Microsoft Offers Visual Studio for Free ?!?!
October 4, 2007
This isn’t recently breaking news, but I hadn’t posted about it yet.
Microsoft is offering their “Express” version of Visual Studio for free, just go to the Visual Studio Express Home, and download it. You do have to register with them to get a product key, but that still seems pretty painless.
The fact that Microsoft is offering a development platform for free was surprising to me, but what was really shocking was that although this version is aimed at hobbyists and students, there is no licensing restrictions, so you can sell your code commercially without worrying about lawyers breathing down your neck.
There are a couple of different versions, depending on what you are interested it, there is a web developer suite, as well as C#, C++, VB, and J#.
Now that you have your Development platform, what next? Well they also have a “Beginner Developer Learning Center” to help get you coding, and a “Coding for Fun” website to give you something to play around with.
Originally the plan was to offer the express editions free for 1 year, but on April 19th, 2006, they decided to make them available permanently for free.
I had mentioned in an earlier post that Microsoft was offering the Robotics Studio for free as well, but you can’t use it for commercial products without buying a runtime license. But you can learn to program Lego MindStorms in your free time. There is no need to go out and buy a robot though, because you can even work with virtual robots.
References:
Visual Studio Express Home - Microsoft
Beginner Developer Learning Center - Microsoft
Coding for Fun - Microsoft
Robotics Development Studio - Microsoft
Introduction to Programming Lego Mindstorms - Coding4Fun (Microsoft)
Also on Port 16:
Posted in Robots, Development, free stuff, Microsoft
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October 5th, 2007 at 3:52 am
Hi Mike
I took a look at the visual studio express it looks pretty cool for a free application.
Microsoft giving something away for free is something out of the norm.I guess being the hallowen month they thought they would do something spooky.
Have a great weekend
Steven
October 5th, 2007 at 5:22 am
It does seem unusual, but they actually have had it available for free since before April of 2006. It does make sense for them in the long run though, since it is in their interest to have people learn how to develop on their platform.
Thanks for the comment Steven!