You don't have to pay for anything to learn the Microsoft stack.
- Visual Studio Community Edition is full featured and free
- SQL Server Express is free
- You really don't need IIS but it is free. With C# you can run on top of Kestral.
- Visual Studio Community Edition is full featured and free
- SQL Server Express is free
- You really don't need IIS but it is free. With C# you can run on top of Kestral.
There were free editions but they were crippled versions of the paid ones with no extensions, etc. The free versions were generally unloved and had annoying quirks.
At the time you needed to add a Resharper license in there too to be decently productive which was yet another overhead.
However, VS Express itself took a while to appear. Back when .NET first appeared, the only thing that was free was the .NET Framework itself (including command line compilers), and online MSDN documentation. Eventually, we got SharpDevelop.
But, well, there's free, and then there's free. In my home country, you could buy a bundle of CDs with complete VS 2002 + MSDN distribution on the black market for around $20. Which was still expensive for students, mind you - so the same bundle was then shared around the class (including the teachers, who only had an older bundle of VS6).
It wasn’t until 2014 when MS started releasing the non crippled version.
But consider yourself lucky. Do you know how hard it was for middle schooler to get a good 65C02 assembler in the 80s like I had to?
It looks like they design for developers with gaming rigs and ten finger chords, I even start enjoying using Eclipse again after spending a couple of months on a Java assignment with InteliJ.
Then my .NET team wonders why I never complain about VS speed and crashes, easy, I am the only one not using Resharper.
Even reading the docs seemed to need a login and paid subscription.