When the beta finally appears, that's when things start to get interesting or maybe just more real.
Beta 1 of Visual Studio (VS) 2010 and .NET 4 was released about two weeks ago and Redmond Developer News is getting some feedback from developers who've downloaded the tooling.
Last week, Microsoft released the May 2009 CTP of the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio, which adds support for VS 2010 Beta 1. The caveat: Azure and .NET Services do not yet support .NET 4.
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Posted by Kathleen Richards on 06/02/20090 comments
We expected to see Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 in the Tech-Ed timeframe and Microsoft didn't disappoint us.
On Monday, May 18 -- the first business day following the educational conference -- the company made Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 betas available for download to MSDN subscribers.
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Posted by Kathleen Richards on 05/19/20092 comments
Microsoft is hosting its annual North American confab, Tech-Ed 2009, this week. Roughly 7,000 people braved budget constraints and swine flu to attend the conference in Los Angeles, according to Bill Veghte, Microsoft's senior vice president of the Windows business.
As expected, the keynotes, given by Veghte and his team, focused on the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 release candidates; R2 of Windows Server 2008, which is 64-bit only, was made available to attendees yesterday.
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Posted by Kathleen Richards on 05/12/20090 comments
When it comes to Microsoft's Azure cloud services, it seems developers are either quite immersed in the technical underpinnings of Redmond's next-generation platform or they're ambivalent about it.
Microsoft this week showcased some of its customers' various mindsets on cloud computing at its Enterprise Developer and Solutions Conference in New York. The customers -- which include The New York Times, Merrill Lynch, Raytheon and Netsoft USA -- joined Doug Hauger, general manager of Microsoft's cloud infrastructure services, onstage Tuesday during the event's keynote address. Naturally, given the host was Microsoft, they were enthusiastic about the prospects for cloud computing and Azure. But they were tempered in their assessments by concerns over security, privacy, availability, reliability, compliance and other relevant issues.
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Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 05/07/20090 comments
With Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 expected around Tech-Ed, developers will soon have new bits and a first look at the updated CLR.
The official branding of the next framework is 4, not 4.0 (just like Silverlight is 2 and 3). Many people in Redmond apparently didn't get the memo on the official branding as most call it ".NET 4.0." Version number, official branding, consistency, word choice...it's the stuff that editors' nightmares and jobs are made of.
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Posted by Kathleen Richards on 04/28/20090 comments
With .NET 3.0 and .NET 3.5, Microsoft stacked its new libraries and tooling on the .NET 2.0 Base Class Libraries (BCL) and Common Language Runtime (CLR) that shipped with Visual Studio 2005, in what the company called a "layer cake" model.
This time around, the CLR is getting a major upgrade, jumping from .NET 2.0 to .NET 4.0. The .NET 4.0 Framework is expected in beta next month along with VS 2010 and will likely have a go-live license before the end of the year, according to several sources. Microsoft has been strangely quiet on the new framework since the Professional Developers Conference community technology previews (CTPs) in October.
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Posted by Kathleen Richards on 04/23/200911 comments
Suzy Welch, the better half of business legend Jack Welch, has taken to the airways this week to promote her new book,
10-10-10
. The premise here is better decision-making by asking yourself how a choice will affect you in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years.
For developers, technology choices are more often than not influenced by executive types tasked with improving or maintaining the bottom line. Their only criteria, it seems, is: How can we conserve cash and make do with what we have now? In the current climate, this mode of holding steady for the next 10 months is probably prudent. But the bigger picture may require some tough decisions about user experience and software delivery in the next few years.
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Posted by Kathleen Richards on 04/16/200910 comments
The first beta of Visual Studio 2010 is expected in mid-May, in tandem with Microsoft's annual Tech-Ed North America conference. That's if things go according to plan.
Microsoft won't confirm the dates, but the word on the street is that the annual education confab is the target for the beta release.
Brian Harry, the Microsoft Technical Fellow who runs the Team Foundation Server (TFS) product unit, offered a high-level overview of what's new in Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) 2010 in a blog post last week. Harry indicated that the beta is getting close:
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Posted by Kathleen Richards on 04/14/20091 comments
The initial promise of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) got somewhat muddled in the execution. With WPF 3.0 (aka Avalon), many developers were unclear on what to do with the Windows client technology, and the majority didn't have the skills (manual coding and hardcore XAML) or tools (in progress Visual Designer) to use it. With WPF 4.0 and Visual Studio (VS) 2010 expected in beta next month, developers can look forward to drastic improvements.
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Posted by Kathleen Richards on 04/07/20091 comments
We've all done the wave at rock concerts or sporting events. I put my hands in the air more than once at the old Yankee Stadium on a steamy day last June. The temperature was 95 degrees and climbing, and like the TSA at the airport, the ticket-takers were confiscating bottles of sunscreen.
Left-hander Andy Pettitte was pitching and a bit wobbly. He gave up several home runs, including a grand slam. The Yankees had the lead by the time Mariano Rivera strode across the field to the pitcher's mound to the tune of "Enter Sandman." His heavy-metal entrance, even to a Red Sox fan, created anticipation. The Sandman gave up a home run to the first batter.
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Posted by Kathleen Richards on 03/31/20090 comments
From all accounts, Microsoft has put a lot of work into the Architecture Edition of Visual Studio (VS) 2010 Team System. Application modeling is an integral part of the application lifecycle with new features such Sequence Diagram Reverse Engineering and the Architect Explorer for analyzing the relationships between modeling artifacts. The upcoming release also adds support for five UML diagrams, beyond the UML support in Visio.
With VS 2010 Beta 1 around the corner -- most estimates put Beta 1 in the Tech-Ed timeframe -- how does "Oslo," the new model-driven development platform previewed at the Professional Developers Conference, fit with the app modeling tools in VS 2010 Architecture Edition and the existing DSL Toolkit?
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Posted by Kathleen Richards on 03/24/20090 comments