One area of software development I'm really passionate about is Quality Assurance. Why? After all, if it compiles successfully, it's going to work, right? Besides, there's always time to fix it in the next release. Well, when you ship software that people...

Most of the time, I’m working on either a notebook or a desktop. So the whole multi-monitor thing is not something as fluent with me like it is with some of my friends. One my notebook, I’ve started to use a second monitor because I’m constantly working...

I recently had a Windows XP desktop computer die on me a while ago, so I basically cannibalized the parts (memory, video, and hard drives). I couple of days ago, I was looking for some data and realized that it was on one of the hard drives from the dead...

This is probably old hat to a lot of you, but it's been a while since I've had to setup a Windows server, in particular one with POP3 and SMTP services. In the past, I always used an Exchange Server (especially if I was working working with the Small...

I don't follow Dilbert as much as I use to but every now and again when I do view them, a strip will hit pretty close to home. I've been having a lot of discussions with customers about the principles and value of Scrum as an alternative methodology to...

Today, we announced that Office for Mac 2011 Home and Business and Communicator for Mac 2011 will be included in all Visual Studio Premium and Ultimate with Subscription Levels. This is the first time since I’ve worked with MSDN subscriptions (which dates...

When I first learned to program, I learned on an Apple II+ using Applesoft BASIC. I first started out just by retyping in the program listings I found in Creative Computing and then started to realize that I understand the syntax and what it all meant...

As part of the VS 2010 announcement we made at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas (Monday, October 19), we also announced what we’re calling “The Ultimate Offer.” Depending on what Visual Studio 2008 edition you have when Visual Studio 2010 ships...

If you've had an opportunity to play around with the VSTS 2010 CTP 12 image that was made available to world back at PDC 08 in October, you probably saw glimpses of a product we codenamed "Camano." It's a separate test case management and manual test...

A feature pack and power tool are now available for Visual Studio 2010. The first is the VS 2010 Visualization and Modeling Feature Pack while the other is the VS 2010 Productivity Power Tools. Jason Zander has blogged about these features packs in...

One of the common questions I get asked when I show the database change management features that Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition (now part of VS 2008 Developer Edition) and will be part of Visual Studio 2010 Premium and Ultimate Editions is: can we...

Last week, Microsoft released System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 . Having been an operations manager before, there’s a lot of enhancements that would have made me happy in that former life. What really gets me excited is that this service pack are...

For those not keeping up with the TLA (three letter acronyms), CAL stands for Client Access License. In order to be properly licensed to use Team Foundation Server (TFS), you need a TFS CAL. Now a TFS CAL is included with your copy of Visual Studio Team...

Hey kids, moms, and dads...what time is? Service Pack 1 Day for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5! And there was much rejoicing (<insert Tom Slick crowd cheer>yeah</>). Seriously though, like a lot of Service Packs we're shipping these days...

One of the great things about Visual Studio 2008 is it's ability to work multiple .NET Frameworks (.NET 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 to be exact). Unfortunately, .NET 1.0 and 1.1 developers will still need to have Visual Studio .NET 2002 and Visual Studio .NET 2003...

There are a lot of utilities out there that will allow you to burn ISO images to a CD or DVD like Nero and Power2Go . But if you don’t want to waste the time or plastic to make disc, your best bet is use a program that can mount an ISO just a like it...

I just assumed the rumors were true that there was no upgrade path from Win7 Beta (Build 7000) to Win7 RC (Build 7100) and decided to use the trick the Win7 Dev Team wrote up on their blog entitled Delivering a quality upgrade experience . Sure enough...

In case you were wondering when the next //BUILD conference would be, wait no longer! The //BUILD conference’s website was updated today letting the world know what the conference will be held in San Francisco, CA at the Moscone Center on June 23-28....

Before the Internet became the wealth of information that it is today, I used to go bookstores in hopes to find that one book that would help me finish the feature I was working on. As a result, I would end up buying books just because one or two chapters...

It’s here! It’s finally here! This is the second feature pack update for Visual Studio which includes new testing features and code visualization & modeling features. But more importantly, CODE UI TESTING FOR SILVERLIGHT 4 APPLICATION! Let’s hear...

My colleague, David Scruggs , recently did a MSDN Webcast on Integrating TFS and EPM . For those of you who are not with what EPM means from a Microsoft point of view, it stands for Enterprise Project Management and the related products associated with...

Today, Microsoft released the Microsoft® Visual Studio® Scrum 1.0 to the web, a Team Foundation Server process template to support Scrum software development. This release complements the MSF for CMMI Process Improvement and MSF for Agile Software Development...

As a recovering software development manager, one of the things that always drove me crazy was the inability to provide the Project Management Office (PMO) with timely updates or getting my team updates on their upcoming tasks without doing a lot of cutting...

Starting this week, the Visual Studio and .NET Framework evangelism team released their first episode of 10-4 , a new weekly podcast which will take a look a different capabilities of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0. You can check out the...

This Patterns & Practices book, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications , has been out for while but if you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you. Just kidding. This book provides an end-to-end approach for implementing performance testing for...