Visual Basic professional vs Express 2010?

[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.

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.