Dreamspark in India

For students aspiring for a career in the software industry or those who are passionate about building software, this should be great news. Microsoft is giving away the latest developer and designer tools that normally cost hundreds of dollars at no charge to verified students through its DreamSpark program. DreamSpark was so far restricted to a few countries. The goodies include the following -

  • Visual Studio 2008 & 2005, Professional Edition
  • SQL Server 2008 & 2005, Developer Edition
  • Windows Server 2008 & 2003, Standard Edition
  • Virtual PC 2007
  • Expression Studio
  • XNA Game Studio 2.0
  • 12-month free Academic membership in the XNA Creators Club

This offering for students is much better than what they can expect out of open-source tools.

These tools are available both online as well as offline on DVD through NIIT, Aptech and Hughes Net Fusion Centers in several towns & cities across India.

My first brush with computers was more than a decade ago when I was in college. All we got was clunky Unix terminals. I graduated later to a 8086 PC but never owned a PC till several years after I finished college. A 8086 PC at that time cost over a lakh (or $2000). For many, it was also hard & expensive to find the right learning resources for picking up tech skills.

Fast forward to 2008, you can get a decent assembled PC & an annual Broadband Internet subscription for about Rs.20,000 ($400). Relatively speaking, students of this age have abundant learning resources including the Internet. The Internet (with a good Broadband connection) is a great leveller. It throws open a treasure of knowledge and ideas, making it immaterial in which part of the world you live. There are also helpful communities on a variety of computer technology to seek help from. The DreamSpark program is a great complement to all those resources.

Students enthusiastic about Computer Science and technology hobbyists may never have it so good.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Data Prep & Exploratory Data Analysis" course by Maven Analytics

Image
The Maven Analytics course on " Data Prep & Exploratory Data Analysis " by Alice Zhao is a beginner-friendly introduction to machine learning with Python. It covers the key steps of the data science workflow, including: Gathering Data Scoping a Project Modeling Data Sharing Insights Cleaning Data Exploring Data Modeling Data  Sharing Insights The presentation deck which is available as a download crisply summarizes the essential details and is a great reference to keep going back to. The course is well-suited for aspiring data scientists looking to get hands-on experience with the data prep and EDA stages of the machine learning workflow using Python and Jupyter Notebook. 
Read more

Maven Crash Course - Learn Power Query, Power Pivot & DAX in 15 Minutes

Image
In the Maven Crash Course " Learn Power Query, Power Pivot & DAX in 15 Minutes ", Chris Dutton walks through a hypothetical business case while showcasing the power of modern Excel tools like Power Query, Power Pivot and DAX. Power Query is used to extract, transform, and load data from external sources like SQL databases, PDF and CSV files. A relational model is created to join the tables without writing a single formula. Exploratory analysis is done using Power Pivot and Data Analysis Expressions (DAX). Data Analysis Expressions is the language that we can use to define new calculated columns and measures to enhance our Data Model instead of the traditional cell formulas that we'd typically use if our data was stored in worksheets. Pivot Charts and slicers are used to design a simple interactive report that the sales managers can use to analyze revenue trends and product performance.
Read more

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Strategic Cloud Platform Services

Image
Gartner defines strategic cloud platform services (SCPS) as standardized, automated, public cloud offerings integrating infrastructure services (e.g., computing, network and storage), platform services (e.g., application, data and value-added services such as AI/ML) and transformation services (resources to help customers adopt cloud-oriented IT delivery models). Image - Gartner Insights I found interesting from the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Strategic Cloud Platform Services report: The eight SCPS providers & global hyperscalers featured in this Magic Quadrant control over 97% of the total CIPS market. While AWS has maintained profitability and a leading global infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) market share of over 42%, its growth rate relative to its key competitors slowed in 2023. Azure public cloud market share is 26%. GCP's overall market share stands at 11.5%. Oracle's strategy of positioning OCI as the top cloud for Oracle software i
Read more