4 ms·

Exactly. Microsoft has always offered educational versions of Visual Studio at discounted/zero cost. I clearly remember getting a student copy of Visual Basic(

Exactly. Microsoft has always offered educational versions of Visual Studio at discounted/zero cost. I clearly remember getting a student copy of Visual Basic(VS6.0!) for ~$50. I built all sorts of stupid things with that and while it definitely biased me in favor of Microsoft tools you know what else it did? Helped me into a rich and diverse career in a wide array of technologies and stacks. Anything that helps bridge that gap is a good thing in my mind. Problem solving, debugging and abstractions are skills that transcend stacks and can be learned in a wide variety of environments. Engagement is they key to this and I think Minecraft is a great avenue.

douche 10y ago
It used to be called DreamSpark, and it was awesome when I was in college - particularly since in those days, the Express, single-language free versions of VS hadn't come out quite yet, and the community edition was yet to be a twinkle in someone's eye. It looks like they give away many Azure services now as well (https://catalog.imagine.microsoft.com/en-us https://catalog.imagine.microsoft.com/en-us)
- riffraff 10y ago
  I used the equivalent about 15 years ago and you could get windows, office, visual studio and a bunch of other stuff. Good deal.
  - anexprogrammer 10y ago
    Especially as you got 10 licences for everything. Was great value. I believe they stopped it a year or two back.
FT_intern 10y ago
$50 is expensive for personal software. Many IDEs are free for non commercial use
- codetoeat 10y ago
  Yeah but for $50 you can build something that someone might find useful and pay you for it. I wished I had more of an entrepreneur spirit in my college days, it would of paid for all those books that I barely used.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  What world we live in that $50 is considered expensive.... I paid around 150 € in for Turbo Pascal 1.5 for Windows 3.1 with student discount and around 200 € for Turbo C++ 3.1 for Windows 3.1, back in 1993. Imagine how much that would be in today's money!
- vvanders 10y ago
  Sure, but we're also talking about back in '98 where the software landscape was pretty different. It was about the same as a AAA PC game title which was a fair price to my younger self. Heck back then I got a physical 8" x 6" box, none of this puny CD/DVD sleeve stuff. We had to drive to a store in downtown San Diego that explicitly sold compilers/productivity software/etc. Hard to believe that happening this day and age.
SCHiM 10y ago
I had this too, it's what started me going with programming and I use visual studio till this day. It probably laid the foundations for my later job in information security.

douche 10y ago

It used to be called DreamSpark, and it was awesome when I was in college - particularly since in those days, the Express, single-language free versions of VS hadn't come out quite yet, and the community edition was yet to be a twinkle in someone's eye. It looks like they give away many Azure services now as well (https://catalog.imagine.microsoft.com/en-us https://catalog.imagine.microsoft.com/en-us)

riffraff 10y ago
I used the equivalent about 15 years ago and you could get windows, office, visual studio and a bunch of other stuff. Good deal.
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  Especially as you got 10 licences for everything. Was great value. I believe they stopped it a year or two back.

FT_intern 10y ago

$50 is expensive for personal software. Many IDEs are free for non commercial use

codetoeat 10y ago
Yeah but for $50 you can build something that someone might find useful and pay you for it. I wished I had more of an entrepreneur spirit in my college days, it would of paid for all those books that I barely used.
pjmlp 10y ago
What world we live in that $50 is considered expensive.... I paid around 150 € in for Turbo Pascal 1.5 for Windows 3.1 with student discount and around 200 € for Turbo C++ 3.1 for Windows 3.1, back in 1993. Imagine how much that would be in today's money!
vvanders 10y ago
Sure, but we're also talking about back in '98 where the software landscape was pretty different. It was about the same as a AAA PC game title which was a fair price to my younger self. Heck back then I got a physical 8" x 6" box, none of this puny CD/DVD sleeve stuff. We had to drive to a store in downtown San Diego that explicitly sold compilers/productivity software/etc. Hard to believe that happening this day and age.

SCHiM 10y ago

I had this too, it's what started me going with programming and I use visual studio till this day. It probably laid the foundations for my later job in information security.