Free Software Development Tools - Adobe, Microsoft, Java

Adobe
Adobe is providing two of its RIA (rich internet application) development tools, Flex and ColdFusion, free to students, teachers and unemployed people. You can request the free software at: https://freeriatools.adobe.com/. Students and teachers must provide a scanned copy of their student or faculty ID.

Microsoft
Also, Microsoft provides "express" editions of its software and database development tools, Visual Studio and SQL Server, free to anyone at: http://www.microsoft.com/Express/

Igor Stavnitser tells me that students can also get complete versions of
- Visual Studio Pro 05 and 08
- SQL Server 2008
- Windows Server 2008
for free @ https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/

Tip of the hat to Steve Cohn for the link to the Technet evaluation center at:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/default.aspx

Java
There are many free Java development tools. My group's tool of choice is Eclipse, which can be downloaded from: http://www.eclipse.%20org/downloads/

All of these programming languages/environments are in relatively high demand - emphasis on "relatively".

Not being able to afford expensive software development tools is no longer a reason for not upgrading or modernizing one's programming skills.

Project Management
For a review of some free project management tools, see the review at 3point7designs.com.