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up vote 7 down vote favorite

Is there any differences, pros or cons between the two? I am going to buy Visual Studio and just want to be sure which one will work the best and have the most support going forward. I I am guessing Visual Studio 2010 but just want to be sure. Oh and will I need the professional version or will standard work fine? Please keep in mind that I am a beginner. Thank you!

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1  
There is no VS Standard any longer (it's been renamed Professional). Here are the available versions; check each to determine whether or not they fit all of your needs. I've been fine with the Professional version for many years (i.e. never needed the Enterprise version), but I'm a lone programmer. – Michael Todd Oct 27 '10 at 2:27

6 Answers

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Go with 2010. I don't know any reason you'd pick 2008 over 2010 if you're developing with ArcGIS 10.

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somewhat irrelevant, Our office refuses to upgrade to winxp-3rdpack hence we can't get .net 4 – dassouki Oct 27 '10 at 13:08
up vote 5 down vote

VS2010 adds support for .Net 4.0, so if you what to use new .Net 4.0 features in other projects choose VS2010. But for ArcGIS 10 projects you are forces to use .Net 3.5, so for those projects it does not matter right now. Place a vote here if you want ArcGIS to use .Net 4.0

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This is true but you can still take advantage of some C# 4 features even when you target the 3.5 framework (optional and named arguments to name a few). – Petr Krebs Mar 23 '11 at 22:40
up vote 2 down vote

VS 2010 so long you use the .net 3.5 framework. Both Standard and Pro will work (although the installer for the ArcObjects SDK check for VS 2008) Only VS 2010 Express is not supported only 2008 Express.

http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/11268-Is-Visual-Stidio-2010-Express-Supported

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up vote 2 down vote

VS 2010 is better in almost all areas. The only advantage I can think of for VS 2008 is that the ArcGIS Mobile Toolbox has not been updated to work with VS 2010. You can still write ArcGIS Mobile apps in 2010, but it will be more difficult without the toolbox.

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up vote 1 down vote

The only reason I would suggest that you go for VS 2008, is that VS 2008 comes with Microsoft's Document Explorer. This has a dynamic Index.

VS 2010 comes with the new Microsoft Help Viewer. This does not have a Dynamic Index.

Searching for things in the SDK help is a pain, if you have only VS 2010

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Visual Studio 2010 SP1 has a new help viewer featuring indexing. – Petr Krebs Mar 23 '11 at 22:41
up vote 0 down vote

Ideally you want to use VS 2010 with ArcGIS 10, BUT if you are developing mobile apps using ArcGIS Mobile 10, you will have to use 2008.

Visual Studio 2010 does not support mobile application development for versions of Windows Phone prior to Windows Phone OS 7.0. Mobile application development is still supported in earlier versions of Visual Studio, such as Visual Studio 2008. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sa69he4t.aspx

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