Microsoft being a niusance or just my ignorance?

[Conelton]

I recently decided I wanted to learn a bit of C++ (I have experience with JS, PHP, HTML and Pascal. I felt like doing something new) and after a quick look around I gathered that I probably want Visual Studio Express. Trouble is, I have to register for it. Normally this would be fine, but Microsoft's registration form assumes that I'm an organisation, or at least working for one. Obviously, this is not the case. I'm just practicing really. So how do I do that? Is there a way I can register as an individual, or do I need to find another compiler/IDE? If so, which one? GCC?

TL;DR Can't register Visual Studio. Need advice or alternative.

[jaypro]

Are you a student? Microsoft has free versions for people with an @edu email. This includes not only Visual Studio Express, but even includes full version of Visual Studio.

The link is:

https://www.dreamspark.com/

[Conelton]

I'm not sure about that actually, I'll have to ask someone at college. Thanks for the reply though, may well use that site in the future.

[Spartan-S63]

If you're a college student, you undoubtedly have an @edu email address. Find out what yours is and you can leverage DreamSpark's software distributions. Like Jaypro said, DreamSpark offers Visual Studio 2012 Professional Edition (your school has to be an MSDNAA partner for VS Ultimate). But it's a lot more powerful than the express editions.

[rufidmonki]

Lol, dude, just enter some bullcrap.

I don't even remember what I wrote there. You really think Microsoft is going to research every single registration?

[GoodBytes]

If you are a college student, and your school is registered to MSDNAA, then you don't even need to do that. Go to the appropriate site in your school (ask IT department or a student that knows it), login (usually your computer lab password OR your school online system credential), and you have full access to all Microsoft software for free. Visual Studio Ultimate, WIndows 8 Pro, Windows 7, Vista, XP, heck even MS-DOS, the exception is Office (I guess Microsoft has to make some money on you, somehow).

[Conelton]

Sorry for the really late reply, guys. Anyway, being in the UK and not having an @edu email address or any of that, I'm not eligible for the free software :( If I could have got Windows 8 for free I would have jumped at it by now rather than forking out £45. Entering bullcrap seems to be the best option. The only reason I didn't really want to do that is because I figured there must have been another way, but I guess not. If anybody can recommend an alternate software that would be great.

[LaPendulum]

Qt is a good alternative option to visual studio

[lutzee]

Sigh, americans thinking everyone is US, anyway you can always look at IDEs such as eclipse, I'm sure there is a decent plugin set for it to deal with c++, there seems to be plugins for everyone

[GoodBytes]

Virtually all colleges and university provide students with a college e-mail. If its not edu, you can contact them if I am not mistaken, or have an exception list. Try and see.

If you are in Computer Science or Engineer of any kind, you have for sure full access to MSDNAA. Contact your college for more info on where to get your login info, and where to go to access it.

[RockinRoel]

You don't need a .edu e-mail address to get on Dreamspark. As a Belgian student, I just used my (.be) university e-mail address and it worked fine. If your educational institution is registered with Dreamspark and you have an e-mail address, then it should just work. Also, for the Express edition, I think you can just enter whatever in the company field and it will let you through.

Other than that, Qt and Eclipse have been mentioned before. There's no need to use Visual Studio. I don't have a tonne of experience with QtCreator, but I've used Eclipse before and it works just fine. Their servers seem to be unreachable at the moment, but when they go back up, look for Eclipse CDT (C/C++ Development Tooling). You should just be able to download Eclipse with CDT all in one and get started with C++ right away.

[lutzee]

"college" in england is 16-18 yo generally, and are also funded by the government still, the chances you find a college with a premium dream spark account is very low, however after using dreamspark myself i went looking for ISO versions due to dreamsparks terrible download manager.. low and behold microsoft provide ISOs too.. http://extr3metech.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/microsoft-visual-studio-2012-express-offline-install/

Try that, it should be free to use

Link found here: http://extr3metech.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/microsoft-visual-studio-2012-express-offline-install/

[Conelton]

So if nothing else this thread is an example of how terrible I am at checking all my forum accounts. I really appreciate your help though. As far as Dreamspark/MSDNAA is concerned I'll have a word with my teacher (as I am a computer science student), but @lutzee pretty much hit the nail on the head; I doubt anything will come from it. In the meantime I'll check out Qt and Eclipse (which I've used briefly before for Java so will probably end up sticking with) and might even try just BS'ing the Visual Studio registration.

Thanks a lot guys, you've been a big help :-)