One announcement I missed at at Connect() last week was that of Visual Studio Dev Essentials. I only heard about this one whilst listening to RadioTFS’s news from Connect() programme.
Visual Studio Dev Essentials is mostly a re-packing of all the tools that were already freely available from Microsoft e.g. Visual Studio Community Edition, Tem Foundation Server Express etc.; but there are some notable additions* (some coming soon)
- Pluralsight (6-month subscription)—limited time only
- Xamarin University mobile training— coming soon
- WintellectNOW (3-month subscription)
- Microsoft Virtual Academy
- HackHands Live Programming Help ($25 credit)
- Priority Forum Support
- Azure credit ($25/month for 12 months)—coming soon
- Visual Studio Team Services account with five users
- App Service free tier
- PowerBI free tier
- HockeyApp free tier
- Application Insights free tier
*Check the Visual Studio Dev Essentials site for the detailed T&C
So if you, or a student/hobbyist you know, need great development tools sign up at Visual Studio Dev Essentials