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Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition...for free! Direct from Microsoft!


BongoBob

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Indeed, we use it in my computer science class, it's quite nice.

 

I'm gettin the whole package, and am gonna tell my teacher about this.

 

PS: Apparently this has been a little secret of Microsoft since november of last year o.0

So if this is old news, it's new news to me :D

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It wasn't a secret, it was announced on their main page :D

 

As for what is, it's an Integrated Development Enviroment, it's for writing programs, everything from VB .NET to native/unmanaged C++ and assembly. It also contains one of the most accurate (and easy to use) compilers to use on the market, as it 98%-99% comformant to C++ compiler standards (there's a specific name for them, but I forget what it is :D). The reason that it's awesome that it's free (for a year anyways...) is that the cheapest version of the full studio (VB, C#, C++ .NET, C++, ASP .NET for C# and VB) is like $200-$300, and it ranges all the way up to $1000+ for the 'Team Builder' version.

 

***EDIT***

I just checked the link you gave, it's for the Express versions only, meaning it's for one language per program, and they're only like $50 to buy; but hell, it's free :p

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I'm by no means an expert, but i'd suspect C# (C sharp) would be the most useful long term. Its an advance over C++. VB is ok, but is mainly a MS construct.

 

In the full version you can mix and match code modules from each language interchangably... but then most people will only write in their favorite language anyway.

As they are all object oriented, there is actually not much difference in the way C++, C#, VB, Java are written. the syntax is different, but not overly so. And the concepts are all the same. My programming is very rusty, but even i find that once you know the basic principles (i learnt c/c++ a long time ago) you can pick up c#/VB/java with a tiny about of "switch over" time.

 

Its basically the development software that pretty much ALL windows software, and a lot of web applications are written in.

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I'm by no means an expert, but i'd suspect C# (C sharp) would be the most useful long term. Its an advance over C++.
Well, it depends on what you are trying to do. C# wouldn't be very good for writing device drivers, for example. :) So like all things, C# is good for somethings but not for others. It competes more in Java's space as opposed to C/C++.
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I got a free full distro of Visual Studio .Net for being a Computer Science major at the University of Colorado. We're part of the MSDN Academic Alliance or some jargon, and we can get several kinds of software from MS for free, including XP Pro...

 

As far as languages to learn, my personal suggestion would be to learn c or c++ first, learn it well, and then like toms said switchover to other languages is a breeze. Once you've got the basic concepts of programming down, it's all about syntax and learning some of the little nuances of each language, what tricks you can do with their structure and the like.

 

Once you're used to programming picking up new languages is a breeze, unless you're trying to learn assembly...but that's a very different beast from high-level programming languages...and if you end up writing in assembly as a job then I pity you.

 

As far as a personal preference I'm a c++ and c# kinda guy. I hate Java with a burning passion. On a side note, I'm curious if anyone here has ever dealth with IDL before...it's a language (if you can really call it that) that is used extensively where I work, just curious if anyone else has ever had to put up with it.

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What about Java? Where is Java used
All over the place. Server stuff, ecommerce, on and on.

 

and where are the C families used come to think of it?
They tend to be in the lower level world. Embedded stuff, most games, OS's, too many things to mention.

 

I hate Java with a burning passion.
Why is that?
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I tend to use C# for GUI applications, it's easy to write and it has decent performance. However, I'm writing a physics engine that uses all C++ and ASM, as it has much better performance than C# (for now anyway). So the only real reason to use anything lower than C#/Java now is for performance-oriented programs, like game engines and things like that. Also, Java is not good for most things, it doesn't work well on all processors, and it seems to have especially bad performance on A64 systems, as well as the memory management issues that it's always had, plus most mainstream users will have problems with running the *.jar executable and installing the JRE.

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