Students choose Visual J# over BlueJ, JCreator, and other IDE's

I received this note from Brian Scarbeau, a high school AP Computer Science teacher in Orlando, Florida.

Thought I’d pass this along. . . My AP students are now using the MBCS hands on. I don’t require them to use an IDE and they choose either bluej, JCreator or VS. Some started to use Visual Studio for the first time today and they were blown away by the intellisense and how easy it was to use. Needless to say that got the attention of the other students that were using the other ide’s. Guess what IDE all my students will be using tomorrow in class?

At Microsoft we spend lots of time, money, and energy educating the academic community about the merits of our tools and platform, but we obviously can't talk to every student or teacher out there. So when students independently choose Visual Studio over other IDE's - without any influence from their teacher - it reminds that we're building a development tool that makes life easier for millions of people - students and professional developers alike.

One of the main reasons I came to Microsoft to do marketing in the Visual Studio group is because of my academic experience. I graduated from the University of Florida (Go Gators!) the same semester that Microsoft released Visual Studio .NET. I remember reading about the product and trying it for the first time and being so amazed at the capabilities. The only unfortunate part about my experience was that the timing of my education didn't permit me to use Visual Studio .NET as part of my college career since it wasn't released yet. So when I was given the opportunity to come work for Microsoft and help teachers and students realize how Visual Studio .NET could help them be successful in their college careers and beyond, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I am living my dream job every day, and my only regret is that I don't have more hours in the day with which to code. =)