Visual Basic 9.0 Language Specification Released (Beth Massi)

Beth Massi

The Beta 2 version of the Visual Basic Language specification has been released onto the download center. This language specification corresponds to the version of Visual Basic that will ship in Visual Studio 2008. The spec covers the following major new features:

• Friend assemblies (InternalsVisibleTo)
• Relaxed delegates
• Local type inferencing
• Anonymous types
• Extension methods
• Nullable types
• Ternary operator
• Query expressions
• Object initializers
• Expression trees
• Lambda expressions
• Generic type inferencing
• Partial methods

The following features are not covered but should be shortly:

• XML Members
• XML Literals
• XML Namespaces

Although it will be updated again for the final release, the VB team wanted to get this out to the community now.

Enjoy,
-B

Author

Beth Massi

Beth is a Product Manager on the .NET MAUI team at Microsoft and responsible for making native device and hybrid web development in Visual Studio a delightful experience. Formerly the Marketing Director and Community Manager for .NET as well as serving on the Board of Directors for the .NET Foundation, she’s spent her career helping .NET developers be successful.