Advice Required: 2.0 or 3.0

MadGerbil posted on Monday, May 05, 2008

Greetings:

I'm just about to start a new project and I'm trying to decide if I should cast the whole thing in 2.0 or 3.0.   I currently have development going on in VS2003, VS2005 - and I've just learned C# - so I dunno if I should go ahead and install VS2008 and take the leap to C# 3.0 and the 3.0 framework or not.  It's probably a strange question.  The project I have to do is pretty simple (which might make it a good learning project)

Is there much of a difference between 2.0 and 3.0?

Does 3.0 get unnecessarily complex?

Are there any good reasons to stick with 2.0?

All suggestions welcome.

 

Curelom replied on Monday, May 05, 2008

I would go with at least 3.0, it doesn't increase the complexity and fixes a number of bugs.  You also don't need VS2008 for 3.0, you can use VS2005. 

If this is a new project, it would probably better to use 3.5 and VS2008.  3.5 actually simplifies a lot of the coding.

ajj3085 replied on Tuesday, May 06, 2008

I would use VS 2008 for even just 3.0, or 2.0.  The IDE is improved, and 2008 has support for Wpf, Wcf, etc.. but I agree, if possible start on 3.5  Linq is really very useful.

MadGerbil replied on Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Oh what the hell.

I jumped in by ordering VS2008, a C# 3.0 book, and pre-ordering Business Objects C# 2008.

The bummer with tech work is that I'm constantly being made incompetent by technologies that keep evolving faster than I can keep up with them.  I'm getting to the point where making a web page using notepad and strait HTML gives me feelings of nostalgia.

I'm now an eternal student - at least until I get to about the last 5-10 years of my career at which point I'll transform into a naysaying, grumpy old tech guy whose knowledge is stale.   I'll go on and on about how the apex of programming occurred with VS2020 and the .NETJAVA 15 framework.  I'll be the last guy in my shop who insists on sticking with the old 32" monitors...

People will laugh at my old and crusty ways.

 

sergeyb replied on Wednesday, May 07, 2008

RockfordLhotka replied on Wednesday, May 07, 2008

MadGerbil:

I'm now an eternal student - at least until I get to about the last 5-10 years of my career at which point I'll transform into a naysaying, grumpy old tech guy whose knowledge is stale.   I'll go on and on about how the apex of programming occurred with VS2020 and the .NETJAVA 15 framework.  I'll be the last guy in my shop who insists on sticking with the old 32" monitors...

People will laugh at my old and crusty ways.

It is so true

Our industry is only good for perpetual students and seekers of knowledge. For people who want to learn something and then use that same knowledge for years there are many factory jobs, or construction jobs or even other white-collar jobs like accounting that would be a much better fit.

RockfordLhotka replied on Wednesday, May 07, 2008

MadGerbil:

Is there much of a difference between 2.0 and 3.0?

Does 3.0 get unnecessarily complex?

Are there any good reasons to stick with 2.0?

To give you a straight answer though:

• If you are using .NET 1.0 or 1.1 then you should use CSLA .NET 1.53.
• If you are using .NET 2.0 or .NET 3.0 then you should use CSLA .NET 3.0.
• If you are using .NET 3.5 then you should use CSLA .NET 3.5.

As an organization, if you are using .NET 2.0 or higher I strongly suggest considering the move to Visual Studio 2008. It can still target .NET 2.0 for your projects, and there are numerous productivity benefits in the new VS that make the upgrade worthwhile.

If you are using .NET 3.0 then you really want VS 2008 because it has support for WCF, WF and WPF (sort of).

Obviously if you are using .NET 3.5 then you must use VS 2008.