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Getting
Started With Visual Studio .Net
Visual
Studio .Net (herein referred to as just
Visual Studio, unless otherwise stated!) comes
in several different versions, targetted at different
types of programmers/different needs. The basic
package tends to be the same (Visual C++ 7, Visual
Basic 7 and C#), but you'll get different template
projects, additional tools, software and resources.
Have
a look at this
page on the Microsoft website to see what
components fit into what version of Visual Studio.
The majority of small teams and solo-developers
will only need the professional edition,
and I cant think of any reason why anyone other
than a large company would actually want to buy
the full enterprise-architect edition.
If you still qualify as being in formal education
(university/high school etc...) then you can probably
get the academic/student priced edition (which
is how I got Visual Studio 6 Professional Edition).
Microsoft sent me a copy of the straight Enterprise
Edition for this review, which has every tool
in the professional edition and more! I will try
to mention when I'm discussing features not included
in other versions.
Price
is probably a big factor in deciding what version
you might be interested in, and given the high
starting price it may well be completely out of
your reach. Follow this
link to get to the Microsoft pricing page,
I'm not going to list the prices here because
they are quite likely to change over time, and
will be slightly different depending on what territory
you're in (Europe, Americas etc...). For a rough
overview, Professional Edition was around US$600,
and Enterprise was around US$1600 when I last
checked.
Installation
Assuming
that you've purchased your copy of Visual Studio,
the first thing you need to do is install it.
Luckily this is really not very complicated at
all, and was a relatively pain-free experience
on my part.
Visual
Studio (Enterprise) came with 15 CD's, although
only 6 of them were for the actual software, the
rest being additional software (Win2K Server for
example). There is also a DVD edition available
should that suit your needs better (probably will
for those with more modern PC's). Installation
starts with the usual detail-filling and configuration
as with all software, and from then on you can
safely leave the computer alone and go for a walk
(or whatever you want to do in your spare time).
A walk is probably a good idea, as installation
takes a long time!
I
chose a fairly typical installation of the Enterprise
Edition - pretty much everything except for a
few internet-only components (my development machine
is not connected to the internet), this took up
2.1 gigabytes of my hard drive space - ouch! This
is marginally bigger than my Visual Studio 6 Installation
(1.7gb) and not too much bigger than my WindowsXP
installation once the system is running (1.8gb).
All in all, just for programming and the operating
system I've got nearly 5gb of my 10gb drive chewed
up! With current hard drives now hitting 75gb
(20gb seems to be the minimum) this is probably
not going to concern most people.
Installation
from the very start (sticking the CD in the drive)
took well over an hour - with the file copying
being 50 minutes of that, obviously this is variable
depending on the CD ROM speed (32x in my case)
and the hard drive speed. Whilst its probably
quite convenient to busy-yourself with other things
during an installation of that duration, but if
you have the CD edition you'll need to swap disks
3 times during the main installation - every 15
minutes or so I reckon, so dont go too far!
Once
file copying is complete the software is ready
to go - simple as that really. Whilst the initial
installation isn't entirely simple (you effectively
have to do a "custom" style install,
selecting all the components and tools you want
installed, as opposed to default "typical"
/ "full" options you normally get) the
whole process is pretty painless and gets my approval.
During installation you're presented with a simple
web-page like window with a small piece of information
on all the major areas of your new software, providing
a good 10 minutes of reading whilst waiting for
the software to install. I like this feature,
its much better than the normal method of showing
a nice picture and a paragraph of text that changes
for every 10% of installation thats done...
To
continue with the story click here
or click here
to return to the introduction.
•
Introduction:
Introducing the software, and the aims of this
review.
• Getting Started With Visual Studio .Net:
The installer, version, prices etc...
• The new
IDE: New things in
the Integrated Development Environment, and is
it an improvement?
• Learning
to Talk the Talk:
Learning the new language (C#) and the changes
to Visual Basic
• Visual
Studio .Net in the Real World:
Performance and real world capabilities
• Conclusion:
Summing everything up in a neat way
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