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Visual Studio Express Additions


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Are the express editions good enough for just hobbyist development. Like what things do they lack that the full version has?

Excuse my misspelled title it won't let me change it.

Edited by Aero_Rising
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If you are a student you can get the full version for free via DreamSpark

I have seen that before but does your school have to approve you doing it like do they have to sign up because there is no way my school ever would. I live in about the worst place in the US to be interested in computers because my hometown is so anti technology. Yet for some reason IBM wants to come here :laugh:

EDIT: Turns out your school does have to be registered :( The site dreamspark partners with has other companies too and the only one that requires the school to register for you to get it is Microsoft so now I have no chance at getting it and you can't do a lot of things in express edition. So they go off claiming to be helping all kinds of people by letting students get this free and saying it isn't just for big cities then they say but your school has to register which rules out pretty much ever non big city school district in the midwest.

Edited by Aero_Rising
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Hobbyist development is exactly what the Express Editions are designed for. They're awesome for the price. :p

What is it exactly that you need that isn't included in an Express Edition of Visual Studio? Sure there are a lot more features in the Professional Edition, but you don't necessarily need them.

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Well, if you do native development the fact that the Express edition lacks a resource editor, 64-bit support, and MFC/ATL is a bit of a bummer.

Nothing that downloading the Platform SDK doesn't fix (except for the resource editor).

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Hobbyist development is exactly what the Express Editions are designed for. They're awesome for the price. :p

What is it exactly that you need that isn't included in an Express Edition of Visual Studio? Sure there are a lot more features in the Professional Edition, but you don't necessarily need them.

gui builder, resource editor, things are just easier with the full edition instead of having to work around the limitations of express.

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gui builder, resource editor, things are just easier with the full edition instead of having to work around the limitations of express.
GUI builder? The express editions have the same WinForms and WPF designer as the other editions.

Yes there are many additional features in standard, pro and team system editions of VS, but they target larger-scale development. For hobbyist development I don't see how you'll be limited by the express editions.

Anyway, if you really need some of the features, by all means, go for it. Visual Studio starts at 200$ if you go the upgrade path for the Standard Edition, all the way up to 11000$ for TeamSystem Team Suite. http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-u...pare-price.mspx (Y)

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Most of the features removed from Express appear to be only ones you'd use if your in a big business with many users working on the same project. Well, thats at least what I noticed going from full version to Express, no change. :)

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GUI builder? The express editions have the same WinForms and WPF designer as the other editions.

Express edition of Visual C++ has no resource editor which is how you "draw" the GUIs but if you know anything about the Win32 API you should be able to create your own GUIs with the API. The resource editor is only there to make things easier and not having it doesn't make the express edition any worse at making programs.

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Nothing that downloading the Platform SDK doesn't fix (except for the resource editor).

The Windows SDK does include 64-bit compilers, but as far as I know they won't integrate in Visual Studio (unless you find a hack somewhere to do it). ATL and MFC are products that are part of Visual Studio, and are not in the Windows SDK.

Express edition of Visual C++ has no resource editor which is how you "draw" the GUIs but if you know anything about the Win32 API you should be able to create your own GUIs with the API. The resource editor is only there to make things easier and not having it doesn't make the express edition any worse at making programs.

I think you mean the dialog editor, which is for making dialogs and not "GUIs" in general (although simpler programs can certainly use a dialog as their main window, and programs can embed dialogs in other Windows, and so on). Dialogs are only one thing resource files can contain though. They also contain everything from version information to icons to bitmaps to strings to menus. It's not really possible to make a Windows program without them, which means you'll either be editing the source files by hand or using a third-party editor. You lose a lot of convenience.

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So they go off claiming to be helping all kinds of people by letting students get this free and saying it isn't just for big cities then they say but your school has to register which rules out pretty much ever non big city school district in the midwest.

Ummm.. so... why can't your non big city school in the midwest register ?

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I think you mean the dialog editor, which is for making dialogs and not "GUIs" in general (although simpler programs can certainly use a dialog as their main window, and programs can embed dialogs in other Windows, and so on). Dialogs are only one thing resource files can contain though. They also contain everything from version information to icons to bitmaps to strings to menus. It's not really possible to make a Windows program without them, which means you'll either be editing the source files by hand or using a third-party editor. You lose a lot of convenience.

The dialog editor is part of the resource editor and is the main drawback to not having the resource editor. The other things you mention (icons/bitmaps/menus/version info) are pretty easy to hand code and don't take much time at all. Having them in a resource script isn't even required and it is definitely possible to make a windows program without one.

It is definitely more convenient for the dialogs as not only is it easier/quicker but it will actually show you what the dialog will look like without having to compile and run the program. Menus are standard and you don't need a graphical representation of them to know what they'll look like (or shouldn't do).

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The dialog editor is part of the resource editor and is the main drawback to not having the resource editor. The other things you mention (icons/bitmaps/menus/version info) are pretty easy to hand code and don't take much time at all. Having them in a resource script isn't even required and it is definitely possible to make a windows program without one.

Dialogs aren't that hard to hand-code either, especially not if you already have Win32 experience since you'd be familiar with laying out elements in code instead of graphically. Like I said though, it's a matter of convenience. All the parts of the resource editor are useful, and definitely a drawback to not have.

Having them in a resource script isn't even required and it is definitely possible to make a windows program without one.

Well, icons and version info and manifests have to be standard resources, but yes, the rest you can create a custom implementation of yourself, but why should you? You could load strings from a custom file yourself, but why should you when Windows already has a system to do it, one that even supports compiling localized resource files into .mui files and then automatically loading the right one for the system settings? Again, it all comes down to convenience.

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Ummm.. so... why can't your non big city school in the midwest register ?

If you ever came to where I live you'd understand people here think programming = hacking for one well atleast when you know some programming at 16 they do.

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