Can Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express be used with .NET 4?

I only have 512MB RAM and 开发者_C百科found out that MSVC++ 2010 Express ran hellishly slow, so I uninstalled it. Assuming same for MSVC#. I'm planning to learn C# over the summer with the book "Pro C# and the .NET 4 platform". So I'm wondering if I can use the 2008 version?

You don't need Visual Studio. All you need is the framework (apparently they no longer call it the SDK). However, Visual Studio provides a number of nice features, but strictly speaking it isn't mandatory.

For an alternative IDE check SharpDevelop. I have very limited experience with it myself, so I can't really give you any useful pointers.

Nope, you can't use 2008 for .NET 4 stuff.

VS 2008 only does .NET 3.5 and earlier. MS doesn't retrofit new versions of the runtime / language features into older compilers. So, you're stuck with 2010 if you want to do .NET 4.

All you need to develop with .NET is the SDK and a text editor.

Just as a fun aside, consider trying Compilr.com for online development of C# applications.

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