How can I learn the Apex language?

I bid for a freelance gig earlier, coding in the Apex language, used for the Force.com CRM platform. It looks like an interesting language to learn and code, but it also looks expensive开发者_开发问答.

Is there a way I can download a shell platform, just for the dev tools etc?

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Salesforce gives away free Developer Editions at http://www.developerforce.com/events/regular/registration.php

Developer editions allow you to have access to all the Force.com standard objects, features, and development features.

Once you get a Development org up and running, you can download the Force.com IDE which is an Eclipse plugin and play with that.