Is it worth it to invest on the next Visual Studio 2010?

[Black Zero]

Now that there's recession invade my country... It's hard to get a revenue already. More worst than it, Developer like Microsoft keep investing on a new version such as VS 2010.

I just bought a copy of VS 2005, and is it really worth it to spend my money again on VS 2010? What if I stick to this 2005 one?

Or is it a time to say goodbye to Microsoft programs?

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

Why, in 2009, would you have just bought a copy of VS2005?

[Black Zero]

Yes. Is there anything wrong with that?

There was a discount on e-store on my country for that copy, so I decided to buy it. Do note that I had been using pirated copy of VS 2005 all along.

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

Have you heard of VS2008?

[BillGeek]

Are there any major differences between 2005 and 2008? And I mean MAJOR differences. I'm not talking about some additional assemblies or some new UI. Is there an actual comiler difference, or speed increase, or ANYTHING worth my while? (I'm also looking at going 2008)

[not-serious]But I too got VS2005 only last year. [/not-serious]

[mendhak]

VS 2008 -> .NET 3.5 and .NET 3.5 SP1
VS 2005 -> .NET 2.0

I'd say that's a major difference. You'll be missing Linq, ASP.NET AJAX, ADO.NET Entity Frameworks, ADO.NET Data Services, WCF, WF, WPF, ParallelFx... although some of these area available in VS 2005 through the extensions route.

[I_Love_My_Vans]

Become a student, you get it for free

[timeshifter]

Are there any major differences between 2005 and 2008? And I mean MAJOR differences. I'm not talking about some additional assemblies or some new UI. Is there an actual comiler difference, or speed increase, or ANYTHING worth my while? (I'm also looking at going 2008)

[not-serious]But I too got VS2005 only last year. [/not-serious]

2008 includes framework targetting, so while 2005 is stuck building 2.0 apps, 2008 can build 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5. 2010 will also have this feature, but with the addition of .Net 4.0.

2008 is a considerably faster IDE than 2005, in my experience. Also, it has the Split view for web pages, which while not necessary for me, is still nice. Much better JavaScript and CSS Intellisense support.

Oh, and did I mention .Net 3.5?

[FunkyDexter]

I think the answer to the question is : It depends.

Since you bought your copy of 2005 from a discount store I'm guessing your a guy who wants to some programming from home and hopefully make a bit of cash while you're at it. In that scenario I think I'd find it hard to justify forking out on the latest version of visual studio - it's not cheap, after all. Sure, you get more features with it but .net 2.0 was a perfectly good language and you'll be able to work with it just fine.

On the other hand, if you're buying this for a company and you've got even a half decent budget then it's always a good idea to be able to use the latest technology. The increased productivity should more than offset the cost of buying the software.

[NotLKH]

Yes. Is there anything wrong with that?

There was a discount on e-store on my country for that copy, so I decided to buy it. Do note that I had been using pirated copy of VS 2005 all along.

BZ,

How much did you pay for 2005?

[Black Zero]

Mhhh wait, lemme see my receipt. It's around US$ 70 dollars. My currency isn't US Dollars, though, so it's an approx value.

I think the answer to the question is : It depends.

Since you bought your copy of 2005 from a discount store I'm guessing your a guy who wants to some programming from home and hopefully make a bit of cash while you're at it. In that scenario I think I'd find it hard to justify forking out on the latest version of visual studio - it's not cheap, after all. Sure, you get more features with it but .net 2.0 was a perfectly good language and you'll be able to work with it just fine.

On the other hand, if you're buying this for a company and you've got even a half decent budget then it's always a good idea to be able to use the latest technology. The increased productivity should more than offset the cost of buying the software.

Yeah. I will use it to get a side-revenue for my life. I am not good at programming, but for small stores that want to make a database program for daily use, I am more than enough.

I guess I'll also find a pirated copy of VS2010 =="

I know it's so wrong, but I really can't afford it.

[mendhak]

You don't need a pirated copy, there are 'express editions' available for free.

[Siddharth Rout]

Yeah. I will use it to get a side-revenue for my life. I am not good at programming, but for small stores that want to make a database program for daily use, I am more than enough.

[Just Joking]The best business is to earn profit without investing a single dime/pence/cent or whatever it is... Why buy such a costly software or get a pirated copy? Simply outsource the project and earn a profit on it [/Just Joking]

[Shaggy Hiker]

I'd wait for at least a year before buying 2010, but that's just me. I generally prefer to wait until a program is released before buying it.

I am still using 2005 at work, and will need to for some time, yet. The advantages of 2008 are not so great that I feel any great urgency about switching. However, 2010, when it finally gets released, appears to include some features that will be considerably different, especially when it comes to making use of multi-core processors.

[EntityX]

I downloaded the free express version of Visual Basic 2008. I found it worked very well and that it runs faster. I recently invested in Visual Studio 2008 Standard. I got it on ebay for $ 110. Technically speaking I got Visual Studio 2008 Standard for free but I had to buy some big book that I didn't want at all. Sometimes you can find deals like that. I was interested in Visual Web Developer 2008 Standard otherwise I might have just stuck with the Express version of Visual Basic 2008.

[EntityX]

There's a feature in Visual Studio 2008 that I just started using. Find and replace. I've been using the find feature for years but I don't think Visual Studio 2005 has the find and replace feature but I'm not sure. Anyway whether it does or not it can be a very useful thing if you have a large application and you want to change some variable or something. It will automatically replace any occurence of whatever you want very quickly.

[timeshifter]

Yes it did. That's a pretty standard feature in any text editing program. I was a little disappointed with the Find function in VS2005, though.. tended to not search solutions very thoroughly. VS2008 isn't much better...

The biggest feature I've been taking advantage of lately is macros. I don't know if VS2005 had them, because I only started using them a month ago or so. But I've already written a few nice little utility macros to fix my CSS and remove double line breaks from bulk text. Fun times.

[wild_bill]

I think he's talking about the variable renaming functionality. I use this quite a bit, and it was available in VS2005.

[edit]
One of the things I'm finding really handy in VS 2008 is type inference for VB.

[timeshifter]

Where's the inferrance? I might be blind, but I'm not seeing it.

Type inference is one of the things I hated about VB6, still hate about JavaScript, and am in the process of hating in C# (var, it's a LINQ thing). I think it says something about you if you write code to pass a value to a variable, but you don't even know what type the value is gonna be...

[Shaggy Hiker]

I'm too tired to think it through at the moment, but type inference is essential to LINQ. Without type inference, there would be LINQ statements that couldn't be evaluated.

[mendhak]

Var is a lazy programmer's thing; it just happens to get used with Linq a lot because some can't be bothered figuring out the return value, but it can be used in non-Linq statements. I speak, of course, of Linq queries in which known types are being returned, rather than anonymous types. You'd have to use it with anonymous types coming back, but if you've thought your application through, you shouldn't be using anonymous types a lot.

If you run a query against a List<Customer>, then chances are that your Linq query is going to return an IEnumerable<Customer>. Why would you use var there? This isn't JavaScript. Are you a sheep? Look at your query and figure out that type, it's easy. If you can't, then you should probably be posting here.

[BillGeek]

Are we talking about Variant types here, or am I missing something? In a certain scripting language you have the option to define a type for your variable:

var theObject : Object = <insert value here>;

[mendhak]

var myQuery = from x in aListOfThings where x.CustomerCity == "Dallas" select x;

Not sure about VB.NET, but it might look something like this:

Dim myQuery = From x In aListOfThings Where x.CustomerCity = "Dallas" Select x

Where aListOfThings is List<Things> or List(Of Things).

In this case, myQuery is going to be IEnumerable<Things> or IEnumerable(Of Things), but the 'var' infers the type. Similarly,

var abc = "Noob";

abc will be inferred as a string.

[NotLKH]

... You'll be missing Linq, ASP.NET ... although some of these are available in VS 2005 through the extensions route.

I have not had a chance to develop with linq yet, as I use .Net 2005.
Is linq available as a .Net 2005 Extension?

I did a 5 minute google, and found nothing...

[mendhak]

I think you get a preview of Linq (which means unsupported) to use with VS 2005.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

[JuggaloBrotha]

The Option Infer in VS 2008 completely negates C# and VB.net being wonderfully strongly typed.

I turn it off, there's little reason to use Linq for everything.

[wild_bill]

You still get strongly typed objects.

's is a string object
Dim s = ""
'd is a decimal object
Dim d = 0D

[mendhak]

I think he may have meant readability.

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

This thread is starting to sound intelligent and meaningful.

[mendhak]

You are right, MM, this thread will unfortunately need to be moved now. (General Developer forum)

[JuggaloBrotha]

Why, in 2009, would you have just bought a copy of VS2005?

Lack of research, yea, he burned himself on this one

[dilettante]

I haven't kept up on the plans, but VS 2010 was supposed to have two VB.Net compilers, one for CLR and one for DLR.

[Black Zero]

You don't need a pirated copy, there are 'express editions' available for free.

haven't tried that edition.

Is it able to make a project at all? Since it's labeled free... I doubt it can even make a database program ==a

[timeshifter]

You can do anything with the Express versions that you want. The main difference is that there's one Express program per language (VB, C#, C++, VWD), and they have little plug-in support. I've built pretty nice projects with the Express versions. No issues.

[JuggaloBrotha]

haven't tried that edition.

Is it able to make a project at all? Since it's labeled free... I doubt it can even make a database program ==a

It's the same framework, anything you can do in any of the full editions can still be done (usually manually) in the express edition.

What the express editions are lacking is the IDE featured, like database connection wizards and other helpful stuff, but nothing's preventing you from connecting to a DB in the framework, you just need to do it yourself instead of using a convenient wizard