I know there are basic differences like no plugins and such. But if I use Visual Studio Pro at work and want to do some ASP.NET MVC apps at home, would I find Visual Studio Express a hindrance?
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JaredPar
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Mike Wills
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5Impossible to tell. Try it, count the number of "oh crap!"s per hour. – Hans Passant Mar 03 '11 at 01:30
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1Actually, Visual Studio 2010 Express allows some extensions. Have a look at the question http://stackoverflow.com/q/7940249/723845 – Loom Nov 21 '12 at 08:49
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Visual Studio Expression is a free but less featureful version of Visual Studio Pro. As you've noticed it doesn't support plugins and a number of other features. It does support the editing of MVC web applications so it should be just fine for your purposes.
Here is a very useful FAQ page for Visual Studio Express

JaredPar
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The Wikipedia article on the package outlines a list limitations for each component.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_Studio_Express

Brandon Frohbieter
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Aside from plugins, there are only a few things behind the scenes that are different, but for the most part you won't notice a huge difference -- unless you want to create plugins for VS or collaborate with a Team through the Team Foundation. Here's the MS comparison of versions

M. Tibbits
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1There are no licensing restrictions according to the Visual Studio Express FAQ http://www.microsoft.com/express/Support/Support-faq.aspx – JaredPar Mar 03 '11 at 01:09
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I actually thought you were right at first and went searching for the actual license restriction when I found the FAQ. – JaredPar Mar 03 '11 at 01:28