As expected, Microsoft has released Beta 1 of its Visual Studio 2010 tool set along with the first beta of the NET Framework 4.0. The software represents the next major version of Microsoft’s flag ship software development environment.
As expected, Microsoft has released Beta 1 of its Visual Studio 2010 tool set along with the first beta of the NET Framework 4.0. The software represents the next major version of Microsoft’s flag ship software development environment.
I’m curious to see how Python and Ruby have been integrated into .Net 4. They may be hyping “cloud” software and the new WPF IDE, but I think the new Dynamic Language Runtime and dynamic C# will be the big draw.
Look how much Groovy has improved Java programming. The same will happen here. I would love to write gui interfaces in IronRuby.
And I don’t have a MSDN subscription, but it seems that they will release the beta to the general public. We’ll see in a couple of days.
The DLR is now part of the runtime, C# has the dynamic keyword, and there are interfaces to make it trivial to embed python and ruby as scripting languages into existing applications. Other then that, they are just like any other language on the CLR
I’ll have to grab a copy of this tonight. From what I’ve heard, Microsoft has rewritten the code editor to use WPF. If so, this is an interesting release for two reasons:
1) It’ll be the first time that Microsoft has eaten their own dog food, so to speak, and used .NET for a core UI component of a flagship product, and
2) WPF has had issues with blurry fonts at small sizes. This never bothered me personally, but it has generated a large number of complaints. Hopefully this has been addressed for the code editor.
Also, they’ve introduced some C++0x features into this release. I’m particularly intrigued by the new lambda functions, though I’m reluctant to take advantage of them until the Linux/Apple versions of gcc catch up.
This is indeed the case. You can hear an interview with one of the developers on the Hanselminutes podcast:
http://www.hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=165
If they keep this up i guess we’ll eventually see Visual Studio on Linux?
The running joke is that the VS codebase has pieces of every technology ever pushed by microsoft in it.
Thanks for the link. I’m glad the devenv team decided to go in this direction.
WPF has a steep learning curve, and it’s quite a bit different than everything else out there, but after working with it for a few months, I find it really hard to do work in any other UI toolkit.
Microsoft dogfooded WPF when they wrote the Expression Suite using it
.
But yeah, it’s awesome that Visual Studio got a modern face lift using WPF.
Got me excited though, I thought .NET 4.0 was Generally Available today.. cruel Microsoft.
IMHO as a “old school” developer, vb6 was the last true version of vb that there is. MS totally botched it when they re-did the whole language to be more C like.
the purpose of vb was to have a RAD language, and with it being so C like, it is not.
and sadly enough, i do speak from experience. i still use vb6 to this day, even after a half a year of trying to beat .net in to my head.
What does VB6 have to do with Visual Studio 2010? VB is not the majority .Net language and probably never will be. I’ve found in my travels through .Net that most people using VB.Net are only doing so because they cling to the VB6 legacy code. C# is the way forward.
I agree. Actually all of the vb.net iterations is not really vb in any shape or form, except in name. Microsoft realized that due to how many developers who do not use vb.net and stuck to the real vb, vb6.
There is one big problem in vb6 that always killed me. You can change as much code as you want while at a breakpoint. You can even move your ‘next execution’ line anywhere and it will use the new code, BUT you can never save the changes until you stop running your code. I could develop a whole app while in debug but if vb crashed, you lost everything.
when moving to VS.NET you lose a lot of conveniences that non VB programmers will never understand how great they were but it is so much more powerful. just make the jump.
Edited 2009-05-20 09:26 UTC
I agree. They should have never re-did it, just buried it. Any “true” version of VB must be:
1. inelegant
2. cumbersome
3. incapable of extending itself significantly
4. syntactically awkward
5. pointlessly verbose
6. internally inconsistent
VB.NET is STILL all of those (well except for 3). You will probably hate me for saying it, but its the truth – the only way to fix VB is to kill it – it was born ugly and should have been put down a long time ago. Its beyond all hope of repair. It is the perfect example of a product that became successful in spite of itself.
If you want to go “old school” and use a product that is very much like VB, but without the brain damage, Borland Delphi is a pretty good. It is all that VB could have been and more.
But its 2009. Pre-dotnet VB is dead. I still mourn Delphi, but sadly it is dead also (MS basically bought it from Borland in the form of all of its developers thus killing it through attrition).
I would recommend learning python or ruby if you like languages with simpler, less C-like syntax, but the best language for truly getting your head around the .NET framework is C# – it is the reference implementation – and it should be learned FIRST. And step one of learning C# for a former VB developer should be to forget everything and start over – you essentially learned on a language that did virtually _everything_ wrong and you will need to do ALOT of unlearning.
Anyone using python, ruby, etc. on .NET should be doing it for the right reasons – and you cant know the right reasons if you don’t first conquer C#. Same goes for Java on the JRE. The key is learning the framework and the runtime, and the best language to learn those things on is the reference language.
If you want a true native RAD solution
that beats the pants off of VB6 and even C# then I have
one word for you DELPHI…..
http://www.codegear.com/products/delphi/win32
Native compiled single file executables
Full unicode support
Generic support
TRUE RAD
and much more.