Microsoft offers students free design, software development

Microsoft launches free design and software development program for students

As Apple continues to believe growth among youth, Microsoft believes it is necessary to keep up with the demographics. Microsoft Corp. announced on Monday that the software giant will offer free access to its design and development tools up to one billion of students, whether they are in university or college.

The goal with DreamSpark program is reaching out to students from all over the world, and foster technological innovation throughout the world. The software included in the DreamSparks program includes Visual Studio 2008 2005 Professional Edition, Expression Studio, XNA Game Studio 2.0, SQL Server Developer Edition, Windows Server Standard Edition, and its website and the overall design tools graph.

So far, Microsoft is offering DreamSpark more than 35 million university students in Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the USA PC World reported. Microsoft plans to expand the programme to Australia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Japan, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia and for the next six months.

“I have always believed in getting developers at an age as young as possible,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman, in an interview with Channel 8. “These are tools that people can build a career around or can simply build software fun for themselves. Groundwork for understanding how the good works of architecture, data structures … these have been the same for the past 30 years. Essentially, design skills, know what code looks like good - that will be useful for at least the next three decades. “

Currently, the DreamSparks program is available to students whose focus include technology, design, mathematics, science and engineering.