Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Why free?

Why is Microsoft giving away Visual Basic Express and other Development languages in the Visual Studio Express Suite (that is, apart from any conspiracy theories).

There are a number of Editions of Visual Studio 2005, and the Express Edition is the most limited (it's really basic).

The other editions, according to this link are:

Visual Studio Standard Edition
Visual Studio Professional Edition
Visual Studio 2005 Team System

So, why the free Express edition? Simple, apart from trying to attract first time programmers and hobbyist programmers to Visual Studio .Net. There are still a large number of hobbyist programmers using Visual Basic 6. This is one way Microsoft is trying to entice them to get into .Net Development. They will of course need at least the Professional Edition to develop full blown applications, but the Express Edition is a free introduction.

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