My $10 copy of Visual Studio standard 2005 came in the post today – I took the two required webcasts ages ago and when I went to check the status of my registration I couldn’t find any documentation but the funny thing is that the next day I got an email to say the product was on the way. I’m quite eager to get started on the programming – it will be interesting to see how much has changed. The last serious programming I did was with VB6 – I started off with VB3, but I did a bit of programming 2 years ago whilst looking for a job, so to get a full copy of Visual Studio for free (plus $10 shipping) and two hours of my time was a bargain. There is still time to register for this offer yourself at the VB upgrade labcast webpage. I know you can already download the express versions of the software, but this is more complete for the home programmer, but a feature comparison chart should help you decide if you want to go for this product (the list price is $249 at amazon)
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Hey Andy,
I think you’ll like it, but I will warn you it’s a whole new world in some areas. I’m doing mostly the ASP.NET side, not much with the desktop apps anymore, so I haven’t played with the desktop VB.NET as much. There’s some things that definitely make things easier, and some gotchas that are just different because of the creation of the Common Language Runtime. The first obvious one is that some of the types have changed, such as what we’d do in INT for VB you want INT16 or INT32 for now. There’s 4 or 5 varieties of int mostly differing in the space they can handle.
There are some books for going from VB6 to VB.NET, though I can’t recommend any specific ones as I’ve not read most of them.
HOw can I also get $10 copy of MSVC 2005
@Yoda – as per the original post – go to http://www.microsoft.com/business/vb2005upgrade/default.mspx and take the labs