Hi, .NET developers!
In Microsoft terms, the no longer supported means the product has gone passing through mainstream support period. The Extended support period means that there's additional charge for additional support beyond mainstream support.
We shall put our focus on at least Visual Studio 2010 Professional or Ultimate, because Visual Studio 2008 has passed its mainstream support phase.
Visual Studio 2012 has Update 3 (consider it as "Service Pack 3" cumulative update).
Visual Studio 2013 is going to be released soon, the date is October 18 2013, the same date of the worldwide launch of Windows 8.1.
Visual Studio 2005 is no longer supported, although extended support is still available until 2016. Visual Studio 2008 is coupled with .NET 3.5 release, and both of these product has the same mainstream support end date.
For Visual Studio 2005 period is below:
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=10441
Visual Studio 2005 SP1 has brought some life to Visual Studio 2005, but the support for SP1 is given after one year of mainstream support: (although Microsoft only said "end of product's support lifecycle")
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3041
Visual Studio 2008 Standard and Professional edition support:
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=12913
Again, based on the table above, Visual Studio 2008 SP1 will extend the support slightly longer, but only one year after the release of the service pack.
What about Visual Studio 2010? Visual Studio 2010 still has the mainstream support:
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=14048
We can still count on Visual Studio 2010 until July 2015.
The latest release, Visual Studio 2012, has the latest update named Update 3.
FYI, here's the support information for Visual Studio 2012:
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=16677
Please take note: there is no Service Pack 2 for Visual Studio 2010, as Microsoft is entering the trend of shorter cadence of Visual Studio and Windows.
This means that there will be new release of Visual Studio to be released in 12-14 months period!
For more information, please visit: http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/05/10/new-visual-studio-release-cadence-begins.aspx
For me, this is the best opportunity as a developer, always learn something new and very quickly adopt it as needed.
Conclusion? We should focus our energy on Visual Studio 2012, and prepare for Visual Studio 2013!
Sounds agile for me!
