Fat_Lip

Hello Everybody,
I have an AAS degree as a Programmer/Analyst that I received about 2 1/2 years ago but I never went out and pursued that career because the job market was next to nothing and I was already making pretty good money at the time. I have been programming Databases like mad for the past year (for my own enjoyment) and I am thinking about changing jobs.

So this leads to a couple of questions.
I am pretty green in the programming lingo. I am using Visual Studio 6.0 Professional and I am wondering if it is pretty much outdated. Should I go out and buy Visual Studio 2005, and if so, should I be getting the standard or pro edition? What are the differences between these two editions? I basically want to do database programming with VB, C#, and maybe C++ using the jet engine. Plus I want to be able to use all of the components that are offered in 6.0 Professional.



Plus, what exactly is .NET and what is the difference between Visual Studio .NET and the other versions?

I appreciate any response but please keep it pretty basic. Everything looks like a sales pitch on the Microsoft website so I would like to hear from some experienced people.

Thanks,
Fat_Lip

reboot

We get this question 20 times a day, hence the sticky threads:

http://www.xtremevbtalk.com/showthread.php?t=206150

http://www.xtremevbtalk.com/showthread.php?t=206151

http://msdn.microsoft.com