Hey everybody! :)
I decided to learn C# by myself..YAY :icon_mrgreen:
So I downloaded some book, I'm not sure when it was written, the author suggest to download Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition.
I think there's 2010 and 2008 also, so what would u recommend I get?
I know that the latest isn't always the greatest lol

Any other beginners advice would be appreciated!

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Hey everybody! :)
I decided to learn C# by myself..YAY :icon_mrgreen:
So I downloaded some book, I'm not sure when it was written, the author suggest to download Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition.
I think there's 2010 and 2008 also, so what would u recommend I get?
I know that the latest isn't always the greatest lol

Any other beginners advice would be appreciated!

Get Visual C# Express to learn with, its free and there's tons of reference sources for it on the web. It works just like the Studio packages with some "nice stuff" stripped out.

Then, if you stick with it, buy what you can afford. I still use VS2005 because that's what I own, and other than LINQ, VS2008 and VS2010 hasn't offered anything I need yet. I don't upgrade just to upgrade.

And before someone jumps down my throat ... yes, I will eventually have to upgrade and learn it for the versions of .NET. That's the life of a programmer.

I am not a fan of Microsoft (on many many levels), so consider the source.

It's usually best to keep up to date. There are "Express" versions of every edition to Visual Studio. So I suggest you get Visual Studio 2010 Express, simply because there's no reason not to use the latest version.

Only Visual Studio 2010 allows you work with .NET 4.0. Additionally, VS2010 can open all solution files created by a previous version, however, the reverse is not the same (you cannot open a 2010 file with 2005)

I'm not a "fan" of Microsoft, but it's about choosing the right tool for the job. As you have no starting point or previous version assets, there's no reason not to start at the most recent version :)

VS2005 because it is realistic to assume the company out there don't have VS2010 or VS2008.........and VS2008 can accept VS2005 project, but VS2005 can't accept VS2008 project........

Any serious development company should have upgraded to VS2010 and 2008 at the very least.

.NET 4.0 and ASP .NET MVC 2 are only supported in VS2010.

Visual Studio 2005 does not support WF, WPF, WCF and LINQ at the compiler level. Additionally, to access some of the features of .NET 3.5 there is additional work required (as the compiler doesn't have native support for .NET 3.5)

Usually development companies will get the new release of Visual Studio on their MSDN subscription. If your company does not have an MSDN subscription, I would question whether or not they care about their development staff.

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