Microsoft To Give Students Dev Software For Free
Why weren't they doing this when I was a poor 18YO freshman?
Sure, they had "academic" rates -- but $40 or $60, even for a piece of $300+ software, is still a big chunk of change for someone unemployed, or underemployed.
As a primarily Microsoft developer, I think this is great for students.
Is it Microsoft making further efforts at marketing to students? No doubt about it. I still think it's a good thing for students -- run Linux, run Windows, get to know Eclipse, get to know Visual Studio, get to know MySQL, get to know Oracle, get to know SQL Server, get to know whatever you get your hands on, because in software engineering, experience is your true education.
3 comments:
In the big picture, it doesn't really matter if they give it away. Microsoft's overall sales and marketing culture and even little habits betray the goodwill they gain with no-cost software (no-cost yes but definitely not "free").
Using no-cost Microsoft tools always involves a double hassle of getting a somewhat less-than-entirely-useful version and irritating and manditory intrusive self-identifying registration with the machine.
IMHO Microsoft's no-cost software efforts have (unfortunately) done little to nothing to engender a developer-friendly reputation with the low-dough developer.
Agreed Michael, but in this case, they're offering the Pro version, which I think could really make a difference. Of course, what does it matter if you have MS IDEs on your personal machine, if your entire infrastructure is Linux/Unix and Mac, as is the case at more and more schools?
As Windows continues to wane as the dominant consumer OS, I'm getting more and more inclined to use Mono more than Visual Studio.
I like developing with C# far more than deploying to Windows machines.
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