lot of stuff as well. Just not in .net 3.5.


RE: cool but ....
By Spivonious on 2/20/2008 9:18:51 AM , Rating: 2
Actually, you can develop for .NET 3.5 in VS2005, you just lose out on the WPF designer tools that are in VS2008.


RE: cool but ....
By TomZ on 2/20/2008 9:53:45 AM , Rating: 1
Actually, the program includes VS2008, not VS2005, so you can use the WPF designer.