New to ASP.net - which to use€?

A proper newbie question (well to .net). I've programmed in ASP 3 (not dot net) and also VB6. I want to move onto ASP.net 2 now, I will be writting programs for both online and internal. The online is more important as our internal servers are Windows servers so I can run the same programs internally or at least reuse code.

My question therefor is which version of Visual Studio to use and which language. It will be datadriven as I like to avoid writting code where I can! Dynamic website and internal systems.

I look forward to your answers and thank you

That depends on your background, like you mentioned, you have vb experience, then go with vb.net
If you have experience using c++ or javascript then go with c#

As far as version of Visual Studio to use, go with VS2008 it's new and it's
what Microsoft supports now and in the future.

If cash is an obstacle, you can always download Visual Studio Express Here
Don't bother with 2005 at all as it's going to be obsolete very soon

Company will pay for Studio 2008
My VB6 way of working is a bit all over as I did PHP at uni (and hated it!) when I was employeed they thought it was same thing so had to learn very quickly so to me I just want to whilst keeping in my head what I have learnt start at the beginning and make sure my fundermentals are correct :-)

So c# it sounds like then. I downloaded 2008 express today as on New Year/Christmas break. Thank you! Right now to get that Hello World under my belt. We don't have SQL on the server set up at all but I'll read up on that before I start asking repeat questions.


Thank you!

What version of Windows do you have?
If you have Xp Pro, then may I suggest for you to install IIS so that you
can run your websites off IIS, this way when they are ready for
production you can easily publish them directly

Also as you begin learning C#, you'll see it's much more rewarding than vb.
This of course is a personal preference of mine, and I'll stick to that

Just like you I've hated vb.

Though I gotta tell you, even though they are
both syntatically different, they generate the same dlls
so the bottom line is they end up being the same as far as
dlls/installations generated.

If you get stuck with code, please create a new thread on our .net forum

I have Vista and XP. Ideally I should work on both. The servers are 2003 mind but it's not going on those for now as alot of VB6 stuff on there and we do not want any conflict so prob just be a fast XP Pro machine to begin with, no reason it needs much more at this stage to be honest. Less than 500,000 at most only thing that is slowish at moment is probably Access 97!!