[Arelius]

If you think Visual studio express works as well as pro, or that pro and the like are only for corporate enterprise architects and e like. You've clearly never used visual studio pro. Profiling and x64 support are two trivial examples of what's missing, both of which are features included in the free Xcode.

[bwarp]

x64 is only an issue if you do native interop.

Profiling is solved by using ANTS profiler.

[Arelius]

> x64 is only an issue if you do native interop.

I'm specifically speaking on my personal experience with Visual C++, in which x64 is much more important. Additionally I'm unsure if native interop can be done at all with Express editions, since there is a seperate Visual Studio Express for every language.

I'm certain .Net languages have other limitations using the Express editions.

> Profiling is solved by using ANTS profiler.

If we are expressing equivalency with every free non Microsoft product with the similar Visual Studio pro feature the whole Discussion is moot, because you'll be able to find a Mono or GCC, or some other tool that has the same feature checkpoint. But that doesn't change the fact that Visual Studio Express doesn't have profiling among other things.