So what are the downsides? The two that come to mind are the dropping of support for VBScript and Classic ASP. This means that there will be neither Intelesense help nor highlighting for either of these types of code. This will be a significant problem for those shops that still support these platforms. According to Microsoft, they recommend running Visual Studio 2005 along side of 2008. Now this is not an all is lost proposition. As of this writing word has it that Microsoft is considering restoring this functionality in a service release, but those who are still maintaining older sites will want to keep their existing tools. The other is the lack of support for .NET Framework 1.X. That would have been the cherry on the sundae, but not a deal breaker since no prior version had the multi-framework support.
Bottom line, if you are a Microsoft shop, I would most definitely upgrade and begin all new development using Visual Studio 2008 to take advantage of the new technologies. Once you are comfortable using Visual Studio 2008 I see no reason not to upgrade your existing projects. My experience has been that the upgrade is rather painless with relatively few actual code changes.
For those who are maintaining older versions of Visual Studio, I would seriously consider making the move to Visual Studio 2008. Even for those who thought that Visual Studio 2005 was a bit problematic, I would suggest that they take a good long look at 2008.
My impression is that Visual Studio 2008: Professional Edition; and probably all of the editions, are very, very solid. It is a strong upgrade; perhaps the most decisive upgrade in a long time. I believe that, with very few exceptions, users of prior versions will find a significant feature to justify an upgrade. If you have never used Visual Studio, now is a great time to check it out. I highly recommend Visual Studio 2008: Professional Edition!
Article comments
1 - Tyler Folsom
MSVC 2008 has a serious flaw: it produces non-portable binaries. I am used to writing a simple program and being able to copy it to a customer's computer and execute it. You can't do that anymore. Copying the EXE and DLLs to the target directory doesn't work anymore The problem has to do with DLLs. You get programs expecting different versions of DLLs, so Microsoft did something about it. All DLLs have been moved to the WindowsSxS directory and given names decorated with arbitrary strings. OK, I can live with figuring out how to build an install project, running it, and then installing the package on the target computer. Problem is, that's not enough. Once you do the installation and try to execute the program you get an obscure error message about initialization failing. It suggests that you reinstall the program, but of course that doesn't help.
There are three work-arounds:
1) Install the VC run-time on the target computer. The run-time is free, but it is a 92M download and takes a while to install. People who never program should not need a compiler on their computer.
2) Use static linking of the run-time libraries, which will blow up your program size.
3) Use MSVC 2005.
The third solution is the most elegant.
The 2008 version of Visual Studio has added some new goodies on the Tools and Test tabs, which I never use. It is set up to allow access to the web and databases. I don't use any of that either, since I write scientific programs for use in-house. Before installing VC 2008, make sure that the new features give you value that outweigh the non-portability of the produced executable code.