Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional with MSDN Premium Review

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(More customer reviews)VS Pro + MSDN Premium is pretty much the sweet-spot in Microsoft's development tool subscription offerings if you're a serious individual developer who wants access to all of the MS software in a dev/test environment.
It's important to note that Amazon only sells the "Retail" license option, and if you go to one of Microsoft's official resellers (via the list on the MSDN site) you can buy the same thing through their Open license program and get a two or three year version of the MSDN Premium subscription for just slightly more than the Retail one-year subscription price!
If you have an active MSDN Premium subscription when VS 2010 launches, you'll get upgraded to the next higher tier of subscription for free (according to the MSDN and VS 2010 site) which will get you more commercial-use licenses for things like Expression Studio 3, and more of the new VS 2010 tools. See those MS sites for details.
The MSDN Premium subscription gets you access to almost all of Microsoft's software offerings of operating systems (workstations and servers), SQL Server, and their application products. Note that:
These are licensed (with a few exceptions like one full copy of Office) for Development and Testing purposes only. So if you use an MSDN Windows 7 license on your home PC and you use it for playing a game or doing your taxes or email etc., then you're in violation of the license.
They're licensed for a single named individual's unlimited use (for dev and test), so you can set up 100 huge Windows Server systems if you want, but if you have a second developer or anyone else use any of them then you're in violation of the license. You can't just buy one subscription and share the software with all your programmers.
The licences you get are perpetual (unlike with some other Microsoft programs like Empower) and do not expire when your subscription runs out. So if your subscription does expire, you can still use the versions of VS and the other software you had at that time.
If you don't need all the server OS versions and the commercial-use copy of Office, then you might consider the cheaper MSDN subscription offers. If you just want to learn to develop on Microsoft systems, then you can do a lot with the free Express editions of Visual Studio C#, C++, VB, SQL Server, etc. and you may not need to spend any money at all.
If you're a member of a big team that wants to buy completely into the Microsoft way, then there are even more ridiculously expensive team versions of the software you can buy (but you have to pay for each developer separately as here).
If you're a company developing a software product for Windows, you can sign up *very* cheaply for up to two years for the Microsoft Empower program that gives you five MSDN subscriptions and other goodies I believe (though the licenses expire at the end of the term) if you commit to shipping a commercial product within that time.
But if you're a single serious developer who wants access to pretty much the full suite of development tools (minus the fancy high-end team stuff) and all the MS operating systems, server software, applications, and you need a new version of Office for yourself, then this is the one to buy (or talk your boss into), preferably via a two or three year Open license version since it's only slightly more expensive than this one-year Retail version.
G.

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Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Standard Review

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(More customer reviews)I made a sea-change jump from VC++6.0 to Visual Studio 2008. I miss my old ClassWizard, but it only took a day or so to get familiar with the new methods. Probably the hardest thing to get used to is the change from Alt + E + I to launch Find-In-Files to using Ctrl + Shift + F. Even after weeks of using VS2008, I still do the old key combination.
The executables produced are great and the program functions reliably.
I would easily buy it again.

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Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Standard Edition, Win32, English

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Borland C++ Builder 6 Personal Review

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(More customer reviews)Be careful if you are buying this least expensive version of Builder 6.0 to develop simple applications to SELL (or as Borland seems to indicate even to USE for a business purpose). This was NOT a stipulation in earlier versions (Standard level), as far as I can tell. You can only use the 6.0 version as a 'learning version'. This may not be a problem for many programmers, and granted at this price this may be fine, but things have changed from earlier 'Standard' versions and before purchasing you should be aware of this. Go to Borland's website and check the license agreement in detail if you have concerns. You might want to snap up 5.0 Standard before it is gone (although you can't read the license agreement for 5.0 at Borland's website, I have seen discussions that this restriction on compensation is new only for 6.0). So, just be careful and be aware of the 6.0 restriction.
I have quoted part of the 6.0 license below:
Sect 4.3 SPECIAL TERMS THAT APPLY TO C++BUILDER 6.0 PERSONAL ONLY
...rights under this license to use the Product and to create Works solely for personal use. You may not use the Product or any Work for any commercial, business, governmental or institutional purpose of any kind ('Commercial Purpose'). [it seems that even charitable use is prohibited? - my comment].
... you may not receive any direct or indirect compensation for the distribution or use of your Works...

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Learn C++ development for the Windows platform with Borland C++ Builder 6 Personal. Its drag-and-drop visual development environment, easy-to-use wizards, sample applications, and tutorial simplify development. Real ANSI/ISO C++ gives you the performance needed to implement cross-platform-ready e-business applications that support Web services. Borland's C++ Builder 6 also increases the speed of Web application development, lets you build Web services-enabled middleware, and boosts productivity with its 32-bit native code compiler. Plus, you can take full advantage of the software's industry-standard compliance with SOAP, XML, WSDL, and XSL protocols.

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Microsoft Visual Sourcesafe 6.0 CD Review

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(More customer reviews)I think it's time to set the record straight on Visual SourceSafe. This is a product badly in need of updating, but it doesn't seem to have any direct competitors (nobody wants to be Borlanded or Netscaped), so it probably won't happen any time soon.
If you're creating non-web applications with a programming tool that supports SourceSafe integration, then you probably won't mind SourceSafe. You will have to work around a few frustrations: the lack of drag-and-drop, the amazingly dated look to the client app, and the fact that a lot of discipline is required to use it properly and safely. If you don't train a developer new to SourceSafe, you can count somebody writing code referencing a wrong relative path, and having to merge lots of changes people made because they didn't check files out properly.
However, if you're trying to develop a web application with others in an integrated programming tool, then there will be times you want to tear your hair out until you sit down and really learn how the thing works (without any aid from the skimpy online help), because the interaction between the web files, the local files (if an ASP app), and the SourceSafe files is poorly documented and very finicky. Hint: whatever you do, don't remove the SourceSafe binding inside Visual Studio .NET and attempt to put it back again later -- instead delete all the local files and do "Open from Source Control" inside Visual Studio.
I should also mention that it networks very poorly. This is because there is no server component; clients just grab files via ordinary network shares. If you are trying to use SourceSafe from a remote site, then you will need patience, because doing a large operation such as a recursive "get latest" takes a long time even if you are telecommuting from the same city over a high-speed internet connection. Please note though that another company makes an inexpensive product called SourceOffSite that works with SourceSafe to overcome the networking deficiencies.
In general, SourceSafe is a whole lot better than collaborating without help, and it is priced relatively reasonably, which is why it's still around. It's just long in the tooth, and is missing obvious features such as viewing all the check-in comments for a file at the same time. It really should come with printed manuals for end users detailing best practices to use and pitfalls to avoid. Instead, the online help makes it seem as if a child could use the product and everything is always sunny when using it. I know there are competing products, but I've never had the opportunity to try them, because for better or worse the market has chosen Visual SourceSafe as the standard.

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Visual SourceSafe 6.0 is the latest edition of Microsoft's award-winning version-control system for managing software and Web-site development. Fully integrated with the Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual J++, Visual InterDev, and Visual FoxPro development environments, as well as with Microsoft Office applications, it provides easy-to-use, project-oriented version control. Visual SourceSafe works with any file produced by any development language, authoring tool, or application. Users can work at both the file and project level while promoting file reuse. The project-oriented features of Visual SourceSafe make managing the day-to-day tasks associated with team-based application and Web site development more efficient.

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Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional with MSDN Professional Review

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(More customer reviews)I already had Visual Studio, so I purchased this just for the MSDN license (will let someone else at my company use the VS 2008 license). I needed to test on a variety of 32 and 64 bit windows OSes so I downloaded some keys and then downloaded the Operating Systems that I wanted to test on. Determining which license went with which OS was a little confusing at times but besides that it was pretty easy to find what I wanted, download it, then run my testing. Thanks for providing this MS!

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Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Standard Upgrade Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm positive you're reading this because you are wondering what is eligible for an upgrade. Relax cheapskates, virtually everything makes you eligible:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/it-it/vs2008/products/cc263904(en-us).aspx
"
Upgrade Pricing Eligibility
To qualify for upgrade pricing, you must be a licensed user of one of the following products:
* An earlier version of Microsoft Visual Studio
* Any other developer tool (including free developer tools, such as Visual Studio Express Editions or Eclipse)
Upgrade pricing eligibility does not apply for Volume Licensing programs.
"
If worse comes to worse, install the free express edition and register it, but it looks like any old version of Visual Studio will do.
You're welcome!

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Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Review

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(More customer reviews)Visual Studio 2008 is the latest version of Visual Studio. Visual Studio is Microsoft's primary IDE. It can be used to develop console applications, Graphical user interface applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code as well as managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft. It contains four major products Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft Visual C#, Microsoft Visual Basic, and Microsoft Visual Web Developer. However, it is possible to integrate additional products like IronPython and IronRuby. I've integrated Microsoft Robotics Studio and the CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime) libraries with my Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 (I also enhanced Visual Studio 2005 by downloading .Net 3.5).
Among the major enhancements to Visual Studio 2008 (as compared to Visual Studio 2005) are the .NET Framework 3.5, WPF, WCF, WWF, LINQ, and the language extensions in C# 3.0. The .Net 3.5/3.0 is really the item that provides most of those other components and Studio 2008 provides support and IDE. For us it is the language extensions in C# 3.0, for example, LINQ, and the more concise syntax to get lambda expressions to work that matters the most (the new "=>" operator). WCF (Windows Communications Foundation) is a new great programming framework that is used to build applications that inter-communicate. However, we are using CCR instead for that purpose. The CCR primitives are very easy to use and great for multi-threaded applications with, for example, autonomous agents. As I understand CCR is scheduled to be included with Visual Studio 2010/2011 but you can start using the CCR library now with Visual Studio 2005/2008.
Visual Studio 2008 Professional is targeted towards Professionals (software engineers, small development companies, etc.). If you are a student or a hobbyist you should instead down load the four Express editions of the products which you get for free. However, for serious programmers they are not enough. The four express editions are Visual Basic Express, Visual C++ Express, Visual C# Express, and Visual Web Developer Express. I will put a link for the free downloads in a comment that I will add later, and I will also give links for free .Net 3.5 download and CCR/DSS.
It should be noted that the Express Editions have significantly reduced functionality. They only include a small set of tools, and libraries. There is no remote database support for data designer, no extensibility, no class designer and several other tools, no Microsoft SQL Server integration, no support for plug-ins. x64 compilers are not available for the Visual Studio Express edition and there is only a smaller express edition of MSDN. Missing C++ related items are, for example: C++ Name undecorator, Spy++, ATL trace, MASM, Visual C++ Web deployment tool, Server Explorer, no create GUID tool, CRT debug library, CRT source code, ATL, MFC, OpenMP, C++ Support library, etc. Naturally Visual C# and Visual Basic are also scaled down. The standard edition have somewhat reduced functionality and is targeted towards rich and serious students/hobbyists and poor professionals.
I currently have Visual Studio 6.0, Visual Studio 2003, Visual Studio 2005, and Visual Studio 2008 on my computer. I am using mostly Visual C++ and Visual C#, and on rare occasions Visual Web Developer. For that reason I believe that I can contribute some information regarding the difficulty related to upgrading.
It was not too difficult to convert Visual Studio 2005 C++/C# code to Visual Studio 2008 C++/C# code and the interface changes from Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 were minor simple improvements and added community components, which was nothing to cry about. When I went from Visual Studio 6.0 to Visual Studio 2003 and then to Visual Studio 2005, there were a lot of interface changes to get used to and some of my favorite tools were no longer available (class wizard), and the project file extensions were also different. Some of the projects I worked on also had problems with syntax errors that appeared only after the conversion.
When I converted a medium sized Visual C++ project (65,000 lines) from Visual Studio 2003 to Visual Studio 2005 I got more than 500 syntax errors due to changes in variable (from wrong to correct) and due to changes in what kind of declarations was allowed (from wrong to correct). We also had problems with run time errors that appeared only after conversion from Visual Studio 6.0 to Visual Studio 2003. The reason was that Visual Studio 6.0 executables often were able to execute bad code, like functions returning pointers to stack variables. The problem was really Visual Studio 6.0 not Visual Studio 2003/2005, but when you converted from Visual Studio 6.0 to Visual Studio 2003 the bad code caught up with you. Goofy project settings could also not be converted. It was a lot of work to clean this up.
When I converted the same medium sized Visual C++ project mentioned above from Visual 2005 C++ to Visual 2008 C++ I got no syntax errors and it ran fine the first time. When I converted a much larger application containing several projects with mostly C# code but also managed C++ code that loaded dynamic link libraries built using un-managed Visual 6.0 C++ code, it built and ran problem free instantly. The Visual Studio 2008 Conversion Wizard is also nice. However, there was a small gotcha. If you are doing the conversion offline (without access to configuration control management) and you answer yes, to the question that you do want to have the project files made writable, then this might actually not happen, with the result that the conversion fails. The failure to change the read-only status of the project files happened only for the projects containing both managed and un-managed C++ code (in a mostly Visual C# application). I don't know if that was a coincidence, or if I goofed.
So it seems like the conversion from Visual Studio 2005 to Visual Studio 2008 is much less painful then previous conversions used to be. However, if you convert a Visual Studio 6.0 project to a Visual Studio 2008 project then you might have all the issues mentioned above as when converting to Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Studio 2005. However, this does not mean that Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 are similar. There are a lot of new and very useful components that have been added to Visual Studio 2008.
I already mentioned the language extensions in C# 3.0 (as compared to C# 2.0), for example, LINQ (querying data bases) which allows you to build strongly typed query expressions. Personally I am hoping that C# will in time more or less replace both C++ and Java. Another component I already mentioned is Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF); a new GUI toolkit that allows you to build extremely interactive and media-rich front ends (2D and 3D graphics and animations) for desktop applications (and web applications). The WPF Designer also provides a split view and snap lines for aligning controls and text. Windows Communication Foundation which allows you to build distributed applications (but we are using CCR instead). WWF allows you to define, execute and monitor workflows to model complex business processes, IntelliSense has been significantly improved and now supports JScript authoring and ASP.NET AJAX scripting. There is a Report Wizard, a class designer extension for unmanaged code, Object Browser improvements, and MSBuild recognizes when a system has multiple processors and uses all the available processors to reduce the build time.
I should add that I have bought two copies of Visual Studio 2005 Professional with MSDN from Amazon (actually my wife did) and I was happy with the price and the delivery. However, I did not get my Visual Studio 2008 from Amazon. As I am become more familiar with Visual Studio 2008 and gain additional experience from using I will probably edit or add to this review.


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Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction Review

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(More customer reviews)It was a pleasure to find out that this book had been updated when I reads news of it. CC2 is a great one-stop 'place' to go to when you want a great excuse to apply Stephen Covey's 'Sharpen The Saw' principle. This updated version has some solid, fantastic, expert instruction on designing from scratch, whether it's OO, writing better routines, psuedocode, nested loops, or at the higher level: agile methods, etc..
McConnell's approach of talking to you, the programmer, is ideal: not too much humor, and an easy to read, but professional approach in the way he donates the contents of his brain: i.e. McConnell's lengthy experience in the field.
I read just a couple of paragraphs in a chapter before work one morning, and the advice I picked up saved so much time that same day. And it wasn't even specific to coding instruction. It was a piece of advice on a philosophy on how he personally determines how much upfront design he should settle on before coding.

Reading Software Construction material of this caliber, as compared to some, yet another, new book on a specific language that might look impressive to know, is what makes for a solid programmer.
Refreshing your overall S/W construction knowledge gives you so much more of your life back, because you will have way less bugs and a lot more fun maintaining the high-quality code you are now writing because of CC2.
I mentioned already that he covers OO, but I wanted to emphasize the excellent material he offers in this area. I am now seeing the benefit of measuring the quality of your classes by this guideline: are they true Abstract Data Types. ( rather than just trying to use the syntax that the language provides to its potential).
Great job on a rather thorough re-write of a S/W development staple.



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Widely considered one of the best practical guides to programming, Steve McConnell's original CODE COMPLETE has been helping developers write better software for more than a decade. Now this classic book has been fully updated and revised with leading-edge practices—and hundreds of new code samples—illustrating the art and science of software construction. Capturing the body of knowledge available from research, academia, and everyday commercial practice, McConnell synthesizes the most effective techniques and must-know principles into clear, pragmatic guidance. No matter what your experience level, development environment, or project size, this book will inform and stimulate your thinking—and help you build the highest quality code.

Discover the timeless techniques and strategies that help you:

Design for minimum complexity and maximum creativity
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Use construction practices that are right-weight for your project
Debug problems quickly and effectively
Resolve critical construction issues early and correctly
Build quality into the beginning, middle, and end of your project

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