C# Programming
Recently I have been playing with C#/.NET programming. I’m quite impressed with the C# language, it is definitely an improvement on C++ and Java. One of my favourite features is get/set properties. As a FIT student at Monash you are entitled to use the Microsoft Visual Studio development tools. However if this does not cover you, you could try Visual Studio Express, a cut-down version that will be free for 1 year. Another option is to install SharpDevelop, a free IDE for developing .NET applications in C# and VB.NET. I am really impressed with the quality of SharpDevelop, I think you could easily use this as a development platform. All that is required is the .NET Framework and .NET Framework SDK. I’m not sure if it works with Mono though.
Microsoft and Oracle have released free editions of their database products, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition and Oracle 10g Express Edition. This is probably in response to the popularity of powerful open source databases such as MySql. The Express Editions are cut down versions of the enterprise products, and as such Microsoft’s doesn’t include the data mining tools.