Visual Studio Workstation

I've been using Visual Studio since version 6.

For three years (2000-2003) at Compaq/HP as a sub-contracted member of the Factory Systems Team, we used Interdev to develop/maintain over 200 "classic" ASP pages and VB6 for a variety of production Windows Forms desktop apps under SourceSafe control.

In 2002 & 2003 I attended MSDN Roadshows for the release of the first two editions of Visual Studio .Net, installed RTM and/or Beta releases of both on test machines and attended workshops on VB.Net and ASP.Net.

When I was abroad teaching English (2004-2007) I was using the Express Editions of VB, Web Developer and SQL Server 2005 as a "hobbyist" working through the Starter Kits. In 2007 I started getting serious about getting back into development and worked through Scott Mitchell's MSDN tutorial on 3-tier Architecture with ASP.NET 2.0 and a variety of books on VB.NET, ASP.NET and T-SQL.

On returning to the UK and finding the depressed job market and my lack of recent experience to be a bar to getting back into work, I decided to work towards the MCTS certs in ASP.Net and WinForms using VS 2005 Pro. A year or so later I took the opportunity of taking the MCAS Office exams through the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) Microsoft IT Academy and this eventually led to me getting on the MCTS .NET 3.5 courses using VS 2008.

The Academy course included a preliminary module with VB.Net using VS 2010. The system I set up for these courses is detailed here and inluded VS 2008 Team System and VS 2010 Ultimate workstations.

In early 2012 I "bit the bullet" and used VS 2010 to learn C#.

In July 2012 I took up my current post of Web and Database Developer at KEY where we use C# to develop multi-layered, multi-assembly MVC sites, maintain a legacy ASP.NET WebForms site and create the occasional WinForms desktop app. This work has involved Visual Studio 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2015 editions.

As a final note, these many years experience with so many editions & versions of Visual Studio mean that I am very familiar with the fantastic range of tools it puts at the developer's disposal.