What else should use I along with VS 2008 Express Edition.

Question

Dear Freinds,

I've just installed VS2008 Express Edition. I'm still reading the "What's new" section.

I just wanted to know from your personal experience what else you would recommend I use.

For example: VS2008 SDK, Silverlight, WPI or anything else to make my applications/utilities more pleasant & user friendly.

I'm also having a doubt:

Do all uitlities developed in VS2008 EE require Framework V3.5 on the client machine? Or is it possible that those utilities will work perfectly the 3.0 framework? Or can I control the usage of framework versions by my utilities

Friends, Let ur expeirence speak for me.

Answer 1

What you're using is fine. You can set your compiler to compile for a specific framework (.NET 3.5 is default, but you can compile for 2.0). I'd use VS2008 express until VS2010 express is available. It has a nicer coding environment. (minimap, etc)

Answer 2

When using Visual Studio (including express edition) you can change the target environment of your project to different versions of .NET, though this will limit your application to the features available from that version.

To do this, open the properties of your project, select the 'Application Tab', and change 'Target Environment' to your version of choice.

Answer 3

Your question turned to be a question about a plan for learning programming, which is a very very long plan. I will give you here the beginning tips from my personal view:

1- Learning how to use the IDE (Visual Studio) is not the main issue, learning the language (C#) and the technology (.NET) is more important.

2- More important than learning a programming language, is learning How to program?, that is: you should learn Algorithms, data structures, software engineering, database design, ...etc. besides learning the programming language.

3- If you are a beginner, VS Express will fulfill most of your needs, as you upgrade your skills, you will find it has some limitations. You can find a comparison between different Visual Studio Editions here.

4- Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the new Microsoft's way for building Cool Desktop applications, but you still need the traditional WinForms.

5- The world is going Web, then you have to check the ASP.NET paths (ASP.NET, ASP.NET Ajax, ASP.NET MVC). The Web counterpart of WPF is SilverLight (which was formerly a part of the WPF itself).

6- As per VS Express FAQ:

The ability to target a version of the .NET Framework other than 3.5 (i.e. multi-targeting) is included in all the Visual Studio Express Edition products. Multi-targeting is available under the Project Properties menu which can be selected by going to Project-> Properties.