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Some manufacturers have to give their development tools away in order to encourage customers to use their products. Microcontroller chip makers are a good example. I think there's a different business model working in this case. The manufacturer is the sole supplier for a product. Similar products, with similar capabilities, are made by the manufacturer's competitors. One way to enhance the differences between the manufacturer's product and that of the competitors' is how you handle the development tools: make them free, make them more standards-compliant, better performing, etc.
Software Zen: delete this;
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This an good option, if the main business is to sell hardware. But if you need revenue from software-sales it´s tricky.
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A free good development environment is a good way of pushing a platform, like VS is for Windows. Since the number of developers is much lower than the number of end-users, this would have a low impact on the price of the target platform.
And, since the development tools would be free or almost free, the price of most softwares would lower, because there would be a lower barrier, less risk and more programmers in this platfrom.
OOPS! More programmers? Lower prices? No, thank you, thinking again, programming tools should be quite expensive! 
lazy isn't my middle name.. its my first.. people just keep calling me Mel cause that's what they put on my drivers license. - Mel Feik
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Daniel Turini wrote:
A free good development environment is a good way of pushing a platform, like VS is for Windows. Since the number of developers is much lower than the number of end-users, this would have a low impact on the price of the target platform.
And, since the development tools would be free or almost free, the price of most softwares would lower, because there would be a lower barrier, less risk and more programmers in this platfrom.
OOPS! More programmers? Lower prices? No, thank you, thinking again, programming tools should be quite expensive!
Daniel, just because the tools are free does it mean that people will become programmers. To be blunt MOST people lack the ability.
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
You are the intrepid one, always willing to leap into the fray! A serious character flaw, I might add, but entertaining.
Said by Roger Wright about me.
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Colin Davies wrote:
Daniel, just because the tools are free does it mean that people will become programmers. To be blunt MOST people lack the ability.
You forgot VB "programmers". Can you imagine a world where VB is free ??  
lazy isn't my middle name.. its my first.. people just keep calling me Mel cause that's what they put on my drivers license. - Mel Feik
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Its not an easy job . Too expensive and only a few will use them , too cheap and everyone uses them including the incompetent . The ideal target price would be cheap for corperates and expensive enough to make personal very possible but weeding out the time wasters. I think the current pricing level is about right . Compare what MS gives you for your money compared to other companies ? Companies who need more revenue through development software sales such as Borland seem to charge more for their products. They seem to balance it by giving away old versions to encourage the personal users .
Am I the only one forever playing catch up with technology , while all the juicy opportunites keep rolling by ?
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Like Shog said below it is important for an OS to come with a bundled set of development tools. Even if it is just a simple text editor and command line compiler/interpreter. I certainly would not have got into programming if it werent for QBasic which came with DOS.
The next positive step I received was qualifying for the educational version of Visual Studio by Microsoft. VS costs thousands of Rand at the time and I was just a kid with 40 bucks pocket money a month. Yet here comes MS saying "Prove you are a student and you can have VS for R300." R300 is affordable by almost anyone, and those who cannot afford that even can get it through charities or by approaching a big business and asking for sponsorship. What an absolutely wonderful idea. It also "locked" me into MS, not that I minded. So win for MS, win for me.
Once I had that going it put the feather in my cap that made me employable. Once employed then the company can shell out for VS.NET and all the other goodies.
Anyway I just think that the educational promotions are really superb and MS and the other companies that do it deserve a big cheer. Also those organisations that actively help up and coming developers are really doing a good thing.
I know that back when I was starting I would have readily agreed to work for someone as means of paying off some developer tools.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa
Ray Cassick wrote:
Well I am not female, not gay and I am not Paul Watson
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Paul Watson wrote:
What an absolutely wonderful idea. It also "locked" me into MS, not that I minded. So win for MS, win for me.
I must say... i'm a bit conflicted on the issue of educational versions of software. On the one hand, it's a good concept in that students unable to afford tools otherwise are able to obtain and learn to use them. On the other hand, it has the potential to affect what is taught in unpleasant ways.
Currently, getting locked into MS software isn't usually a bad thing, as their tools are quite popular in the industry. But their recent push to .NET makes me uneasy. If .NET makes it big, then no worries - but it's not there yet. If [C#|VB.NET|J#] is a good teaching language, then no worries - but that should not be rushed. Ideally, the goal of a school is to teach you the technique, not the software, and so it shouldn't matter what they use. Still, if all jobs are looking for C++ or Java or RPG programmers and all you know is VB.NET, it's just that much more pain.
Curiculum decisions should be made based on what the student and the market demand, not on what software company offers the best deal. As long as that is done, academic discounts are good.
Shog9
------
The Army's on Ecstasy, so they say -
I read all about it in USA Today.
They stepped up urine testing to make it go away,
'cause it's hard to kill the enemy on ol' MDMA...- Oysterhead
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Shog9 wrote:
Curiculum decisions should be made based on what the student and the market demand, not on what software company offers the best deal. As long as that is done, academic discounts are good.
The realities for a many students though are: What can I afford?
Anyway as you said it is the principles behind programming which should be the aim of educational deals. Students should be sufficiently smart enough to make their career choice decisions without being blinded by marketing hype.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa
Ray Cassick wrote:
Well I am not female, not gay and I am not Paul Watson
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Paul Watson wrote:
What can I afford?
I'ts lik eyour inside my head man.. dude, how do you do that...  .. but your so true!!! I'm lucky enought to have got VS.NET Enterprise because I actually worked for the college and was covered under their licence to use it, but very few people I know can afford it... very, very few people.
Regards,
Brian Dela
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Paul Watson wrote:
Yet here comes MS saying "Prove you are a student and you can have VS for R300."
For real? I'm going to study next year for 4 years! ANyone VS.NET for $50?
PS: For those who didnt understand me the first time, above is joke. I will have no part in it what so ever.
"I dont have a life, I have a program."
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It depends on the kind of development tool.
For me, compilers are clearly a consumer-product, just like an office application, graphics application or database.
This is not necessarily true for SDK-style of development tools. E.g. a database vendor should be happy if a developer wants to use its database system as a back-end for his application, since it will increase revenue for that database vendor once customers start buying that application. Another nice example is JRun. Free for developers, since the developers are actually promoting it to their customers.
What is definitily wrong is that a software vendor wants money for the SDK (development) AND for the run-time (deployment). In my opinion either the SDK/development-tool should be free, or the run-time should be free. But asking money for both of them seems unreasonable.
Enjoy life, this is not a rehearsal !!!
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One of the most disgusting things that I've encountered was when we had a vendor who has many of our documents within their product. They offered us the 'API' so that we can retrieve some of OUR information and incorporate it into new state-of-the-art branch software. For this 'API' they wanted $125,000 US otherwise we could not get at our own information. (and it is stored in their proprietary database format so open API's such as ODBC was out of the question)
The thing is .... I mention the API in quotes because the base code and functionality that we needed was still in development. Worse than that:
a) the vendor would not guarantee the functionality was there.
b) the vendor would not warrant the software -- they treated it as if it was an external add-on to their product instead of their own code!!!
c) they would provide no true SDK -- they would provide some basic documentation but no help files, little documentation, and little help.
This is the type of thing I would say ... should be free.
_____________________________________________
I have a tendancy to where my mind on my sleeve
I have a habit of losing my shirt...
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Not a jolly thing. There is not one person on this planet who writes code for free. They may write it for something other than money, but that is a different matter. Either way, a discussion based on the question at hand implies some 'higher calling', whereby something should be given out for the common good, and that is just garbage IMO. People only argue that software should be free to justify the fact that it is so easy to steal, and I say good for Microsoft for taking steps to make it harder. As a developer, I count on people paying for their software so I can eat, and sleep in a warm bed out of the rain.
Christian
No offense, but I don't really want to encourage the creation of another VB developer. - Larry Antram 22 Oct 2002
Hey, at least Logo had, at it's inception, a mechanical turtle. VB has always lacked even that... - Shog9 04-09-2002
During last 10 years, with invention of VB and similar programming environments, every ill-educated moron became able to develop software. - Alex E. - 12-Sept-2002
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There is not one person on this planet who writes code for free.
If "for free" means "for no money", then this is plainly false, and coming from you it is even a contradiction
Please note I'm not advocating free development tools here. But it's obvious that some development tools (and other SW as well) are given away for no charge.
Joaquín M López Muñoz
Telefónica, Investigación y Desarrollo
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Joaquín M López Muñoz wrote:
If "for free" means "for no money", then this is plainly false, and coming from you it is even a contradiction
No, I qualified my statement with the next one - while some products, including IDE's and compilers, do not cost money, no-one does anything for FREE. They may do it to push a platform, for the glory, or for an ideal, but no-one does it without percieving something good coming out of it for them, or their community. What I was trying to say is that everyone codes for a reason and to say that something MUST be free means asking people to provide something even if they do not get something THEY want out of it.
Christian
No offense, but I don't really want to encourage the creation of another VB developer. - Larry Antram 22 Oct 2002
Hey, at least Logo had, at it's inception, a mechanical turtle. VB has always lacked even that... - Shog9 04-09-2002
During last 10 years, with invention of VB and similar programming environments, every ill-educated moron became able to develop software. - Alex E. - 12-Sept-2002
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I have no problem with free software.
The difference is between commodity products like an OS, an IDE, a web broswer, and custom software like I write.
Now if you're in the OS or IDE or Office suite business, I'm sure you'll disagree.
Jason Gerard
"This almost never matters, except quite often."
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I have no problem with it either, but being happy for free software to exist is different from claiming it MUST be free.
Christian
No offense, but I don't really want to encourage the creation of another VB developer. - Larry Antram 22 Oct 2002
Hey, at least Logo had, at it's inception, a mechanical turtle. VB has always lacked even that... - Shog9 04-09-2002
During last 10 years, with invention of VB and similar programming environments, every ill-educated moron became able to develop software. - Alex E. - 12-Sept-2002
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Christian Graus wrote:
Not a jolly thing. There is not one person on this planet who writes code for free.
agreed... I don´t believe in altruism in the IT industry...
Mauricio Ritter - Brazil
Sonorking now: 100.13560 MRitter
![Jig | [Dance]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/jig.gif) I've gone sending to outer space, to find another race
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...Now, let me qualify that.
I don't think everyone has the right to expect a shrink-wrapped copy of the latest Visual Studio.NET Super Enhanced Enterprise Edition mailed to them free of charge. Same with Intel's compiler, CodeWarrior's IDE, Cygnus's tools, etc. etc.; a lot of money, time and effort has gone into making these tools, and it's up to their makers to decide who gets them and for what price.
I *do* think that when you buy a computer, you should be able to produce software for it, should you desire, without shelling out extra cash. It doesn't have to be fancy; Notepad and a decent scripting host, or a command-line compiler would be fine.
This was one of the things that bugged me moving to Windows back in the day, after always having a BASIC interpreter at hand under DOS. 
Shog9
------
to the revelations of fresh faced youth
no one will come to save you
so speak your peace in the murmurs drawn
but youth is wasted on the young - Smashing Pumpkins, Thru the Eyes of Ruby
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Shog9 wrote:
I *do* think that when you buy a computer, you should be able to produce software for it, should you desire, without shelling out extra cash. It doesn't have to be fancy; Notepad and a decent scripting host, or a command-line compiler would be fine.
So isn't .NET great then? You can download the SDK and redistributable for free and code everything in Notepad if you fancy. You can then compile and GAC and blah etc. all from the command line.
Also, doesn't Windows come with a scripting host now days? That WSH thing.
I agree with your sentiments though. Basic, out of the box programability is so important. It is what got me started on programming (DOS 5.0 with QBasic and the Snake game.) If someone had given me Visual Studio to start with I probably would have said "sod it, what a complicated mess, I am going to be a journalist rather."
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa
Ray Cassick wrote:
Well I am not female, not gay and I am not Paul Watson
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Paul Watson wrote:
If someone had given me Visual Studio to start with I probably would have said "sod it, what a complicated mess, I am going to be a journalist rather
Wouldnt the world be a better place? Without all those BASIC morons?
Ok, before you feel insulted - I've started programming with BASIC too. At least I can claim today that I tried to learn to do some real programming and expanded my horizont a little.
Imagine every PC comes with VB pre-installed. Todays programming market is already bad enough because every kid thinks they are programmers just because they could make a web-enabled dialog application with 10 colors and 5 fonts.
Better pre-install an assembler to keep them away.
I keep submitting “VB” as a Priority-1 bug, but apparently no one here knows how to fix it. Nick Hodapp, Semicolon
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Andreas Saurwein wrote:
Wouldnt the world be a better place? Without all those BASIC morons?
Ok, before you feel insulted - I've started programming with BASIC too. At least I can claim today that I tried to learn to do some real programming and expanded my horizont a little.
Imagine every PC comes with VB pre-installed. Todays programming market is already bad enough because every kid thinks they are programmers just because they could make a web-enabled dialog application with 10 colors and 5 fonts.
Better pre-install an assembler to keep them away.
Thanks but I would rather not be an elitist jerk off.
Paul Watson
Bluegrass
Cape Town, South Africa
Ray Cassick wrote:
Well I am not female, not gay and I am not Paul Watson
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Andreas Saurwein wrote:
Imagine every PC comes with VB pre-installed. Todays programming market is already bad enough because every kid thinks they are programmers just because they could make a web-enabled dialog application with 10 colors and 5 fonts.
And who exactly is this hurting? If the kid has a reason to program, then let him do it - he may never advance beyond BASIC, but if he does what he needs to do then that is enough. Mr. Wirth's assertion that BASIC programmers are forever ruined as programmers may or may not have merit, but not everyone who programs need be a programmer.
Shog9
------
The Army's on Ecstasy, so they say -
I read all about it in USA Today.
They stepped up urine testing to make it go away,
'cause it's hard to kill the enemy on ol' MDMA...- Oysterhead
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Shog9 wrote:
And who exactly is this hurting?
Anyone who has choosen to program for living. If you read my sentence, you will see that I was talking about these 'kids' claiming to be programmers.
This is having a negative effect on the programming job market. The level to enter this domain is currently much to low.
I am not even complaining about using BASIC as such, because even while I dont favor it, I agree it is useful for certain purposes and sometimes even better (please, dont tell Paul) than C/C++.
I am complaining about all those wannabe's that never even reach the level of a Bill S. but still take a share of the available jobs and ruin the good name of programmers and programming.
ok?
I keep submitting “VB” as a Priority-1 bug, but apparently no one here knows how to fix it. Nick Hodapp, Semicolon
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