Which Visual Studio?

[tgreer]

I personally have been developing C# apps (GUI, Console, and ASP.NET) for a few years now.

I'm tasked with suggesting the proper development tools for a corporate application development group. We've settled on C#.

However, a glance at Microsoft's site for Visual Studio is a bit daunting. It isn't readily apparent which version of VS.NET we should use!

This group does little or no Internet Development. Most apps will be Console Applications. A very few, but I suspect growing amount, will be GUI (Windows Forms).

Do we need Visual C#.NET 2003? Visual Studio 2005 C# "Express Edition"?

Are there 3rd-party IDEs that are worth investigating?

Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

 

[JurkMonkey]

From a professional standpoint: I would stay away from C# 2005 for at least 1 more year. Let the bugs get fixed, the service packs released, and the framework updated.

If you are looking for a free development tool, SharpDevelop is definately worth looking at. Very similar to Visual Studio. Seems to be fairly stable.

 

[tgreer]

We want a fully-supported, muchly-documented/dicussed and regularly-updated IDE. Which defaults us to MS, I think. So, "Visual C#.NET 2003" is the right animal?

Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

 

[JurkMonkey]

2003 would be your best bet.

 

[NeilTrain]

I have Visual C# 2003 and have developed web apps, web services, console apps, and windows apps all from the same IDE with no complaints, it has a few quirks but by and large its been very reliable. I look forward to what 2005 has to offer but like a poster above said, best to let it mature before putting too much faith in it

 

[stsuing]

Visual Studio 2005 C# does bring more to the table and is worth a look.
For example Generics, partial classes, binary serialization of dataset. That alone make me lean toward 2005

Although, I would say that if the developers at that company aren't senior level you might stick with 2003 just because there is an example for about everything, and lots of people that know the tool.

If you asking about Professional vs Enterprise I can't speak to that because I've always used Enterprise.