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This does not follow. Student prices are so cheap anyhow that there is no excuse for someone not to buy, for example, VS.NET student edition, if they want it. Most students own a car, that costs a lot more.
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:
Student prices are so cheap anyhow that there is no excuse for someone not to buy, for example, VS.NET student edition, if they want it.
In which case, it is as close to "free" as you'll get. "Reduced price" wasn't an option, and this clearly doesn't fall under the "Definitely not..." category IMO. I could have gone "undecided", but I do have an opinion: If I want to learn a development tool on my own time and not for monetary profit, I shouldn't have to pay the same price Acme Software pays when they turn a profit X times the cost of the tool. That is why I chose what I felt is the "best answer". 
Nitron
_________________________________________--
message sent on 100% recycled electrons.
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Christian Graus wrote:
there is no excuse for someone not to buy, for example, VS.NET student edition, if they want it. Most students own a car, that costs a lot more.
Very true Christian, I own both a car and a copy of Visual Studio .NET (the academic version). My car did cost a lot more as I still have a car payment every month and VS.NET only cost me $100.00. I couldn't pass it up, I bought it the day it came in stock at the campus bookstore.
Nick Parker
May your glass be ever full.
May the roof over your head be always strong.
And may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead. - Irish Blessing
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Christian Graus wrote:
Most students own a car
 Different over here. Over here most students would probably drive a car[ parents] but very very few own cars. Anyway.. owning a car is the easy bit.. insurance is a joke over here. I got a quote of €8654 for insurance as the main driver on a 1.5ltr Honda Civic and €4760 if I get insured under my father or mothers insurance.... Insurance must be cheap over there. It's a f***ing joke over here [forgive my "flowery" language]
Regards,
Brian Dela
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You Brits must be LOUSY drivers.... My house and contents insurance is bundled with the car, all up I pay monthly, $70. That's about 25 pound a month for house, contents and car insurance. I'm not even sure it's cheap, it was just easy, I got it through my bank.
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:
You Brits must be LOUSY drivers....
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.. I'm not British. I'm Irish. Massive difference! Thank god I'm not like a lot of Irish people who would be seriously insulted by this... no offence to any English people but a lot of Irish people still hold a grudge over the 600 or so year occupation of this country. Personally I don't and I have no problem with anybody from England so please don't flame me for saying this.
Regards,
Brian Dela
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Brian Delahunty wrote:
no offence to any English people but a lot of Irish people still hold a grudge over the 600 or so year occupation of this country
I just wish more of us brits faced up to that fact when they think of the whole Ireland debate. Speaking from a dual nationality point of view. My family is Irish yet I am british by birth entitling me to hold dual passports.
If you asked anyone about the independance of India now they would say that it was the right thing to do, they deserved their independance, but it was and still is going on in Ireland yet [edit]hardly anyone in england[/edit] seems to notice.
The Internet, whats that? Is it a car?
"There's a statistical theory that if you gave millions of monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespere. Thanks to the Internet, we know this isn't true."
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If you ask me the whole situation is a joke.
My solution for Northern Ireland:
Build a big wall around it and let them sort it out. I'm sick of all the crap that's going on.
What part of Ireland are your family from?
Regards,
Brian Dela
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MOther - Near Westport Co. Mayo
Dad - Kells i think.
U?
The Internet, whats that? Is it a car?
"There's a statistical theory that if you gave millions of monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespere. Thanks to the Internet, we know this isn't true."
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Jonny Newman wrote:
MOther - Near Westport Co. Mayo
Dad - Kells i think.
Two lovely places.
I'm from Slieverue, Co. Kilkenny [Just outside Wateford City, where I live now]
Regards,
Brian Dela
"The doorbells are inside the front door. who the feck designed that!" - Eric Robson
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Christian Graus wrote:
That's about 25 pound a month for house
More like £45 GBP.
I'm being insured on my mothers insurance as a named driver. As a 17yo the insurance is about £1500 (~$2250) per annum. Hopefully by next year the insurance for an 18yo will be less.
Christian Graus wrote:
You Brits must be LOUSY drivers
Keep death off the roads.......drive on the pavement. 
The Internet, whats that? Is it a car?
"There's a statistical theory that if you gave millions of monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespere. Thanks to the Internet, we know this isn't true."
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Reduced function reduced price student tools are great. Unfortunately if things like enterprise edition were given to students everyone else would abuse the system.
People who develop good dev tools deserve salaries too, even though the rest of us hate paying out - that's just life. If we didn't pay for dev tools there would have been no reason to bring out something like .Net (from MS's point of view). Good money breeds good competition, so I support it, even though I really have to save to afford any of these things
Deploying a web application without understanding security is roughly equivalent to driving a car without seatbelts - down a slippery road, over a monstrous chasm, with no brakes, and the throttle jammed on full. Hacking Exposed - Web Applications. Joel Scambray & Mike Shema
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I think this is the reason many universities use Linux or Unix.. these operating systems almost always come with compilers and development tools without any additional cost ("for free".)
An individual student can probably buy a reduced price educational version of a compiler, no big deal. But when you have to buy development tools for each computer in a lab, those costs start to add up.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
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Sure, Unix comes with compiler. It should for the price of purchase + annual maintenance fees.
I am in favor of the Student edition of many software apps (aka crippleware). Had Simply Accounting student ed. limited to small size. However, I'll bet you get almost no support for those apps.
Heck some are even full-featured at the lower price. A friend bought full MS Office 2000 Pro for C$260 just because she had a student card. (Name goes into database so you can't buy more than 1).
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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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