Do I need to buy Visual Studio Professional?

Question

I have been using Visual Studio Express versions. I used to use the full Pro VS 2005. I can't figure out what I am missing with the Express version. What benefits will I get if I buy the full version of VS?

Answer 1

Here you go. This link is vs2005 specific rather than the more-recent 2008, but that's the version you asked about.

Some highlights:

• No Mobile Device support
• No Object Test Bench
• No Extensions
• No built-in source control support (they should really change this)
• No remote debugging
• No Office Development support
• No 64-bit compiler support
• No Visual Studio Package support
• No profiler
• No SQL Server debugging integration
• Limited deployment options

This list is actually quite lengthy, but with the notable exception of source control they are mostly things you might be able to do without as a single developer, if you really have to. Even the source control can be handled by a file-system-only tool like Tortoise.

Obviously if you're building something like a smart phone app or VS extension it's a non-starter, so you'll need to evaluate what you're really doing. Some of the other missing features like object test bench or the profiler can be partially replaced by third-party tools.