What is Digg?73 Comments
- fatdog789, on 10/12/2007, -1/+47You mean like the Entire Visual Studio Express line? MSDN, which has been free for the better part of 2 years now? Over a decade's worth of free SDKs including the Windows SDKs and DirectX? The ability to use a near-infinite combination of hardware components with no need to code for specific hardware?
Really, when you compare Apple to MS for what they've done for programmers, MS comes out on top *every single time*. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33His comment aside, this is a very generous move by Microsoft, and MSDN is one of those amazing resources that really highlights how inefficient a forum can be for learning something.
- johnlewin, on 10/12/2007, -3/+30No doubt fatdog. Its absurd to give apple any credit for any kind of opensource/architecture. Apple holds onto proprietary technology more than any software or hardware provider I've seen.
- nolanjurgens, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20The MSDN Library is distributed as .iso (.img) files. If you don't want to burn them on to discs just so you can install them, Microsoft does have a free (unsupported) .iso mounting tool that you can get here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/b/6/7b6abd84-7841-4978-96f5-bd58df02efa2/winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel_21.exe
There's also other options like Daemon Tools as well. - motang, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Sweet, first it was Virtual PC 2004 now this.
- palmer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18What morons modded this guy's simple question down?
Log off, for the benefit of mankind. - ninlar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12I personally prefer the rich client for using MSDN. First, Visual Studio supports dynamic help, so help topics change in the integrated panel based on the context of your cursor. Second, the rich client supports more advanced features such as filtering only the code examples that match the language you are using, etc. MSDN is also faster on your local machine and you can work with it offline. I also like the "Ask a question" toolbar button for posting in the forums.
- egorgry, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13free != OSS
Like r2d7 already said this is a good move by Microsoft; who has embraced more of an open standard and community driving road map. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8If you've used both Google and MSDN to find anything ever you'll go to MSDN first instead of all the stupid sites regurgitating spammy little snippets of it.
- johnkeplerlewis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I didn't realize microsoft had it's own version of this, many thanks.
- crzdmn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8If you do more than just simple things in .NET, you'll be going to MSDN not google first.
- crzdmn, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11To all those who don't understand that Microsoft didn't say "Hey we're going open source, download the MSDN library" they didn't get it thru your thick skull. Microsoft will never go full open source. ever. not even if they claim they will.
And to tell a multi-billion dollar company open source is the way to go is just dumb. All those billions came from secretive lucrative crappy code, is Sun microsystems a even a close contender to hurting MS income? NO! Stop preaching open source like a faith people.
Some of use still make money on writing software and selling our time, effort, intelligence packaged up in a pretty little exe file. And to us, open source is a balance. We use open source to contribute and enhance our software, while assisting in the improvement of the open source code we used.
And for the moron who made the first comment... they can bash that all they want. A company like Microsoft letting go of a revenue stream is an amazing thing, but it isn't the best thing since sliced bread. - i440, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13Documentation. ~256MB of it.
- MasterInsan0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7A Wiki doc system would be bad for MS...they'd get far too many idiots on there vandalizing the articles...people that think editing every entry to read "Reboots ur comp lmao" is hilarious.
- KCorax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Apparently not.
But it is what most people care about anyway: free as in beer - panic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I'm not too familiar with Doxygen but Microsoft's information is great (IMO) if you're looking for reference material. They do have decent examples in some cases too, but I thought they did a good job outlining their class and method specs. It would be nice if they had a sort of commenting system so people could throw in their 2 cents, too, similar to how php.net's documentation system works. Or maybe even a wiki sort of model, but that might be too open for Microsoft's taste.
- hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -16/+22So, what did VS Express 2005 include in terms of help exactly?
- Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Usually fixes to known errors in the documentation, and I figure incrementally more coverage of new API's.
- mlit2000, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8It was a small subset of the entire MSDN but the rest was searchable online. As one of the comments from the article states though it is much easier to use google.
Still nice to be able to have all of that local. - pcgeek101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Hell yes this is great news! The MSDN library is a wealth of information, and I have a legitimate copy, but this will help many others get into Microsoft development as well. Sweet! Digg++++++
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6OSS biotch #3 accounted for.
- BenBenMan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Sweet ... with all the free developer stuff Microsoft is releasing, they should make just one big DVD image with all the VS Express Editions, SQL Server Express, MSDN Library, VPC, the Platform SDKs, the WinFX SDKs, the Microsoft Expression apps, and an evaluation of all the server platforms. Now that would be a complete developer package.
If there was a torrent of it, even better. - KCorax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The 'document explorer' engine that supports the help files is unbeatable. At each search it fetches results from hard-drive, msdn online and even question-answer sites. Google doesn't even come close to the spider that this system is.
- laplie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5that is, unless you're on a site like Slashdot.org
- panic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Very cool, I thought years ago they should have done this. There's really no reason why they shouldn't help developers as much as possible and the info was always available online. Back when I was an msdn subscriber I would receive quarterly updates to the MSDN libarary which was nice, but it sucks now that I'm no longer subscribed to it because I have to use msdn.microsoft.com if I want the latest help. If the info is public anyway, why not help out by providing a downloadable version? Props to MS for this one.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Many articles and step-by-step examples are frequently added (in a monthly basis) as well.
- palmer, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10If only someone would make a Visual Studio plug-in to compile Objective C and generate Mac executables!
Like it or not, Visual C++ has set the standard in IDEs since version 1. - saifatlast, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I believe it provided only .Net framework documentation. This is the entire vast library, which presumably includes things on MFC, Win32, and whatever else Microsoft thinks their programmers might want to know.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The fact is: despite of being available online, "offline" documentation searches are much, much faster. Of course, there is also the bandwidth consumption as well.
Besides that, it's much more reasonable to me to download an entire package of information only once. Some of the same information is consulted many times (for instance, which .NET developer doesn't access data components properties and methods such as the DataSet object many times a month?) - joshjoneswas, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Yea, but will it still be a terrible search? For example, when I tell it to only bring back C# topics and it brings back VB, etc. I learned within 30 mins of VS2005 to ditch the MSDN as is and simply scour google or the MSDN threads themselves.
PS - Anyone else have the search criteria problem with Visual Studio 2005? - consumer4beta, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4For all those who dunno, all MSDNs after Jan 2006 are only for VS2005. Jan 2006 was the last one which worked with VS.NET 2003 just like Oct 2001 which was the last one to work with VS6.0.
- Dotnetsky, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Get a life, shmuck! If you are so anti - Microsoft then go read posts about Linux and Firefox and save us the boredom.
- SuperJdynamite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Sure I can download one of their lame duck implementations of their free tools"
I find that the Express Editions are quite good. What do you feel that they are missing? - zbeast, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6it's about time. It's stupid to have to pay for the library that
lets you program for your OS. Great way to limit your market.
There's an India outsourcing programing shop that the company
I worked for outsourced some work to.
The copy of msdn they were using was so old.
They were placing actions in the installer that would remove
windows service packs from our computers so there code would work.
I laff I smile and I bill overtime to fix this crap. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -16/+19@naio21
your comment astounds me... I hereby give you the title of "Stupidioius Maximus." - jeffyjones, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4They're giving a lot more of the tools away because I suspect they finally get (in the development market) that their real bread and butter is in the server products. The OS itself, BizTalk, SQL Server, CRM, etc., that's where they make the real money.
I never would've bothered to have the library if I didn't have an MSDN subscription, since it's mirrored online anyway. It's just convenient to have it locally when you're not connected.
Incidentally, I suspect the reason it wasn't available previously is because most people (and Microsoft) didn't have the bandwidth to put it out there. I think this is more of a "oh yeah, we can do that" realization in the days of downloadable audio and video. - posure, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2OSS? This is documentation, not software - for the most part (great documentation btw). It'll be nice to finally have this locally. It's so nice to be able to navigate the .NET section for all the documentation and its alot faster than the web.
- zackk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Another great tool CloneDrive I used this to install Visual Studio Express. Nice handy tool.
- ioral, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3MSDN is a pretty good resource. Just use google to search it. Sometimes, the help isnt helpful, eg. DirectShow documentation. But it's still good, and there are samples you can learn from.
"bane of my existence for, um, ever" ... fsking whiner... just how long have you existed? have you been complaining throughout your entire existence?
Btw, that's a rhetorical question, don't bother to answer it. - MrTea, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3How is this "May 2006" version different from the version bundled with VS 2005?
- KCorax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Definitely not the vast msdn library, those of us that pay for it should know better :)
- wassim2k, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2How about just going to http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp ?
I guess this is great if you want an offline resource. - intilli4, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No Longer Available
- bobbyi, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Yeah, the search isn't so great. I have the desktop version of MSDN and I always use the online version instead and search it with google.
- Veretax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The msdn documentation has been on line for free for several years now. But a wiki system, I don't think could work for one simple reason, There is no way in hell that MS has the capitol to pay folks to sit and respond to every comment that is going to come in. MS gets paid to teach people this stuff why would they do that for free.
- KCorax, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3The EU has requested something that microsoft never provided: their undocumented APIs. And ms has stalled the process like hell, their behavior is explicitly malfaisant.
- Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3EU is mostly asking for undocumented protocols and internal API's; something MSDN hardly covers.
- modthoa, on 05/16/2009, -0/+0Remember Steve Ballmer's monkey dance and "Developers, developers, developers" chant? There's a lot of truch to that "Developers" chant. If your development tools are easy to use, powerful, flexible, stable, etc, then developers will want to use them. And if developers use their tools, that gives you power in the market. Also, if Microsoft makes it easy to develop for Windows, people are more likely to program for Windows and ignore other platforms. Think of the alternative situation. If it's hard and/or expensive to program with Microsoft's tools, you'll use something else. Something else that perhaps makes it easier to develop for multiple platforms... http://pspgames247.com
- masykur, on 07/04/2009, -0/+0download.......loading
http://stopdreamingstartaction.almuhsin.or.id - joeisanemokid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@superjdynamite
the 2005 express editions are missing quite a deal. Things like insufficient templates (None for MFC in the visual c++ edition) and completely different options menu that make working with e-books for beginners like myself troublesome to deal with.
But, even so, it is great that there are free versions of such great development software out there for people interested in learning and such.
p.s. anyone know of a place where templates can be downloaded other than msdn's limited choice? -
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