Visual Basic professional vs Express 2010?
Due to the price ($0.00), I have been using Visual Studio Express 2010.
Microsoft has announced a price reduction in anticipation of the release of new versions.
Visual Basic Professional can be bought for $499.00 without MSDN. It is implied that buying it will provide discounts on upgrades to later versions (I am not sure of this).
That price is a bit much for me, but I am sorely tempted. I am wondering what Professional provides that Express 2010 does not.
BTW: So far I have been running all my projects using IDE Debug Mode. Can Express 2010 produce a Stand-Alone running program? I assume that Professional can & would be interested in being able to run on systems without the Visual Studio IDE
Also what are the chances of a later version of Express?
Would appreciate any information relating to the above.
Re: Visual Basic professional vs Express 2010?
As you can see in this thread:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/For...4-957aa7397b0a
... your questions are fairly common. Real, authoritative answers are also as rare as hen's teeth.
A lot of this rarity and imprecision is probably marketing. On the one hand the "real" Visual Studio editions have a nasty price tag, so they don't want to put customers off by making them think they have to pay megabucks for an incremental advantage over the free Express products. On the other hand the Express products are crippled in serious ways, but they don't want to put off Joe Plinker because they are desperate to increase the .Net mindshare out there.
Hopefully somebody who makes serious use of both the Express and "real" editions can offer you a useful opinion. Sadly, though this has been asked many times most reponses have been as unsatisfactory as mine is.
The differences are real, but most of them are fairly subtle from the standpoint of a shadetree coder.
Re: Visual Basic professional vs Express 2010?
I have not used any of the express editions so I really do not know what limits they may have. I think that the express versions have not supported smart device development but even there I am unsure.
The way the .net languages work though they have to create an executable before they can run erven from the IDE. The difference is that when you run from the IDE you have the debugger features attached to your application and are able to step through the code and such. The only thing that should be required to run a basic program written in .net on another computer is the .Net framework of the version you used with your program. These are on most system already so if there are no special support files required by your programyou should be able to copy the exe to another computer and run it without issue.
Re: Visual Basic professional vs Express 2010?
Generally Express lacks 'productivity' technologies. So for example, you won't get deployment and testing projects. Neither are you going to get things like Team Foundation Server (which is geared towards Team working). You don't need these but they do help you work faster and smarter.
AFAIK the language content of express is identical to the charged versions so you can view it as a complete stand alone product. If it is missing any language elements they will, again, be productivity elements. So, for example, it might not support linq (I have no idea whether it does or not, this is just an example). That doesn't 'break' express because linq isn't a necessity, it's a nice to have that can speed up your development. But there's nothing you can do with it that you couldn't do without it.
There are comparison pages out there that would fully detail this. I'll see if I can find you a link.
edit> hmm, can't seem to find a comparison that includes both express and charged versions. I guess I'm just so used to dealing with charged versions (my employers pay for them :)) that I've never noticed express is missing from the comparisons. I guess that bears out what others have said in this thread.
Quote:
So far I have been running all my projects using IDE Debug Mode. Can Express 2010 produce a Stand-Alone running program?
Yes. It wouldn't be alot of use otherwise. All you do is right click on your solution and select 'Build'. This will create all the apropriate files for you to deploy your project to any computer that's got the .Net Framework on it (which is basically any modern windows machine because it comes bundled with Windows). Depending on the type of project that will probably be an exe and zero or more dll files. You just need to drop them onto the users machine in the same relative locations as they were on your development machine.
Deployment can get a little thorny on complex projects and I've probably made it sound easier than it is but, on a simple project, you shouldn't struggle.
Re: Visual Basic professional vs Express 2010?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
FunkyDexter
Generally Express lacks 'productivity' technologies. So for example, you won't get deployment and testing projects. Neither are you going to get things like Team Foundation Server (which is geared towards Team working). You don't need these but they do help you work faster and smarter.
AFAIK the language content of express is identical to the charged versions so you can view it as a complete stand alone product. If it is missing any language elements they will, again, be productivity elements. So, for example, it might not support linq (I have no idea whether it does or not, this is just an example). That doesn't 'break' express because linq isn't a necessity, it's a nice to have that can speed up your development. But there's nothing you can do with it that you couldn't do without it.
There are comparison pages out there that would fully detail this. I'll see if I can find you a link.
edit> hmm, can't seem to find a comparison that includes both express and charged versions. I guess I'm just so used to dealing with charged versions (my employers pay for them :)) that I've never noticed express is missing from the comparisons. I guess that bears out what others have said in this thread.
Yes. It wouldn't be alot of use otherwise. All you do is right click on your solution and select 'Build'. This will create all the apropriate files for you to deploy your project to any computer that's got the .Net Framework on it (which is basically any modern windows machine because it comes bundled with Windows). Depending on the type of project that will probably be an exe and zero or more dll files. You just need to drop them onto the users machine in the same relative locations as they were on your development machine.
Deployment can get a little thorny on complex projects and I've probably made it sound easier than it is but, on a simple project, you shouldn't struggle.
The differences between Express and paid editions is all IDE features. The languges and compilers are in the .Net Frameworks that these IDE's simply use, so for example you can do Linq is in the Express edition just like you can in the paid editions because Linq is in the FW. The things that are missing from the Express edition is things like wizards and DB connection objects, for example in vb.net express I can't use the DataSet designer to connect to an Access database, but I can for Sql Server, in VS 2010 Ultimate I can connect to both. Now in the Express edition I can type out all of the code to connect to an Access DB just fine and it will work, but I don't have the convenience of the dataset wizard to do that code generation for me. It's features like that which makes the Express edition limiting, but none of those removed features will stop you from anything as you can always crank out the code using the FW objects to do it anyways.
Re: Visual Basic professional vs Express 2010?
So does the express edition have the ability to create smart device applications for Windows CE and Windows Mobile, Windows Services and Web Services as well? I was under the impression that this type of stuff was not available in the express edition.
Re: Visual Basic professional vs Express 2010?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
DataMiser
So does the express edition have the ability to create smart device applications for Windows CE and Windows Mobile, Windows Services and Web Services as well? I was under the impression that this type of stuff was not available in the express edition.
Yes, I forgot to mention that, not all of the project templates are available in the Express editions, such as none of the Express editions have mobile development. Then again when it comes to VS2010 as a whole, none of them support mobile development that I know of either. I see it available in my VS2008 Pro, but it's not there in VS2010 Ultimate.
MS really messed up on the available project types as a whole with VS2010.
I also create and maintain Sql Sever SSIS packages too and have to use VS2008 Pro for all 4 types of those because MS didn't include any of them in VS2010.
Re: Visual Basic professional vs Express 2010?
Express also only offers ClickOnce packaging the last time I looked, and I think the Service template is another missing one.
