Cheap Visual Studio

I'm posting this here because I've seen a couple people say they couldn't afford Visual Studio. Microsoft is releasing cheap versions (< $50) of its developer products called Express. They're stripped down somehow, but it wasn't obvious to me how. The C# product, for instance, mentions that you can consume web services, so maybe you can't build web services easily. But you do have the IDE and full access to .NET.

Anyway, here's a link to a page with info and a bunch of goofy pictures: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/

No, I don't work for Microsoft, and yes, I understand they're only doing this is to grab mindshare among college students from Linux and Java

My college lets me get just about everything MS ever made for free as part of their MSDNAA program. It comes with some weird license that basically states MS owns your code, your soul, and every thought that will go through your head throughout your entire life though.

What would be great is if Microsoft gave a free version to students that automatically transmitted all their code back to HQ. Oh, and the IDE could automatically insert a Microsoft copyright notice at the top of every file when you compiled. Well, it would make me laugh at least.

(Honestly, I've had a lot of success with MS products, after surviving the initial trauma of Visual C++ 2.0 and Windows 3.1)

You did notice that these are all Whidbey-based versions of Visual Studio, right?

Which means they won't even be available until about Q2 2005, and that's only if they stay on the (current) schedule.

Oh, and I'm with Eggy. I get licenses for all the full versions, beause I have an MSDN Universal subscription.

Yeah, but I saw that the beta's downloadable. Maybe no one will be interested in that, so this amounts to a heads-up I guess.

I'm not knocking the heads-up, mind you. I just wanted to make sure anyone considering this was aware that these are a long way from final versions.

And, for anyone considering this, keep these points in mind:
- VS 2005 will be a MAJOR change from 2002/2003. Almost as major as .Net was from VS6
- Many people that installed the beta and RC versions of the original VS.Net had to format their hard drives to completely remove the beta/RC versions before they could successfully install the final release.

If you're gonna download one of these betas to play with, I highly suggest that you also download a trial version of VMWare or Virtual PC 2004, and do NOT install these betas on a "real" computer that you use regularly, and don't want to be forced to reformat. (Not saying it will be necessary, but you don't want to take the chance.)

I know of what you speak.

That's the licence for every MS product. They do, actually, own your code.

I'm glad I'm a linux coder then.

Does your MSDNAA agreement get you Office 2003 as well? We get everything except the one piece of software that's of use to me. It only inconvenienced me for the length of the bittorrent download, but still kind of silly they give everything else for free.

Umm, they don't.

The school pays a LOT of money for that blanket license, so the students won't have to.

I'm not sure about a LOT; it's a miniscule amount annually compared to what all the licenses would actually cost. Microsoft only licenses their development and beta applications to students to get the CS department hooked, and the schools do it to protect themselves from liability of students and classrooms pirating the software instead.

You can also download the .NET SDK. It comes with a c# compiler. There is also a free version of the C++ compiler. There is also Fidalgo

I have no idea
My office came from a few ISOs on a friend of mine's laptop. Yes I am an evil pirate and should rot in jail

Remember that .Net is free. Completely, for anybody. The ONLY thing that costs money is Windows itself, and the RAD dev tool (VS.Net). You do not need the tool to program .Net. While I'm not the biggest advocate of MS at all, I do find it amusing that people get offended by their efforts to prevent open violations of their licensing agreements. You know any companies that have ONE MSDN subscription with 45 developers using the VS.Net install and 100 employees using the Office install?

The Express tools are intended for developers that are focused on a particular kind of development. They tend to be language and function specific. VS.Net is an extremely powerful dev tool, but your average developer will not use half of it.

Anyway, to the point, you can always just grab Web Matrix. It's free, a really fast download, community supported for you open source granola crunchers, and fairly powerful...not VS.Net, but a good alternative, a la Netbeans (which I actually use for Java...it's noice).

http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/default.aspx?tabIndex=4&tabId=46

Since I'm not sure who Tcoz's comments are directed to, I'll reiterate that I only posted this for people who already thought they wanted VS.NET and couldn't afford it.