.Net Development (Specifically C# and ASP.NET)

Good morning boxers!

A brief history of myself: I graduated from college in 04 with a BA in Computer science from a small liberal arts college. We did some introductory Java, but I can honestly say ive probably never written a program longer than 100 lines of code or so. I havent done much with programming since then, ive been working IT. I recently created an intranet site for my company using ASP.NET with c# as the back end, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy and fun it was.

I've got some books (yay for work buying me books) about c# development and im interested in picking it up more seriously, both to help me in my current job, but who knows maybe to help me do some freelance programming on the side or whatever.

My question to you guys is this: I am currently using Microsoft VWD Express for the intranet development / maintenance, which allows me to write some c# as well. I know mS also has a Visual c# which looks to be equally nice. However, the way I understand the express licenses, I cant use them for anything I might try to sell. And VS costs like 900 dollars ( i think ) which is not something I can realistically do right now for what might amount to nothing more than a hobby.

So (TLDR's scroll to here, heh) I am looking for a free solution. For the c# coding sharpdevelop has been recommended to me. I dont think it has a nice GUI builder thing but its probably better that i learn how to do it by hand anyways. Do you guys have any other IDE suggestions? And what about the ASP.NET ? I am not sure what i should use for my asp pages.

Anyways, I know a couple of you are coders so would love to hear any thoughts you have.

Thanks for your time.

Visual Studio (standard edition) is $248 from Newegg. You only have to buy a "new" license once. From then on you can buy upgrades forever. At least, that has been Microsoft's policy up to now. I've been upgrading my license for more than ten years.

If you look around you might find a way to get it free -- a Microsoft road show or something.

Thats my bad, I only saw the Professional Edition, not the Standard one. 250 is still a big price tag, but much more palatable than 800 dollars (it was 800 not 900).

I am looking now to see what the difference is between Standard / Professional.

Still open to opinions on what any of you are using,

Thanks.

Edit:

According to wikipedia:

Visual Studio Standard
Visual Studio Standard Edition provides an IDE for all supported products and can support the entire MSDN library. It supports XML and XSLT editing, object test benches, and can create deployment packages that only use ClickOnce. However, it does not include tools like Server Explorer or include integration with Microsoft SQL Server. Visual Studio Standard can only consume Add-Ins for extensibility. Mobile development support was included in Visual Studio 2005 Standard, however, with Visual Studio 2008, it is only available in Professional and higher editions. Remote debugging support is included in Visual Studio 2008 Professional and Team Edition only.

Visual Studio Professional
Visual Studio Professional Edition includes the tools in Visual Studio Standard and augments it with other functionality such as Microsoft SQL Server integration (which allows databases to be created from within Visual Studio) and a remote debugger (for 2005 Editions) (that allows debugging a remote system from within Visual Studio debugger provided a debugging server is running on the remote system). Visual Studio Professional accepts all three extensibility mechanisms.

Im a noob so im not sure but I dont think those things (in professional) would be important to me. Hm.

See FAQ #7 in the below:

http://www.microsoft.com/express/support/faq/

"Can I use Express Editions for commercial use?
Yes, there are no licensing restrictions for applications built using Visual Studio Express Editions."



Personally, I use the Professional edition. But I don't have to pay for it personally :-)

If the free product does what you need, stick with that. The Standard editions are a pretty good deal, however. It's a great IDE IMO.

Microsoft publishes a 35-page chart comparing the editions but they make it very hard to find. :) It's here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

If you buy the standard edition and decide later you made a mistake, you can upgrade to the pro edition.

I have the professional edition and very rarely use any of the extra features in it. (One feature that I miss hugely, that used to be in the professional edition but has now moved to a more expensive edition, is profiling. ) But I use it for C++/Win32 not C#/.NET so my experience probably isn't applicable.

Wtf emesis I guess I read some misinformation somewhere.

I appreciate both your guys' responses. I think I will just let my IDE grow with my requirements in that case. Program in the free one until I get to a point where I go "you know it would be awesome if i had X which is in the standard edition" and then upgrade at that point.

Hm.

I personally use the professional version but then again I do not pay for it. I have rarely used the extra features in professional that standard does not have in 15 years of software development with Visual Studio. The one feature I have used is the integrated database tool; I often do this type of thing in a another tool. The dev enviroment is nice to have all the stuff integrated but I dont always want to open up dev enviorment to look at data. Therefore the tool that installs for DBA to manage the database tends to be what I use most of the time.

I would like the Enterprise version but I think it is ridicules what they charge for that version.

If I were to buy a version I would buy standard; but I thought as well that the Express version was not limited in any way. I personally do not like the fact that if I want to web develop or do c# development I have to open up another tool if I use the express version. For sometime at home I ran the express version to do some work at home but I quickly got sick of the difference in look in what I became accustomed to seeing. Since Microsoft does allow tools to be installed on more than one computer (provided the user is the same user and can not be used at same time; no multi-boxing coding I guess :( ) I installed my version Visual studio from work on home computer(actually seperate work computer; work and WoW dont mix well)

I agree that the Express Edition is the way to go. I have an MSDN subscription so I've been able to use many different versions and I rarely use any features that aren't in the Express (Team Foundation Server integration is about the only thing I can think of).

Lets turn this thread into a thread of my dumb programming questions lol. This is a really nub question so I apologize in advance.

Im seeing a sql server express edition as well. We also have SQL Server (an older version) in our work environment.

I use the sql server with my intranet page for some employee search type stuff, and that all makes sense.

Say I want to deploy a desktop application though, to somebody not on our network who wouldnt have access to our SQL server. How does that work? So I write "Jon's To Do List" app, say, theoretically. It uses a small database with a couple tables, whatever, created in SQL server. If I want to send this program to you.... you need to have SQL server installed on your machine? Is that right? Im trying to wrap my head around it.

Not a dumb question at all. SQL Server Express is basically a database file that you can copy, move and deploy around. It works and acts like a normal SQL Server database (minus a bunch of advance features of course) but it does NOT require an actual SQL Server instance.

You can use Management Studio to create tables, procs, etc, or use the IDE built into Visual Studio.

And it's FREE.