What are the benefits of upgrading from Visual Studio 2005 to 2008?
Any thoughts on whether it's worth the jump, or is it better to wait for whatever's coming next?
+13
A:
There are tons of improvements. The best part is you can continue to target .Net 2.0 with VS 2008 (Multi-Targeting) and use all the new IDE features.
Posting couple of screencasts but you can find more on web:
Script intellisense and debugging in Visual Studio 2008
Multi-threading Debugging Enhancements in Visual Studio 2008
Gulzar
2008-10-10 23:05:41
A:
Check out this question... it has been discussed before.
Though I will repeat that the main thing I love about VS 2008 is their use of the Expression Web GUI for Web App development. It is far superb to what VS2K5 had.
Dillie-O
2008-10-10 23:11:47
+7
A:
My favorite new feature: when an Intellisence option box is showing, you can hold down control to make it semi-transparent and see the code behind it. There are tons of bigger new features and reasons to switch, but that one is a real win for me.
Wyatt
2008-10-10 23:13:58
Wow! I never knew that and I've been using 2008 for a while now. Thanks.
ProfK
2008-10-31 09:15:00
+2
A:
One big feature that I benefitted greatly from in my last job: improved stability. We had a highly threaded application that would cause VS2005 to just blow up (in a number of various fashions). The switch over to 2008 decreased such occurrences by 100-fold.
Also -- VS2005 takes a lot more RAM for the same project than VS2008. At least with large solutions (e.g. 50 projects). This, I think, makes VS2008 a lot snappier / responsive that VS2005 ever was for me.
Yeah it is worth the upgrade -- just from a simple stability factor.
torial
2008-10-10 23:22:10
+3
A:
If you're just looking to upgrade to "most" of the new features of the 3.0 and/or 3.5 frameworks, it is not necessary to upgrade Visual Studio. You can just upgrade your framework. However, there are some advantages, like a new compiler (necessary to use Linq, if I recall), and some nice improvements like JavaScript debugging.
There are plenty of good articles on this exact topic out there, including this one, 22 New Features of Visual Studio 2008, that you may want to check out.
Hope that helps.
Jason Down
2008-10-10 23:31:02
+1
A:
I'll disagree with the last post a bit. The stability for me has not been greatly increased. I've had 2K8 lock up on me in the middle of a build. wtf? But all in all, I like this version namely because of linq. Now I loved the introduction of generics in 2005, but linq make 2008 worth it and then some.
billb
2008-10-11 01:12:41
+2
A:
I like the IDE supports for creating apps with bellow new technologies
- LINQ
- Silverlight
- WPF
- ASP.NET MVC
Jobi Joy
2008-10-11 01:15:29
These aren't features of Visual Studio 2008, they are features of .NET 3.5 and associated side projects.VS 2008 is an IDE
Slace
2008-10-11 01:31:33
Hi Slace. I am talking about the project templates and IDE improvements to support all the above mentioned things. For example Cider designer for WPF and Silverlight, LINQ Designer and intellisense.
Jobi Joy
2008-10-11 04:24:11
+3
A:
Vertical split between HTML and Preview screens. Especially handy on widescreen monitors.
swilliams
2008-10-11 01:20:03
A:
The code generated by the typed dataset designers is a bit cleaner and neater, especially when working with SQL Compact Edition databases.
Bob King
2008-10-11 01:38:16
A:
Please refer the article 22 New Features of Visual Studio 2008 for .NET Professionals
Dutt
2009-12-22 15:11:48