should i move over to vs10?????

[kayleigh]

Coding is only a hobbie for me, but i am really trying my hardest to improve.

I currently use vb express which you all know is free.

Should i move over to vs10? What gains would i have? or is that really only for proper professionals

thanks

[si_the_geek]

As it is only a hobby, I would recommend not spending money on Visual Studio unless you find that you have a specific need for it (such as developing apps for phones/PDA's).

The Express edition of VB is the same language as you get in VS, just with less built-in features - many of which will always be irrelevant to you, and several you can still use if you put in a little more effort (such as editing a file in Notepad rather than clicking a menu option).

[Shaggy Hiker]

2010 will have some new features which might be nice, but they are not likely to be essential. From all I have heard, I'd stick with express 2008 until express 2010 has been out for a little while, and only upgrade if you think some of the core features would be of interest.

[kayleigh]

Thank you very much for the replys, il stick to vb ex for now then :)

[jmcilhinney]

There's no reason not to start using VB 2010 Express as soon as it reaches RTM.

1. All .NET IDEs can be installed side by side, so installing VB 2010 Express will not affect your existing 2008 installation.

2. VB 2010 can target anything from .NET 2.0 to 4.0, so both existing projects and new projects can target old or new Framework versions.

3. The upgrade wizard will prompt you to backup your existing solution before upgrading it. If something goes wrong then you can either open that backup in VB 2008 Express, or you can replace the current solution and project files with the backups and then open the solution as it is in VB 2008 Express.

The only real danger is that VB 2010 Express has a bug that somehow kills your current code and then you will lose the work you've done since the backup. That seems rather unlikely and, if it did happen, I would think you'd find out before you'd done much work anyway.

[Nightwalker83]

The only real danger is that VB 2010 Express has a bug that somehow kills your current code and then you will lose the work you've done since the backup. That seems rather unlikely and, if it did happen, I would think you'd find out before you'd done much work anyway.

Probably a case of human error rather than a software error! I have never heard of any .net application doing that before. Although, I seem to remember Microsoft Word doing that to me once.

[TCarter]

I have used VS2010 beta, and wrote it off swearing not to do VS2010 until it releases.

I recently downloaded the VS2010 RC2. Much improved over BETA. I was stuck to 2008, and now since i got a stable / quality version of 2010..I wont ever go back to 2008.

The UI is alot nicer, it feels more..powerful.

Plus some of the small features are nice (if you click on a word in your code..it'll highlight others with the same...so if you had say.. "Dim this as string" and you clicked on this, it would show where you used "this" in your code. Which is quite nice.