Get started developing with some free software from Microsoft

I have delayed continuing to work on FireworX-10 mainly becuase I have lost interest in the platform I originally built it on. I originally built it in Visual Basic 4 and later moved to Visual Basic 5 becuase those were the versions I had available at the time. What keeps me motivated to work on projects such as this is the opportunity to learn something new and VB 4/5/6 didn’t seem to provide that. Additionally, as part of the software development that I do at work, I haven’t had requirements to use VB since the days of VB5 so I don’t have access to the later versions. They have been too expensive to justify solely to continue to work on a freeware project. Together, these issues have kept me strugling for continued interest in the project.

It seems like that has changed. When I was browsing the Microsoft Visual Studio site to look at some .NET stuff, I noticed that the Visual Studio 2005 Express version is being offerred for free until November 6, 2006. I have downloaded and installed the express versions of Visual Basic 2005, Visual C# 2005 and Visual J# 2005.

These express versions seem like they have what is necessary to build a simple application such as FireworX-10. I rewrote the sample code I provide on this site in Visual Basic 2005 and it seems to work fine. I tried Visual J# but I think it suffers from the sample problems as traditional Java development; the threading model is too flexible and does provide the strict timing control that sending signals to the serial port requires. I am going to start looking into C#.

So, if you have been thinking about getting started with development on a small project or want to learn more about the latest MS tools, check out the free Express versions of the Visual Studio products.