Will it allow me to create ordinary Windows based programs, that will run on Windows 95 onwards operating systems? OR is it designed to create .NET applications and that's it? (I have little idea what .NET is).

Visual Basic .NET
Visual C++ .NET
Visual C# .NET
Create and use XML Web services
Build Web applications
Build Windows applications
Target handheld devices
Design tables and views on SQL Server Desktop Engine
Tools for faculty, including assignment management and code extraction Tools for students, including application wizards and assignment management
Academic-specific documentation and code samples for faculty and students

You may have seen these features before. I extracted them from VS .NET Documentation. They are about half of the features VS .NET has to present.

And about VS .NET and you question, my explanation goes so:

VS .NET installs the .NET Framework which is a machine-independent platform that Microsoft is freely distributing. It is similar to a VM but has been designed to be efficient even for Enterprise solutions and very large applications.

None of the current popular Windows versions install .NET Framework so an extra 20 MB in the installation package must be reserved for installing .NET Framework. It is very likely that in the next years all Windows PCs have .NET Framework installations. Its minimum requirements are not high and are present in all PCs of these years. A list of .NET Framework's requirements can be found in its MS H2 Documentation.

All of the development tools in VS .NET are designed for the .NET Framework. The compiled code can only be run on a .NET platform, no matter what its source language is: VB, VC# or Managed Extensions for C++. All of them rely on the CLR, Common Language Runtime which facilitates cross-language development.

The compiled code does not include Win32 API calls so it can't be run on Win32. The only exception is that of Managed Extensions for C++, it allows you to make and compile Win32 code using older development methods: MFC, ATL, etc.

If you've been writing C++ code, then you've the option to produce Win32 code. Otherwise you either have to learn C++ or accept .NET Framework. It is very stable, reliable, efficient and fast enough for most solutions.

It is a true pleasure to program VC# for .NET Framework. Microsoft's C# is close enough to C/C++ to ease learning it and different enough to compensate C/C++ mistakes and failures. Programming Microsoft C# is true OOP. It demonstrates a unified type system. It is MUCH faster than Java. All conceptual considerations have been applied. There are no exceptions, everything is OO. And it is MUCH easier than C++. There is flawless type-checking, flawless boundary-checking, flawless exception-handling. If you make mistakes, when your debug version is run the .NET Framework will handle all thrown exceptions and report them with all the necessary details to handle them. As Microsoft states "It is the raw power of VC++ combined with the high productivity of VB."

Microsoft C# Compiler, the CSC, is completely free and available from Microsoft's website. You pay only for the IDE and ease of use. If you don't want to pay, well, you can have .NET Framework and CSC installed for free, edit your code in Notepad and design your forms by hand but after all it will work and be as good as a VS .NET designed applications except for possible human mistakes that .NET form designer is unlikely to commit.

.NET is the future Windows lifestyle!

I'm a newcomer to both .NET technologies and Windows programming. When I decided to learn a bit of Windows programming I found programming with pure API calls impossible, with MFC cumbersome and I never got as far as ATL. With .NET I felt a relief; it is far better than other Microsoft technologies because it re-establishes the good old understanding of programming yet unleashes the power of a beast called .NET Framework.

One pain with MFC, which I never understood, was that I couldn't see my program's entry point. It was hidden in deep the viscera of Form classes and I used to code in Assembly where one must explicitly define the program's entry point.

This is an addendum to my previous post:

Managed Extensions for C++ is an addition to VC++ with the difference that it introduces the concept of managed code. When you make Win32 applications with VC++ you have to use it in the unmanaged form, whatever unmanaged means.

Managed Extensions for C++ adds the Garbage Collector and some other features to C++. It also prohibits weird operations like pointer arithmetic common with C and less common but not rare with C++ to make the code safe. If you intend to make real Win32 applications you must ask VS .NET and Microsoft C++ Compiler to ignore managed code restrictions thus making your code namely "unsafe" though it is quite safe, much safer than VC++ 6 code.

Besides, Win32 API calls can be made from any .NET program but this doesn't make it Win32 compatible. The call is captured by the .NET Framework and redirected to a native API call.

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Besides, Win32 API calls can be made from any .NET program but this doesn't make it Win32 compatible. The call is captured by the .NET Framework and redirected to a native API call.

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I'm still using VS6 but plan to load .net eventually (I've had it for 2 or 3 months now.)
Does using win32 api functions result in slower performance? Are all the win32 API calls replaced with .net functions? Do you know of a website or program that outlines and/or details .net functions (something similar to APIviewer) or does VS.net have one already?

Here is the top .net website:
http://gotdotnet.com/

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J-Man said:

I'm still using VS6 but plan to load .net eventually (I've had it for 2 or 3 months now.)
Does using win32 api functions result in slower performance? Are all the win32 API calls replaced with .net functions? Do you know of a website or program that outlines and/or details .net functions (something similar to APIviewer) or does VS.net have one already?

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.NET Framework lives on top a Win32 platform. It enables true OOP and lets the programmer avoid inconsistent applications that have to be savage enough to challenge Win32 API and elegant enough to be extensible, re-usable and easy to use.

Living on top of the other platform is a plus and a minus. A plus because it detaches the developer from the ground and lets her/him fly high. A minus because it introduces invisible overhead into her/his application. Microsoft's .NET team claim they have done their best to reduce this overhead. My little experience with .NET has told me they are right with that.

Nothing is replaced with nothing. When you call a .NET function out of some namespace, CLR (Common Language Runtime) does everything necessary to make your Windows do what you want. It translates your call into one or more API calls. It is much like a VM for Java with its JIT compiler.

Performance is reduced for any call and any task but its decrease is simply imperceptible unless you're running a dozen of time critical applications on a computer which is unlikely to happen.

All editions of VS .NET include really (really!) extensive documentation as well as part of MSDN library. There are even introductions to areas of science and technology that are not related to .NET specifically, eg you can find a mathematical introduction to transformations if you search for the usage and properties of a Matrix object (Matrix is a new type used in GDI+).

Besides, there is a huge beast of documentation, samples, articles, anything about .NET out there on the Internet. I guess a single search will give you a few premium sources. VS .NET documentation has thousands of links to almost anything you will need to use it.

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Greg Bernhardt said:
Quite franky VS.NET is the best IDE out there.

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Bravo, great Greg the truth-teller!

I am loading Visual Studio.net as I speak, and can't wait to use it.