How to convince employer to switch from Visual Studio 2005 to 2008?

Question

I know that is good to switch to newer software, but what are the reasons which I can tell to people above me? In our department everyone has to code in the same IDE, so switching means for company buying approx. 10 upgrades and unless there is a good reason they are not very willing to do so (; We code in C++.

Answer 1

If you have no major problems with 2005, and there are no features in 2008 that make it a compelling upgrade for you, then don't upgrade!

Answer 2

See this existing question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/193281/visual-studio-2005-vs-2008-what-are-the-benefits

Answer 3

2 words: Javascript Debugging

Answer 4

I can't offer any metrics on this but it appears to be faster.

While that might not excite your managers, you'd have to question the judgement of a company that has 10 developers but wouldn't do everything they can to make them as productive as possible.

Oh, and linq is cool!

Answer 5

You lucky bastard...

I think my ex-colleagues are still trying to talk management into switching to 2008, from 2003. anyway...

It comes with a bunch of new features, not the least of which is javascript debugging. It also works rather well on my HP mini, whereas 2005 used to lock up for a couple seconds every few minutes. I know it may be subjective, but I think the code completion, and default code templates got better as well.

Answer 6

Better maybe is invest to Visual Assist X (http://www.wholetomato.com/) VS addon. It's great addon for C++ developers.

Answer 7

Actually, you are probably looking at the wrong argument. Is VS2K8 worth 600$ more then VS2K5... thats extremely hard to say.

Is an MSDN license worth 1100$, or whatever you would be charged, in which case such issues would never come up again? You bet your ass it is!

So, even if I was a bean counter, I would have trouble understanding why a Visual Studio upgrade makes sense... but I can easily see the value in an MSDN subscription. That said, resellers are all a different bunch, and in some places MSDN may cost 900$, while in others its $3000.

Oh, and a nice tip to all people dealing with Microsoft as a VAR, especially when it comes to development tools... the price, especially the MSRP... thats not the price, trust me.

Answer 8

So what you're saying is basically that you've decided that you want to upgrade, but you can't think of any reasons why upgrading would actually be a good idea? ;)

Aren't you supposed to be an engineer? Make rational decisions and such? If you don't have a reason for upgrading, don't suggest an upgrade. I'd be worried about working with a programmer who made decisions first, and then looked for reasons to justify them.

In case you meant "I am wondering if it would be worth it for our company to upgrade", here's what I know:

For C++, the changes from 2k5 to 2k8 are fairly minor. Intellisense has been modified a bit (MS says it's better, my experience is that it refuses to work even more often than before. But maybe in the few cases where it does work it's more accurate than the few cases where it worked in 2k5). Apart from that, well, a few minor fixes making the compiler more standards compliant is about the only thing I can think of.

I believe Microsoft's feature pack with TR1 support is only available for 2k8, but I'm not entirely sure. And even if it is, most of TR1 is directly lifted from Boost, so it's not exactly essential.

Answer 9

Logically, this is pretty easy. If you never upgrade, your version will eventually run out of support. So you cannot postpone upgrades indefinitely. Upgrades are easier between consecutive versions, so you'll save a lot of work by not skipping a major release.

Anyone who has seen people work with Oracle 7 in 2009, knows that not upgrading eventually turns your dev team into dinosaurs.

One thing you can do is take the Microsoft sales pitch and apply it to your company. Don't forget to exaggerate when making a point to managers; they will expect you to. The only way to save the earth is upgrading to Visual Studio 2008!

Answer 10

Employer: So why should we make the switch again?

You: It will reduce cost and increase revenue.

Employer: Hmmm... Ok.

Answer 11

Tell him that when you hold Ctrl, the IntelliSense popup becomes transparent!

Answer 12

Simple from my point of view - you tell him/her it will be less expensive than the upgrade and switch to 2010 when it happens.

We recently went from an archaic SQL 6.5 to SQL 2005 upgrade and it was vaguely painful, not necessarily the differences, but the testing to make sure everything still worked, not exactly the same thing but similar.

We'll be moving every time MS release something new from now on just to remove that pain, a couple of hundred pounds for the next version and a simple upgrade rather than the cost of a real regression test two versions down the line gets my vote.

I know its a Dev environment rather that necessarily a language version change, but I think the point still holds.

Managers get a bit worried about upgrade path if it isn't explained to them in "real terms"

wink wink