This week, Microsoft announced that the Express editions of it’s popular Visual Stuido line of development tools would be made avalable free of charge and free of royalties from now on. This is great news for starting developers, hobbyists and enthusiasts who up until this point had to pay for the privilege of developing in these technologies.
The Express editions are scaled-back versions of Microsoft’s Visual Studio line. They include an IDE and compiler for building:
- Windows Applications in C#
- Windows Applications in Visual Basic.NET
- Windows Applications in Visual C++
- Windows Applications in J#
- Web Applications in C# or Visual Basic.NET
- Database Driven applications in any technology
Look for more great things to come from free and open-source software developers around the world now that these technologies are more widely available.
More detailed information on this can be found in ScottGu’s blog.