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I still use Visual Basic Express 2010, but thought about trying out a newer version, but this time to check out other parts of Visual Studio besides VB.
What I would like to know is your experience with Visual Studio Express 2015, 2017, or Community 2019. If you use the professional versions, what's your experience with them? Which do you prefer and why (features, speed, etc...)?
I mostly program desktops apps with VB Express 2010 on my Windows 7 64bit machine.
I'd like to hear those experiences too. I am just starting out on VB Express 2010.
For up-to-date C++ development, you need to use the latest version of VS. Only VS2017 fully supports C++17 and only VS2019 is supporting the new C++20 standard. Even some of the C++14 standard is only implemented within VS2017. So for C++ developers IMO the minimum version to use would be VS2017. The version of C++ included is the same for the Community and Professional versions. From our perspective, the difference between these two comes down to licensing issues.Quote:
but this time to check out other parts of Visual Studio besides VB.
The Community edition is free and has pretty much all that Professional does, so you should probably install that and start playing. Note that Express editions no longer exist. The Community installer just lets you pick the parts you want. If you're only doing desktop or only doing web then you only install the components required for those areas. You can't install just VB or just C# though.
Note for the VS2017/2019 installer (Professional/Community). By default, not everything is installed. Before commencing the installation I suggest that the VS components to be installed are checked and any additional ones required are included before installation starts. The VS2017/2019 installer is a separate program which can be used after installation to remove/add components.
I am using VS 2019 which since 2010 is my favourite version. That may be in part due to the work i am doing though.
All my work now is either Web (ASP.Net MVC 5 & Web API) or Mobile (Xamarin) and both of these work better in 2019 although the Web stuff only marginally so from 2017.
Moving on from 2010 one of the big difference you will notice straight away is references and NuGet, 3rd party packages are all now done through NuGet which once you get used to it is much nicer than the old way.
The IDE has changed over the versions with some have a more 3D feel and some flatter but i like what they have done with 2019 with creating more screen estate with the way the menus are rendered and returned to a flatter feel.
Depending on how much memory your machine has, you may notice that later version of VS are a bit more memory hungry. I have 16gig of Ram in my laptop though and that seems to be plenty, however some of my colleagues who only have 8gig of Ram and you can see the speed(responsiveness) difference (our laptops are otherwise exactly the same spec)
Turning of some of the default debugging Options can make a significant difference to your project build and run times, in particular turning off under Tools - Options - Debugging - "Enable Diagnostic Tool While Debugging".
The file New Project dialog is quite a bit different if you use that a lot as know you have a search interface to choose the type of project you want to create some people like this some dont but i think its more personal preference.
Publish options for web applications are also better in later versions
Many of the improvements in more recent times are aimed at web & mobile programming and so you might feel there is less change if you are only doing windows apps.
The Community editions are free to use (for personal use and for small businesses under a certain size or turnover it does say in the licence terms exactly if you are interested in this) and i have yet to find any real difference between it and the professional version other than the licence, where as the old Express Editions used to have some feature differences to the Pro version.