Alternatives to Visual Studio?

B

Boot_Comp

Adept
Hi,
I am looking for free / open-source alternatives to MS Visual Studio Studio.
I would like to begin developing Windows apps but can't afford to get Visual Studio :(

Any info / tips / help in this regard would be great.

TIA
 
+1 to greenhorn's link. VS Express editions are free, lightweight and I found them even better than VS for beginning application development. They even integrate with other MS products like XNA game studio, robotics studio etc.

Otherwise, you have Sun Studio/Netbeans C/C++, which are full featured IDE's for C++ development.
 
Boot_Comp said:
Will try this out today (need to download).
Any major limitations with this for app development?
Click to expand...
this may not constitute as a limitation but the express editions are meant only for students and beginners of programming and not for developing commercial projects.
if you are just experimenting with the languages,.then nothing better than the express editions.

another thing i would like to point out, is that i have never been able to compile individual source files without integrating it into some project.so i always have to create a whole new project even when i have to write a very small program.this might not be a problem,..maybe i am a n00b.:S

here are some other recommendations from osalt.com:
http://www.osalt.com/visual-studio
 
if you are a Student, look for dreamspark,
Microsoft DreamSpark: Home
MS offers (offered, im not sure) Proper Visual studio 2008 professional editions for free.

If not, then use the express editions as mentioned by members here. thats the best bet.

If developing console based programs, even simple editors can help, but you need to create compiler scripts to assist in compiling, or type the commands on command line. but thats just too much.
 
Its not the Visual Studio Express cant be used for developing commercial applications. I think most of the features related to collaborative development are missing. Except that, I think most of the features are present. I know of many people who have developed applications using the Express edition.

You might also want to look at wxdesigner/wxdevcpp if you are interested in developing cross platform applications (based on wxwidgets). Its not as feature rich as visual studio, but very good at what it does. There is also a commercial gui builder for wxwidgets.
 
Back
Top