Visual Studio 2005

[Mike]

I just recently returned to programming in VB.NET. I have come back to the
programming side of things due to an internal business need. I have a
library of books for VB that is not huge but it probably larger than the
average Joe's. I had previously coded a little in VB 5.0, skipped version 6
(yeah, sure wich I had gotten into that one), and started studying .NET when
it first came out but put it down for a ~couple of years. I currently have
VS2003 Ent Arch which is, admittedly, more than I need, but I digress.
Here's my question. MS typically hypes the heck out of new VS releases and
I'm wondering if I'm going to "need" to get onboard with VS2005 or if I
should just stick with and try to master what I currently own. How will
VS2003 interact with the 2.0 .NET framework? I am writting small DB
applications and aspx that interact with SQL 2000 Server DBs. Are we
talking worlds of differences in this area? Enough to justify the painful
expense of an upgrade? I know these are questions I will need to answer for
myself; however, I'd like to hear some opinons on the subject.

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Cor Ligthert]

Mike,

2005 is not yet there it will be there in this year. However let us make it
more clear, Microsoft has said that they won't change the name. Therefore I
don't expect it before 4 months.

You returned recently back to programming so you need a bunch of information
that you can find on Internet about VBNet 2003 and much less (surely not
well tested) about 2005.

What are you woring about at the moment. You can take that decission in
about 3 months?

The difference is not that much as between VB6 and VBNet. If nothing change
(2005 is a beta) than should 2003 programs be upgradable in the same way as
it is done with 2002 to 2003. What means just open it and nothing except
some internals project settings change.

Just my thought,

Cor

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

I'm wondering if I'm going to "need" to get onboard with VS2005 or if I
should just stick with and try to master what I currently own.

VS 2005 will be released in some months. If your customers require .NET 2.0
assemblies, etc., then you'll have to upgrade, otherwise I would keep using
VS.NET 2003 for the next time. Maybe there will be a cheap upgrade
opportunity for upgrading VS.NET 2003 to VS 2005.

How will VS2003 interact with the 2.0 .NET framework?

It won't. VS.NET 2003 cannot be used to create .NET 2.0 assemblies.

 

[Guest]

Herfried, if you upgrade to .Net 2.0, can't you still use VB.Net 2003 to
create and run applications? Next question, if this is the case, will those
applications created with VB.Net 2003 with .Net 2.0 run on .Net 1.1?

 

[james]

Herfried, if you upgrade to .Net 2.0, can't you still use VB.Net 2003 to
create and run applications? Next question, if this is the case, will those
applications created with VB.Net 2003 with .Net 2.0 run on .Net 1.1?

Dennis, VB.NET 2003 applications will only work with .NET 1.1 (not counting an ugly hack ). You will need VB 2005 (currently in
Beta 2 stage) to run .NET 2.0 applications. All the .NET frameworks are "supposed" to play nice together and allow applications
built with them to run on the same machine with any, or all of the .NET frameworks installed. I have all three , 1.0 , 1.1 and
2.0 all running on my current system (with a good backup system in place) and "so far" have not had problems. About the only
real problem I had was removing Beta 1 of VS 2005. It took a little extra work and some time with Regedit, but, I managed to
completely remove it. (VS 2005 Beta1 & 2.0 Framework for Beta1)
james

 

[Guest]

Then what you are saying is that if I remove .Net 1.1 and install .Net 2 my
applications that I wrote in vb.Net 2003 won't run unless I install VB.Net
2005 and re-build them all? Is this correct that I have to leave .Net 1.1
installed? If so, then Microsoft is up to their old tricks with non-backward
compatibility.

 

[Tom Shelton]

Then what you are saying is that if I remove .Net 1.1 and install .Net 2 my
applications that I wrote in vb.Net 2003 won't run unless I install VB.Net
2005 and re-build them all? Is this correct that I have to leave .Net 1.1
installed? If so, then Microsoft is up to their old tricks with non-backward
compatibility.

:

Applications written in VS.NET 2003 can not target .NET 2.0, it only
targets 1.1. But, the generated assemblies should run on a system that
only has 2.0. The difference with 2.0 assemblies as compared to those
generated in 1.1, is that 2.0 assemblies can NOT run on 1.1 or earlier
frameworks. MS broke the meta data format in 2.0 to accomodate the new
features (like generics). Just to make this clear, in 2003, which only
compiles against 1.1, it was still possilbe to run your assembies on a
system that only had the 1.0 framework - as long as you only used 1.0
features. I have a windows service that runs eactly this way...
Written and compiled in 2003, but runs on a 2k box that only has the 1.0
framework installed. This scenario is not possilbe with 2005.

 

[Guest]

I think I'll stick with VB.Net 2003 for a couple of years until .Net
Framework 2.0 becomes more common place then and some of the bugs are worked
out of 2005