C# 2008 Express v C# 2010 Express

Question

Can anybody post a link to a comparison chart, or even to a duplicated question here on SO, for these two products?

Plenty of info on what is missing between Express and Pro for example, but I'm struggling to find much on Express v Express.

Is the only real difference the ability to develop apps for .NET 4.0?

I'm developing WinForms apps, targetting .NET 2.0 at the moment, so are there any benefits for me in changing to 2010 Express?

Unfortunately, upgrading to VS Professional or such is not an option for me right now, so I'm stuck with the hamstrung versions.

eThanks.

Answer 1

If you are developing WinForms application and targeting .NET 2.0 the only benefit I can see in upgrading to VS2010 Express is performance improvements (new WPF code editor), maybe few bug fixes and prepare your project for future upgrades to .NET.

Answer 2

Bottom line first:

If you're developing against the .NET Framework version 2.0, and especially with WinForms instead of WPF, chances are that you're not going to profit much from an upgrade to VS 2010.

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My very brief comparison list:

I have three versions of Visual Studio installed: 2008 Express (C# and VB.NET), 2008 Standard, and 2010 Express (C# only). (That is, you can install both Express editions without side-effects and compare for yourself!)

• Of those, I prefer the VS 2008 Express edition for rapid development and code experiments, not least because it has very quick start-up time. VS 2010 takes longer to start.

• VS 2010 has a new look-and-feel to it. You may or may not like it better than VS 2008's look. I seem to remember that they also made slight improvements to IntelliSense.

• VS 2010 Express seems to allow certain extensions (Extension Manager). I'm not quite sure whether this allows more plug-ins than was possible in VS 2008 Express.

• VS 2010 Express .NET 4.0 has Code Contracts built-in. With VS 2008 Express, you cannot use install this library as an add-on (unless you have a commercial VS edition installed, too). But probably this is not an issue; you can always use a unit testing framework like nUnit instead.

As you can tell, the above comparison list is rather short and uncertain. This is due to the fact that I've largely stayed with VS 2008 Express, although I have other editions installed, too.

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Possible reasons for an upgrade:

The only reasons I can think of where VS 2008 Express is not enough is that you either want to:

• use VS plug-ins (e.g. Resharper, or Code Contracts); or
• use libraries that at least partly require the .NET 4.0 framework (e.g. Autofac).

Answer 3

For a vanilla 2.0 Webforms app I'd have to say nothing truly groundbreaking, but 2010 does support multiple monitors which is nice.

On the other hand, upgrading should be quite painless.