Microsoft is giving its core developer tools away for free to university and higher-education students in the UK, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, China, Canada and the US.
In a speech to be delivered later today at Stanford University, chairman Bill Gates will give details on the DreamSpark programme's free downloads, which include full professional versions of Visual Studio 2008, the Expression Studio design tools, XNA Game Studio 2.0 for developing Xbox 360 software, SQL Server Developer Edition and Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.
"The Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance has set up over 600 licensed labs with free software in computing-specific faculties around the UK over the last five years. DreamSpark will now extend this and make our tools available to students of any academic subject, from history to music to ancient languages," said Dr Andrew Sithers, academic manager at Microsoft.
"Our scaled-down Express versions are still available free of charge to hobbyists and students, and I hope these may still serve as a valuable entry point for those interested in getting their hands on a more powerful set of products through DreamSpark," added Sithers.
Microsoft said it recognises that a new set of training and reference materials will be needed for the younger breed of newcomers to software development. There is currently a "gulf" between the ease of downloading the products and students actually being able to use them properly, the company claimed. To address this need, the company is planning to develop a new set of tuition materials as soon as possible.
To bring the DreamSpark programme online in the UK, Microsoft is working with service providers, academic institutions, the government and student associations, such as the UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research and not-for-profit IT services group Eduserv, to ensure the necessary student identity-verification technology infrastructure exists. Microsoft says that the programme will be expanded as fast as this community-based effort with government and organisations can be connected.
According to a Microsoft-commissioned IDC study of the economic impact of IT across 82 countries, technological innovation is a "critical economic growth engine" and is predicted to generate 7.1 million jobs worldwide over the next four years.
"The UK's productivity and future competitiveness depend on making the most of technology. Microsoft is an active supporter of e-skills UK's campaign to make the UK world-class in technology skills and helping the workforce of the future to develop valuable IT skills," said Karen Price, chief executive of e-skills UK.
During 2008, Microsoft intends to extend the DreamSpark programme to school-level students in Australia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Japan, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia and elsewhere.
Talkback
Have a pill for free said the Dealer.
The last thing a student needs when trying to learn good programming techniques is Microsoft's WYSIWYG programming tools. My advice would be to steer clear and use some simple open source stuff. Get involved in a popular open source project and you'll learn what being a good developer is all about. Not just end up another graduate clone who knows hows all about Windows and nothing about development.
but unfortunately most students have large student loans to pay back and they are more likely to get a job if they can show a competency using Microsoft tools over open source ones. Mind you a good programmer will be able to demonstrate sound programming skils whatever tools they use.
If the student, as part of their college work gets the hang of development by taking part in an open source project, they can gain an excellent foundation understanding of their future job. They can also show real world work to potential future employers.
Are you saying that open source development and Microsoft based development are really that far different? I thought the big idea for Microsoft tools was that they are dead easy to pick up and use. C is C, C++ is C++, Java and C# are deliberately very similar; the really difficult and employable bit is that special spark that differentiates someone who can answer questions in an interview and someone who can crank out decent, testable, bug free code.
Our student will be able to prove what (s)he can do in the real world, by .. erm .. showing the interview panel the work already done. Not theoretical made up college projects, but the additions they have made to a real world open source project.
As a graduate you are unlikely to get a job as a programmer unless you can demonstrate some real world experience and that is hard to get in a commercial environment.
Learning Microsoft's ide is all well and good but it abstracts a lot of the principals away so you only ever see half the story. Also working on open source projects gives you a lot of exposure to team working which is what most employers will be looking for. Trust me a C# college project counts for nothing as far as employers are concerned. I will always employ someone who has managed to get commiter status on an open source project over someone with 'college experience'.
Its true that knowledge of microsoft tools is essential in the workplace but that's basic knowledge, i.e. the Windows OS environment, Word, Access, Excel.
In terms of programming tools, the business landscape is changing, a typical job description might require skills in; SAP, Oracle, MySQL, Lotus Notes, Ruby On Wheels or PHP.
Most businesses, especially small to mid-size prefer to buy off-the-shelf applications, therefore your C++ skills are hardly ever required.
Perhaps Microsoft see this trend and that's why they're trying to get the workers of tomorrow used to their apps.