Can You Use Visual Studio Free Versions?

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Hi,

(Apologies for the length of this question.)

I currently have a full licence for Visual Studio 2010 Professional. I cannot afford to upgrade to 2013, but (please correct me if I am wrong), you cannot use the latest 4.5 framework in 2010, and you are kept out of things like Windows Phone 8 development in 2010. I am therefore feeling that I must move to 2013 at some point. My question is: can I do professional development using the Express (free) editions of Visual Studio?

I ask this question because I usually work alone, and I find I simply don't use 75% of the stuff built into the Pro version. I guess I am just a bit old-school; over the years, I have found myself using a smaller and small percentage of VS functionality. All I really want, is a good editor, a makefile, and a good debugger. For example, if I want to write unit tests, I'd rather just write the things myself than be forced to work the way some tool wants me to. Ditto deployment: I'd rather use tools like FileZilla and know exactly what is going on than trust it to Visual Studio automation. Also, I don't use any of the Team stuff, and neither do I use any of the fancy tools like auto-generated class diagrams.

On the other hand, if I switch to free versions, I don't want to find myself restricted in some critical way (e.g. the code being nobbled in some way, perhaps by not being optimised, or perhaps not being able to do remote debugging, or install plugins).

Any help of advice would be very much appreciated, as would any pointers to information to help me make a judgement call on this.

Kind wishes ~ Patrick

Posted 6-Aug-13 23:27pm

Patrick Skelton

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Richard MacCutchan 7-Aug-13 5:45am

Check the EULA on the package for any legal restrictions. Also be aware that the Express Editions do not include some components, e.g resource editor, MFC, some wizards, etc., so you may find that you cannot develop some of your existing projects.

Patrick Skelton 7-Aug-13 5:54am

Proof of my conundrum is that I don't even know what the Resource Editor is. :-)

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Dennis C. Dietrich · Answer 1 · 2013-08-06T23:39:00

I don't see why not. I attended a code camp session a few years ago which was all about the presenter explaining how he runs his one-man software company, mostly with regards to the business aspects. He did emphasize though that he heavily relied on free Microsoft products like Visual Studio Express, SQL Server Express, etc. So while I don't have first hand experience I have met someone who has proven that it can be done. Also, since we are talking about free VS editions just give them a try. To be perfectly honest I don't have a good understand which feature are and aren't available but if there is something missing it's not like you'll have wasted a bunch of money, just a bit of your time. Finally, if you are looking for a free replacement for VS Pro you might also want to take a look at SharpDevelop[^].