Coming Up in the August Issue of Visual Studio Magazine
I have a confession to make: I hate summer. Seriously, if I had to pick one season as the most overrated time of year, the span between Memorial Day and Labor Day wins the prize, hands down. Between the brutal heat and humidity, soaring gas prices, emboldened mosquitoes and, of course, miles upon endless miles of highway construction, I'm hard pressed to name a more inconvenient and uncomfortable season.
Mind you, I'm writing this from the perspective of a New England resident more acclimated to frigid Vermont winters than the steamy, Carolina-like conditions of our recent heat wave. So I struggle to understand why people seem to undervalue the hushed nobility of a snowy January evening, or the crisp repose of an October afternoon. It beats melting.
One thing that doesn't change in the summer is our coverage of developer technologies in Visual Studio Magazine. In the August issue, due out next week, the cover feature by Mark Michaelis focuses on the Task-based Asynchronous Pattern (TAP) in the next versions of C# and the .NET Framework, and how it streamlines the complicated challenge of asynchronous programming. Our other feature in August, by Brian Hart, shows how developers can implement tear-off floating toolstrips in their Windows Forms applications.
Keep a look out for the Redmond Review column by Andrew Brust, who says the recent Visual Studio LightSwitch launch may challenge a lot of developers' beliefs about the nature of development tools. "People in the dev world tend to split products up into framework-based tools that generate code, and elaborate development platforms where code is crafted," Brust writes in his column. "Somehow, the LightSwitch team eliminated the [.NET development] stack’s complexity without compromising its power."
On the how-to front, Peter Vogel's Practical .NET column dives into the challenge of creating long-running services using Windows Communication Foundation, while Patrick Steele answers reader questions in his latest C# Corner column.
Our August edition of VS Toolbox features a review of Innovasys Document! X 2011, a developer documentation tool that integrates with Visual Studio. In VS Insider, guest columnist Brian A. Randell argues that Microsoft's Lab Management product appeals to more than just testers, and can really help developers as well. As he concludes: "I find bugs quicker. I spend less time messing with software installations. I get to have a life." Pretty compelling.
Look for the August issue in your mailbox (if you're a subscriber), or check it out online on Monday August 1st.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 07/26/2011