Frameworks

Going Large

Visual Studio now supports myriad development platforms.

When Microsoft launched .NET Framework 3.0 back in November 2006, it heralded a rush of frameworks, foundations, programming models and languages that continues -- unabated -- to this day.

.NET development has, in short, gone large. As VSM Executive Editor Kathleen Richards reports in our cover story on the evolution of Visual Studio 2010 (see "IDE Evolution"), developers find themselves confronted with a lot of hard decisions. Decisions that have lasting implications both for your applications and for your career.

Today, Visual Studio supports development for Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight, ASP.NET, AJAX and WinForms. And the next version extends its reach in so many directions, it's almost silly. There's ASP.NET-friendly cloud development for Windows Azure, freshly integrated SharePoint tooling, and support for parallel programming and functional languages like F#. And I didn't even mention the Dynamic Language Runtime.

Consequently, developers need to grasp the big picture even as they master the minutiae, which explains the changes in this issue of Visual Studio Magazine. We've adopted a new design, a fresh approach and a broader mission. We'll continue to provide detailed tutorials. Familiar columns including Ask Kathleen, C# Corner and On VB will appear in every issue of VSM in our new Language Lab section. But you'll also see a broader exploration of emerging technologies and challenges facing developers -- like the changes posed by Visual Studio 2010. So take your time. Check out the new DevDisasters department from the folks at The Daily WTF. Read Andrew Brust's Redmond Review column. And get back to me with your thoughts on what we can do better -- I'm at [email protected].

About the Author

Michael Desmond is an editor and writer for 1105 Media's Enterprise Computing Group.

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