Is MS Visual Studio 2005 NET Professional is obsolete?

[mnarewec]

Hi all
We are starting to migrate our apps from VB6 to .NET. I asked my local software vendor and he said MS 2005 Net Pro is Obsolete.

Is this true?

We just had a course in VS 2005 so we though starting with VS 2005 is best for us instead of 2008 .NET framework.

Please advice.

[kenobewan]

If you are in the corporate world, I would definitely say no. Don't let a vendor decide your standards, guess what their motivation might be? VS 2005 & framework 2.0 are the way to go, it is 1.x (VS 2003) that is becoming obsolete. I think that VS 2008 & 3.x are too bleeding edge.

Although I offer these as personal opinions offered without warranty.

[jjvainav]

My company still uses VS 2005, we might upgrade to 2008 soon, but by any means 2005 is not obsolete and I don't believe it will be anytime soon.

What I like about 2008 is you can specify which framework you want to compile your code against, ie 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, or 3.5. Where as VS 2003 only supports framework 1.1, and VS 2005 only supports 2.0.

[Plater]

Depends on how long you go in between upgrades.
In some sense, it is good to start with the "newest" since it will take the longest to be obsolete. But you have to worry about stability and the possibility of being axed (like the way HD DVDs are done for against BlueRays now)

I would certainly not call VS2005 obsolete. VS2003 yes (even though we still get plenty of question about it from people stuck with .net1.1)

[balabaster]

Depends on how long you go in between upgrades.
In some sense, it is good to start with the "newest" since it will take the longest to be obsolete. But you have to worry about stability and the possibility of being axed (like the way HD DVDs are done for against BlueRays now)

I would certainly not call VS2005 obsolete. VS2003 yes (even though we still get plenty of question about it from people stuck with .net1.1)

I would also factor in other items when making this decision - admittedly, some consider 2008 "too" bleeding edge - whatever that means, however - with certain technologies, such as LINQ to SQL and LINQ to XML, stepping straight into 2008 might provide huge leaps in ease of programmability that may mean that applications can be developed faster using 2008 than they could with 2005.

Of course, if your apps don't lean on the ability to pull data out of databases or the ability to easily pass data back and forth between themselves or web services, then some of the newer technologies of the 2008 incarnation may not be of any significant benefit to you, in which case 2005 may be the better way to go.

I certainly wouldn't say "don't pick 2008" but I equally wouldn't say "2005 is adequate". It depends entirely on your programming and application needs and your budget. You can't really make a satisfactory decision without knowing all the factors that comprise the choices.

[mnarewec]

Thank you so much for all your reply. I will speak with the Management see how we go from there.

[r035198x]

A few merits of 2008 are

• lambda operator => (delegates are now easier to work with)

• Support for strongly typed queries (LINQ)

• Anonymous type support

• Extension methods

2008 makes it easier to model your data.