Question

I’ve just installed VS2008 Express Edition. I’m still reading the “What’s new” section.

I just wanted to know from your personal experience what else you would recommend I use.

For example: VS2008 SDK, Silverlight, WPI or anything else to make my applications/utilities more pleasant & user friendly.

I’m also having a doubt:

Do all uitlities developed in VS2008 EE require Framework V3.5 on the client machine? Or is it possible that those utilities will work perfectly the 3.0 framework?
Or can I control the usage of framework versions by my utilities

Friends, Let ur expeirence speak for me.

Answer 1

Your question turned to be a question about a plan for learning programming, which is a very very long plan. I will give you here the beginning tips from my personal view:

1- Learning how to use the IDE (Visual Studio) is not the main issue, learning the language (C#) and the technology (.NET) is more important.

2- More important than learning a programming language, is learning How to program?, that is: you should learn Algorithms, data structures, software engineering, database design, …etc. besides learning the programming language.

3- If you are a beginner, VS Express will fulfill most of your needs, as you upgrade your skills, you will find it has some limitations. You can find a comparison between different Visual Studio Editions here.

4- Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the new Microsoft’s way for building Cool Desktop applications, but you still need the traditional WinForms.

5- The world is going Web, then you have to check the ASP.NET paths (ASP.NET, ASP.NET Ajax, ASP.NET MVC). The Web counterpart of WPF is SilverLight (which was formerly a part of the WPF itself).

6- As per VS Express FAQ:

The ability to target a version of the
.NET Framework other than 3.5 (i.e.
multi-targeting) is included in all
the Visual Studio Express Edition
products. Multi-targeting is available
under the Project Properties menu
which can be selected by going to
Project-> Properties.