What is it?
Visual Studio 2008 supports Vista, Ajax and
Web 2.0 technologies, Silverlight, and multiple versions of the
.net Framework. It fills the gap for .net Framework 3.0, the only
.net version not to have been supported by a contemporaneous Visual
Studio. First released to MSDN subscribers in November last year,
it was delivered ahead of schedule.
Visual Studio 2008 is a unifying release, providing the same
integrated development environment for multiple target platforms
and languages, and representing an almost complete replacement for
VS2005. There have been casualties - there is no support for .net
1.0, and users of "Classic" ASP, who have been vocal about the
dropping of support (along with VBScript editing), will have to
wait for a service pack. In the meantime, they will need to run
VS2005 alongside Visual Studio 2008.
The emphasis is on productivity enhancements, including visual
designers for faster development with .net Framework 3.5, web
development tool and language enhancements, and through Linq
(Language-Integrated Query), a mechanism for accessing most kinds
of data from C# and Visual Basic.
Where did it originate?
Visual Studio had its tenth anniversary in 2007. The first
release in 1997 provided separate IDEs for Visual C++, Visual Basic
and J++. Progress towards a unified
integrated development environment (IDE) for all languages
began with VS 6.0, and the .net Framework came in with VS.net
2002.
What's it for?
Competitors from Delphi to Apache and Mono offer .net IDEs that
provide different kinds of advantages - such as freedom from
proprietary lock-in, and, particularly in the case of the open
source alternatives, more agile support and bug-fixing, not to
mention tools that are effectively free to download. But Visual
Studio is undoubtedly the most comprehensive platform for .net and
Windows development.
It has templates that offer a starting point for most kinds of
Windows and web service applications, with the assurance that
developers will be working with a consistent set of tools and
techniques regardless of language and target platform. Although the
full scope of Visual Studio is beyond any individual developer,
developers are effectively offered an IDE dedicated to the target
platform once they have selected it.
Visual Studio 2008 adds new tools for Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS), and Intellisense code completion now supports
Jscript/JavaScript and Asp.net Ajax scripting. Linq enables
querying of relational data, XML documents and other kinds of data
using new keywords in Visual Basic and C# without the need for SQL,
XQuery and XPath and other APIs.
What makes it special?
Before Visual Studio 2008, developers who had to maintain
applications using different versions of the .net Framework had to
keep multiple versions of Visual Studio, or upgrade the
applications to the latest version of .net.
How difficult is it to master?
Visual Studio 2008 introduces dozens of new wizards and other
enhancements, which simplify application development. However, you
will need to be proficient in VB, Asp.net, C# or whatever supported
language you use. A typical course in application development using
one of these languages with Visual Studio takes five days, and is
priced accordingly.
What systems does it run on?
Windows Server 2003, XP or Vista.
Rates of Pay
Asp.net, VB.net or C# developers with Visual Studio can expect
£25,000 to £35,000.
Training
There is a free, downloadable Express version of Visual Studio
2008 that is ideal for dedicated autodidacts. Microsoft's
Visual Studio 2008 and .net Framework 3.5 Training Kitis
available for download. Other
free learning resources are available from Microsoft's developer
network.