visual c# 2005 or visual c# 2008 beta 2?

[jay75]

starting to do some c# programming. should i go ahead an use vc# 2008 beta 2, or wait for it to be final and in the mean time use vc#2005.

 

[FLegman]

Greetings Jay,

Same "agenda" here and i went for VC# 2005 rather as the tuto im using is based on Visual Studio 2005 Express )
So it's maybe good to stick to the material referenced in your study books.

Feel free to PM if you want to carry further.

Regards,

 

[brandonb]

I was running Visual Studio 2008 beta 1 at work with VB.net (not C#) but I found it to be rock solid with what I was using it for... Much better stability than I thought. You may be ok with Beta 2. Just keep in mind, the beta products self destruct after a certain time period.

 

[KB]

It depends. Do you need the new features in .Net 3.5? WCF, WPF, Workflow, LINQ. If so use 2008.

 

[pcnerd37]

I just bought VS 2005 Pro last week. I would recommend getting it or waiting until 2008 ships so you dont have to worry about it expiring or anything. I cant wait for 2008, but 2005 does everything i need it to do and then some.

 

[Snapster]

2008 is still a bit flakey in some areas. I'd go with 2005 Express for the moment whilst you are learning, and you can transfer to 2008 when it ships.

 

[imported_Dhaval00]

Just as KB mentioned, go for 2008 if you're developing applications that are future-ready (vis-a-vis WF, WCF, LINQ, etc.). If you're "just" learning, I would recommend skip 2005 altogether. By the time you know enough, VS2008 would have shippe and you'll be ready for the new IDE. When I say new IDE, I mean designers/presentation controls for WF (activities), WPF (similar to forms), XAML (asp.net-like), LINQ (SQL to LINQ designer), etc. Nevertheless, most of these newer technologies will be worthless until you know basic C# with major understanding of the .NET Event/Delegate Model; this can be done in 2005 as well as 2008. Both, VS2005 & 2008, use SQL Server Express Edition as part of their setup.

Also, if you use 2005, remember that you'll still need to install VS2005 extensions for WF and WPF so that you can develop those applications in VS2005. No need for this if you go with VS2008.

 

[Tencntraze]

To further what Dhaval00 said, if you need to do WPF, you should go VS2008, mainly because I *think* that they stopped updating/supporting the VS2005 extensions when they released the public betas for VS2008, so you definitely won't have the most up-to-date stuff.

 

[jay75]

thanks for the advice.
flegman has a good point, most of the material available now is for vs2005, and i'll need alot of learning material, so i'll start with vs2005 and move over to vs2008 when its final and has adequate documetation and learning tools.

 

[JavaMomma]

At my work we are currently evaluating Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 now that it has the Go Live License. We've been working on a rather large project that we started in January and will possibly migrate over, from Visual Studio 2005, if everything goes well since we are still some time away from our product release and there are some nice features in 2008.

I spent some time evaluating Beta 1 and it seemed very solid. If you are just learning, why not give 2008 a try, I think they even have 2008 Express and the MSDN up for download. Unless you are writing code for a customer/client -- you'll just be learning a newer tool. As others above said, by the time you master it, it will be released.

 

[JavaMomma]

Also, just wanted to point out that C# 2.0 code works in VS2008 just fine (if you are looking at tutorials). In fact if you wanted to you could even target the compiler to .NET Framework 2.0, you'd just have to give up some cool stuff like LINQ and some of the other new features added to the .NET framework.

 

[jay75]

yup. there is actually alot of 2008beta2 support on msdn. i just didn't see it before. so i'm going with visual c# express 2008. yehaaa!