[Rob] You've probably had enough time to read the last post...Ok, so maybe we were reallllly busy getting our beta product release squared away so you can all get your free Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta1 downloads! Grab it, have fun, win an Xbox...

[Ron] As I type this, some of the Channel9 dudes are interviewing one of the compiler PM's (Kang Su Gatlin) right outside my office. I wonder how long the lead time is before the video makes it onto the Channel9 site...

[Rob] Woon asked in his comment about the % automation we have with our IDE tests. Currently, we are at roughly 50% automated in the IDE compared to the total number of active test cases. These tests range from DTE manipulations to actual UI interations...

[Ron] Eric Fleegal , a tester on the compiler back-end test team, has joined the weblogging movement. His area of interest and expertise is floating point code generation. (He authored the recent MSDN whitepaper on the new Whidbey floating point code...

[Michael] The VS IDE has a ton of cool UI features - many that I'd never ever head of before. If you're a command line kind guy, you can get some use out of the “Find combobox”. I'm sure this feature is in Visual Studio 7.1 + but I also...

[Ron] I noticed Shaykat (over in the C#/debugger team) posted about bug bounces . For our test team., these come in threes. The first one we encounter is ZBB - zero bug bounce. This is driving active product bugs down to zero. This is the bug bounce...

[Ron] Geez the five testers haven't really been posting much lately. I just asked Michael about this and he said that he feels there is a lot of pressure to be absolutely correct in what we say. My take: we've been really busy lately. It's interesting...

[Ron] http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/18/0146234 This is about the VC++ 2003 command line toolkit: http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/

[Rob] General IDE testing cycle status points (iterations on/between any two points…) Specification review Test Plan Design Test Plan Review Developer Implementation design Developer Implementation design review Test case...

[Rob] I know I said the next installment would be on tactics…but I think in response to feedback Woon Kiat I’ll go with ‘resources' first. Before that, very quickly, there was a comment from AT on alpha/beta users submitting automation...

[rob] Since Ron has been entering thoughts and comments on compiler testing, I’d like to add a perspective on IDE testing from VC. I’ll leave it in notation format to encourage discussion of points for which readers would like more clarification...

[Michael] Hello everyone. I haven't been very active on the blog lately - we're in the middle of a big test pass. Let's see if I can start a discussion. How many of you out there are using Extreme programming? How large are your teams? Some of us have...

[Ron] A couple of questions from Woon Kiat to my previous post on the different types of testing we do on our C++ compiler: >>Is understanding the inner working of a compiler vital to compiler testing? I would say so, at least at some level...

[Ron] One of the major new features in the area of code generation for the upcoming Whidbey release of VC++ is our new floating point code generation model. One of the members of my team, Eric Fleegal, has written a nice white paper about this feature...

[Michael] I've got a circuitious style - so if you're impatient, you may want to skip this thread. I'm going to talk about one of the big reasons I'm participating in this blog, and what I'm hoping to gain from it. I'm also big on analogies and stories...

[Ron] Moving on from my previous post , I’d like to start talking about how we approach testing the C++ compiler. I’ll outline the three main approaches we use and in the next three posts I’ll drill down into each one in detail. A...

[Ron] Inspired by Gus’ recent post on testing the C# compiler , I thought I’d talk a little bit about how we test the C++ compiler. Before I do that, though, I should talk about the organization of the VC test team to put things in context...

[Ron] I updated our VC bloggers links to point to their new http://blogs.msdn.com homes. (I didn't see a new address for Martyn. Did he stop blogging?) I added a link to Andy Rich's weblog. Andy's a tester working on the compiler front-end team. He's...

[rob]I've just stepped out of my office to go to another meeting, and I hear my phone ring...the double ring of an external call. I look down at the floor through the open doorway. “I am not 'in the office'....” I continue to the meeting...

[Ron] Just in case there's anyone who doesn't know, we've joined the crowd at blogs.msdn.com . So you can now access us at http://blogs.msdn.com/fivetestersfromvc . The old url at weblogs.asp.net still works too. Hope everyone had a good holiday...

[Barton] Yes, we are alive. We were all out of office for the holidays and now we are back and ready to start blogging. We apologize for being such poor bloggers, and plan to better this year (a new years resolution?). Today we met and were discussing...

Hi, My name is Barton and I’m the Test manager for Visual C++. The VC Test Organization includes teams focused on the User Interface, Programming Model (C++ Front End and Libraries), and the Compiler Back End (code generators for x86, ia64, and...

[Ron] Matthew in his comment to Rob's introduction asks: I'm curious. I'm sure most people on a daily basis find problems with the IDE (or improvements). But for mere mortal developers it's not transparent as to how to report these (or if they have...

[Rui] I am Rui. I am on the C++ project team responsible for the project management and build. If you have any questions, suggestions or grievances, bring them on. Let's see how we can make your project building experience more enjoyable.

[Rob] I'm Rob.  Being one of two team leads for the VC IDE let's me get my fingers into the VC Wizards, .NET designers for VC, VC debugging experience, and the VC Resource Editors (and generally everything else as well).  I've been testing at Microsoft...