The 5 things that I have learnt from upgrading a programming language

We begin using Visual Studio 2005 for the new project, and this is what I found out thus far...

1) If it is a bug, it will still be a bug
VS 2005 does not fix your bugs in VS 2003. It is a programmer's job to uncover bugs, not the compiler's. When we migrate from VS 2003 to VS 2005, we should keep in mind that we will need to review the codes we have written, as whatever bugs in the original version, once migrated over, will still be a bug.

2) There IS a reason to migrate to VS 2005
Take this for example, in VS 2003/2002 we make use of AppSettings in the application's configuration file to store system-level settings. It is one of the more primitive way to create dynamic application. However, we should NOT be using AppSettings anymore in VS2005, since they have already introduced a new concept called ConfigurationManager and ConfigSections! Although VS2005 still supports the use of AppSettings, shouldn't we be upgrading to something more efficient?

3) Keep things simple
Amazed by all the fancy stuffs VS2005 got to offer, I was, for some time, trapped in a dillemma of whether to stick with the old design, or refactor the whole thing and start from scratch. Lesson learnt: If you start a new project, try out all the fancy stuffs first. If you are migrating from an old project, stick to the old stuff, since most of them are still usable.

4) The web is no longer a pure web
ASP.Net Ajax Extension... and even ASP.NET's built in membership provider and profile management has saved tons and tons of codes for me. However, many programmers still write their own, its not that they do not want to use these things, its that it is still relatively new here (and refer to point 3). However, the trend in ASP.NET programming style is that web postbacks will be hugely decreased and web applications will work towards the likes of a windows application.

5) Visual Studio is expensive
Do not get me wrong, I didn't pay a single cent for the developer's copy of VS 2005. However, if we want to up a level towards Teams Foundation Server (the solution to multi-developers environment and project team management, in which I have seen the demo, was the biggest improvements of Microsoft products), the price got us shell-shock. Why pay over 10k for a team server? We decided to stick with SourceSafe 6.0, which was at its own standards, buggy and vulnerable...