Visual Basic Blog

A group blog from members of the VB team

July 2007 - Visual Basic Blog

If I gave you $200 to spend on VB, how would you spend it?

July 30, 2007 Jul 30, 2007 07/30/07
VBTeam
I spent the last few weeks using VB, and I kept thinking things such as “Wow, this is really awesome, I wish all other languages had that!” or “I’m sure there is an easier way to do this”. I simply can’t help it - just as with any other language, when I start using it I notice a few things that are really ...

Amanda Silver will be Presenting VB and Silverlight on Second Life! (Beth Massi)

July 30, 2007 Jul 30, 2007 07/30/07
Beth Massi
(image) If you haven't seen or experienced Second Life it's pretty amazing. It's an online, 3D, digital world. Visual Studio has created an island where you can come listen to live Microsoft presenters in this virtual world's live presentation theater! Amanda Silver will be presenting Visual Basic on Silverlight tomorrow, July 31st ...

Kit George and Chris Smith on Channel9 (Beth Massi)

July 29, 2007 Jul 29, 2007 07/29/07
Beth Massi
I posted a couple more videos on Channel9 that you'll definitely want to check out! Thanks again to Kathleen for helping with the production.The first one Kit George walks us through some of his favorite VB9 language features that enable LINQ:In this in interview Kit George, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team and a former ...

Lambdas, and Take While, and Group By, Oh My!

July 26, 2007 Jul 26, 2007 07/26/07
VBTeam
Hooray! Visual Basic 2008 Beta2 has been released to the wild today to return to its natural habitat – the desktops of our beloved customers. (Please note our smiling GPM's face on that landing page -- he's so happy the Beta is done.) What’s inside? So much that there might be more new features than we released in Beta1, but who’s ...

Closures in VB Part 5: Looping

July 26, 2007 Jul 26, 2007 07/26/07
VBTeam
For previous articles in the series please see Once again sorry for the long delay between posts.  Looping structures can cause unintended consequences when used with Lambda expressions.  The problem occurs because lambda expressions do not execute when they are constructed but rather when they are invoked.  For example take ...

Today's Performance Webcast Slide Deck and Channel9 Interview (Beth Massi)

July 24, 2007 Jul 24, 2007 07/24/07
Beth Massi
The VB team thanks everyone who attended Cameron's webcast on Performance Improvements in Visual Studio 2008 this morning. If you missed it, you can click this link for the on-demand replay. I've attached his slides that he used in the webcast for your reference. Also check out Cameron's Channel9 interview for more information (and if you're ...

Visual Basic on Channel9 (Beth Massi)

July 21, 2007 Jul 21, 2007 07/21/07
Beth Massi
I just posted a couple screen casts/interviews on Channel9 you should definitely check out. I rounded up VB team members and influentials and asked them what their favorite Visual Studio 2008 features were and to give us all a demo of them! The first one is with Erik Meijer and he shows us his favorite feature, XML Literals:In this in ...

Sons and Daughters Day: a pure blast!

July 15, 2007 Jul 15, 2007 07/15/07
VBTeam
On Friday, Chris Smith and I (Chris is a test engineer on the VB Team) attended an event called 'Sons and Daughters' day. The day consisted of 2 sessions (20-25 kids in each) where kids aged 6-13 were run through a class of writing an app in VB (20-25 kids in each). The class was very introductory, but eas very appropriate for the ...

How do we write software at Microsoft: a PM intern’s perspective #1

July 15, 2007 Jul 15, 2007 07/15/07
VBTeam
Now that you know our team, it is time to get down to the real meat - we are building software here, so let’s talk about software. As I promised to keep you up to date with what is going on here at Microsoft, I decided to start a series of blog posts under the title “How do we write software at Microsoft: a PM intern’s ...

Shameless Plug (Scott Wisniewski)

July 12, 2007 Jul 12, 2007 07/12/07
VBTeam
If you get a chance, you should check out the August 2007 edition of MSDN Magazine. In addition to its usual array of awesome goodies, this month's edition features a super cool Basic Instincts column, written by me. In it I discuss the design of Query Comprehensions in VB, giving an overview of the basic framework used by the compiler to ...