Inside the May issue of Visual Studio Magazine
Want to start a fight? Ask a bunch of .NET developers about their opinions on the relative merits of the Visual Basic and C# programming languages. If the activity in our comments section is any guide, the discussion can quickly shift from a high-minded analysis of lambda expressions and XML literals to a shouting match over who makes the most money.
Like so many great rivalries, the contretemps between VB and C# are borne out of proximity. Since 2002 the two languages have shared a common foundation in the .NET Framework, and for the past two years have drawn closer together thanks to Microsoft's co-evolution strategy. In the May issue, we look at Redmond's decision to abandon the effort to differentiate the two languages, and explore how a future of feature parity may impact developers' language choices down the road.
Also in May you'll find Gil Fink's exploration of the new Code First features in Entity Framework 4.1. As Microsoft's Scott Guthrie blogged last year, code-first development in EF "enables a pretty sweet development workflow" that lets developers create domain models without using a visual designer or .edmx file. Finally, Todd Anglin of Telerik offers insight into the opportunities (and challenges) around reusing Silverlight code across desktop and Windows Phone 7 platforms.
Visual Studio Magazine Tools Editor Peter Vogel is at it again this month. He writes a hands-on review of Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1, and also provides a data access deep dive with his Practical .NET column on speeding up data-related operations in .NET applications. On VB columnist Joe Kunk offers a detailed tour of the LightSwitch application development environment, and Mark Michaelis kicks off his new UI Code Expert column with advice on structuring complex Visual Studio solutions.
Roger Jennings is on board in May, writing a VS Insider column that takes aim at the debate over NoSQL databases for Web scale applications. Could SQL and NoSQL be a lot more complementary to each other than we all think? Finally, Andrew Brust implores Microsoft to young it up and be more public and vocal about things like its cutting edge research efforts.
Even as the May issue prepares to hit the street, we're looking for your input for June, July and beyond. What issues or topics would you like to see covered in the next issues of Visual Studio Magazine? Email me at [email protected], or leave a comment below.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 04/26/2011