Customer Reviews

Microsoft Visual Studio Professional w/ MSDN Premium 2005 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What can I say? Visual Studio Pro and MSDN Premium together are the essential foundations for developing software for Microsoft Windows platforms. For the complete life cycle of a commercial product there are excellent additional specialized tools for help authoring and QA as well as Visual Studio add-ins available from other companies that can significantly boost productivity. For the most part VS and MSDN are all you need to get seriously started. Great product!

Does this cost a couple grand? Yes. Is it worth it? It would be worth it at double the price (or more). Note that there are many different options for Visual Studio and MSDN. Definitely make sure you get the version/edition you need - they range in cost from $0 to around $10,ooo (no the $0 isn't a typo). If you're reading this, you already know about the power of Visual Studio. You already know you need it. Find the edition that fits your needs and if need be pry open your wallet. Every year I check online retailers and every year I end up buying from Amazon. Let's face it - this is expensive and if I'm going to give someone a credit card for this amount, I want to know they are going to be around. Amazon is always near the bottom of price range, and at the top of credibility in my opinion. FYI: While you can purchase directly from Microsoft, even they tell you up front that they are the most expensive option for purchase.

I use it daily on the job. I highly recommend it. I can't imagine trying to do what I do under the time lines I have with out it. It is a powerful and capable development environment. It integrates wonderfully with more than what I use. My only complaint with it is how it will rearrange my code. I like highly legible code. The VS system for arranging the code is less legible than mine. Every other complaint out there revolves around not knowing what you are doing (which is common due to the scope and size of the programming we can do with this product) or other products' glitches you have to work with. I would have given it 5 stars, but the code rearrangement slows me down.