What are some top reasons to upgrade to .NET 4.0?
A:
Support!!
If you take longer to upgrade you will end up having unfixed bugs in the future. Microsoft stops supporting older versions of their software after some time.
HGF
2010-08-18 16:43:42
That's a valid reason to upgrade to VS2010--but not necessarily .NET 4. Remember that VS2010 can target all versions of .NET from 2.0 onward.
STW
2010-08-18 16:57:28
+1
A:
- Entity Framework 4 which supports both Model & Code First Approachs,T4 templates (custom code generations), and a better API for advanced data access patterns.
- Covariance and Contravariance
- And you also get to use Visual Studio 2010, which is much more flashy now.
Nix
2010-08-18 16:46:44
Visual Studio 2010 can be used with previous .NET frameworks. Upgrading to Visual Studio 2010 does not require upgrading to .NET 4.0.
sgriffinusa
2010-08-18 16:50:23
@Nix -- no, VS2010 isn't included with .NET 4... it's a seperate product that costs $$$$$, the closest freebie is the Express editions which are definately decent for being free, but lack a ton of the $$$$ features
STW
2010-08-18 17:06:37
Not sure what is so complicated about this. I agree. I am trying to tell you you can't use .NET 4 without Visual Studio 2010.
Nix
2010-08-18 17:10:00
+6
A:
The big ones are probably MEF, Parallel tasks and MVC 2. But it also has dynamic support, big integer support, covariance, contravariance and so on and so on. Take a look.
rtalbot
2010-08-18 16:47:43
MVC 2 can be used in projects targeting .NET 3.5, but you need to [download it separately](http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/03/11/asp-net-mvc-2-released.aspx). However, you won't be able to take advantage of the new HTML-encoding expression that was introduced as part of ASP.NET 4.
Justin R.
2010-08-18 17:43:42
+1
A:
Here is the big list of all the changes, but for me:
- Web.config minimization
- Lazy
- Web controls have cleaner markup
- Covariance and Contravariance
- VS 2010
Martin
2010-08-18 16:48:11
A:
Great features are the awesome Visual Studio 2010 and the Entity Framework 4 (as already mentioned by Nix) as well as the new Lazy<T> type.
Marius Schulz
2010-08-18 16:48:48
A:
A Better Debugger - I would kill someone for it back in VS2008 days. When your solution is heavy and a weird hybrid of languages and technologies, debugger used to not work well.
Hamish Grubijan
2010-08-18 16:49:28
the debugger is not exclusive to .NET 4. It's part of Visual Studio 2010, which can be used to develop .NET 2/3/3.5/4 apps
STW
2010-08-18 17:02:16
A:
This means you have to be less reliant on including binaries to include the .NET framework when you distribute your applications.
Mark Rushakoff
2010-08-18 16:55:51
could you elaborate? If you've previously had to ship core .NET assemblies (whether part of the client-profile, or the full framework) then you're implying your end-users didn't have .NET installed (or, perhaps, a 2.0 application was consuming 3.0/3.5 assemblies?!?)
STW
2010-08-18 17:08:19