FREE Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions

[Spirit of Me]

Read about it here...*

Download Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions free of charge for a year, (as long as you download them before Nov.8 2006 you can keep it forever without charge)

Yes I also know many do not like the .net framework but these are free and sort of fun to play with.

It's about $250 worth of software. Enjoy!





*I have not posted this release on behalf of any affiliation with Microsoft or any of it's agencies, Direct or Indirect.

[cavalierlwt]

Wow, holy sh*#!
I'm going to DL them tonight! It's been ages since I've written a line of code but just today I was thinking I should brush up and renew my interest again.
What do you think is M$'s reason behind this?
Just looking at all this, I keep thinking how back in 1995 (when I was in school for CS) I would have killed for this stuff--and it would have cost one hell of lot more that a couple hundred of bucks too!! I recall student editions of VB and VC++ were $99 each, and I don't think SQL server was free back then either.

[Destructor]

i took a visual studio class, but never did anything else with it. i wasn't the greatest student ever and didn't really enjoy it at the time. wish i had taken more time with it but oh well....

[cavalierlwt]

Before going to college, I loved programming. Spent nearly all my waking hours hammering away at the computer. Learned a ton on my own (there's a lot of great books out there!) and then decided to go to school and get my BS. In the end, I didn't really learn too much about CS, and completely lost my love of programming. I did ironically learn a ton other non-CS stuff though.

[Spirit of Me]

Originally posted by cavalierlwt
....What do you think is M$'s reason behind this?....
Before going to college, I loved programming.... In the end.... completely lost my love of programming.

Bingo, this is the main reason. In less than ten years software development went from being primarily based in small business and individual (hobbyist) development to being corporate and sponsored design.

Believe it or not Microsoft is attempting to open the market again. Most don't realize it but many of the leading software developers employed by Microsoft were once hobbyist developers. Paul Allen himself was self taught

These are often individuals that really enjoy and care about what they do. I'm not saying that college trained software engineers aren't, but many are not driven by the love of the code.

It's my opnion that is the reason many open source titles are really of great quality.
-

[cavalierlwt]

Paul Allen, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak were all programming when they were kids --no small feat considering home computers didn't yet exist.

Originally posted by cavalierlwt
Wow, holy sh*#!
What do you think is M$'s reason behind this?

I think I've read it's free... for a year!

Bit Torrent baby...!

[cavalierlwt]

I can generally afford to buy my software, so it's nice to have the actual (legal) version of things, with documentation and all. If bittorrent had been around when I was a student however, I would have had a moral dilemma on my hands.

I work for a big engineering company and you should see the amount of money we pay M$ every year, it's unbeliveable.

My personal opinion is :

1) all development versions of software should be free.
2) M$ encourages piracy by selling their software at that price!

[cavalierlwt]

Since prices have come down, I can honestly say I feel pretty good about buying some M$ products. My nephew was heading off to college a few months ago, his parents bought him a new laptop. The day he was leaving, I found out he didn't have M$ Office, he had some old Office 97 CD that I gave him 4 years ago when he started High School. He's going to be a business major, so I though he really needed something a little more in sync with what his school would probably be using. I went down to Staples, and there was M$ Office, student/teachers edition for $99. I had to admit, $99 was a good price for M$ Office, as in pretty reasonable money for the value of it. I felt pretty good about getting it, as opposed to years ago when the full install versions of Office were on the shelf for $350-$450. Back then, I always had to get 'upgrade' versions and then use tricks to install it. I didn't have the money and they were charging *huge* amounts of money.

[rseven]

THANKS SPIRIT!!
i downloaded it,now i can learn something new.maybe create a website,or just learn a few things,either way it will be fun;)

[Spirit of Me]

Originally posted by ThUnDeR
I work for a big engineering company and you should see the amount of money we pay M$ every year, it's unbeliveable.

My personal opinion is :

1) all development versions of software should be free.
2) M$ encourages piracy by selling their software at that price!

It's FREE as long as you download it before Nov. 2006 . Can't get any cheaper unless you want MS to come and install it for you.

It cost to produce Even development software. Why should they give away software for someone else to compete against them?

I don't see Honda giving Ford designs for a better fuel injector or even the software to design one.

As an engineering employee does your company share designs with rival engineering firms? If so please post the address and contact info, I have several clients who could benefit from free engineering.

[Spirit of Me]

Originally posted by rseven
THANKS SPIRIT!!
i downloaded it,now i can learn something new.maybe create a website,or just learn a few things,either way it will be fun;)

You are welcome! Enjoy, programing is a great hobby for anyone.

[cavalierlwt]

I was not a fan of Visual C++ (I haven't looked at C# yet), I am a big fan of Visual Basic.
rseven, be sure to grab more than one book (for whatever language you start with), having 2-3 is the way to go. Sometimes one book will just fail to explain something adequately, and one of the others will just explain it in a way that makes sense for you. I would recommend Visual Basic out of that group. Actually, truth be told, I would recommend old fashioned BASIC just to get a feel for program flow and logic, then maybe move on to JAVA.