Differences between Visual Studio 2005 and 2008

Question

Hello lads

I would like to find out what is the most significant differences of MS Visual Studio.NET 2005 Pro and MS Visual Studio.NET 2008 Pro? I was given a copy of Visual Studio.NET 2005 Pro as the previous person who used that has left the organisation. Therefore, I am considering upgrading this version to VS.NET 2008 Pro.

At my organization, we use a mixture of technologies (java, php and .net) to develop mostly web based applications. I know that 2005 uses .net framework 2.0 and the 3.5 framework can be only used in 2008.. OTher than that, I am at a bit of a loss..

Therefore could I get some feedback from the stackoverflow crowd on those who have experienced the differences between those two versions? If it's not too much to ask, could you please post the top three or five reasons to use VS.NET 2008 Pro?

Thanks!

Answer 1

For my purposes, these are the main 3 reasons:

1. Can use .Net 3.5
2. Improved Intellisense for Javascript
3. Various annoying bugs fixed and minor improvement of some UI components

.NET 3.5 is the biggy... everything else is fairly trivial.

Answer 2

I wrote a list but decided to erase it all; why should I duplicate what Scott Guthrie has to state about Visual Studio 2008?

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/11/19/visual-studio-2008-and-net-3-5-released.aspx

Answer 3

1. I hated the way the (web)project-files were in vs2005, so i stayed at vs2003 until vs2008.
2. multiple-framework support.
3. overall improvements

Answer 4

C# 3.0 is (to me) the biggest bonus:

• lambdas statements / expressions
• anonymous types
• partial methods
• auto-implemented properties
• improved generic type inference
• extension methods
• expression trees (when using .NET 3.5)
• LINQ

etc

Note that this is different to .NET 3.5; C# 3.0 can be used even when targetting .NET 2.0, especially when using something like LINQBridge to provide the LINQ extension methods.

There are also improvements for ASP.NET debugging and WCF hosting etc.

Answer 5

There are some cool enhancements in VS2008 that tend to get lost between all the big new features.

• Drastically improved average build times of solutions with many projects.

If you have a solution with dozens of projects, it will take VS2005 about a minute to build it, even if nothing has changed, because that's how long it takes VS2005 to verify nothing has changed. In VS2008, the check for "dirty" projects is instantaneous.

Huge productivity enhancement, and I couldn't find this feature noted anywhere.

• VS2008 allows you use the form designer even when it detects that something may be wrong, VS2005 doesn't allow this. This is a life saver when dealing with WinForms bugs.

• In addition to the VS2008 Features, check out the features that VS2008 SP1 added. I specifically liked the new C# background compilation.

I suggest you just go ahead and try the free version of VS2008. Aside from the big new features, there are countless "small" enhancement you can only find by using the product, some of which may be important to you.

BTW, you may also want to check out the features of VS2010. It's still CTP, and it will probably be released near 2010, but depending on your needs it may be worth the wait before upgrading.

Answer 6

If you were for instance developing for the CF.NET-framework and Windows Mobile, it could be handy to keep a copy of VS.2005 since you can still target CF.NET 1.0 which is still used by many devices/smartphones out there. With VS.2008 I don't think this is possible - however,if I am wrong, please let me know since I'd love to know.