Microsoft wants YOU
Posted in Development | February 21st, 2008 | 2 Comments »
… to code in their languages. In an effort to gain some market share from the amateur developer world, Microsoft is courting students with their free offering of many major Microsoft development tools including Visual Studio 2008, Expression Studio, and XNA Game Studio. With tools like Eclipse and other free IDE’s, users have little incentive for using Microsoft’s Visual Studio for anything outside of .NET development. As Microsoft sees the world of development opening up, perhaps they are seeing their development audience migrating toward tools that embrace open rather than exclusivity.
Is this Microsoft’s attempt at becoming more “open”? Will we see student’s flocking to download Visual Studio or Expression Studio for development? I’ve used Visual Studio as the primary development tool through most of college and at work from time to time. I certainly see the value in having it, but is this enough to steal users away from Eclipse and other open/free IDE’s?
