The third version of the Async CTP was released on 31st October 2011. The reason for releasing v3 is to address installation issues -- a recent Windows Update had conflicted with the Async CTP v2 and stopped it working, or prevented its installation...

The VB/C# team is hard at work on the Async feature... You might already have download the Async CTP yourself, or tried out async in the VS11 Developer Preview , and you might wonder: "The feature seems complete already -- so what are they still...

Talk: What's new in VB10 (VS2010) This talk details the new VB language features that arrived in VS2010 -- Implicit Line Continuations - http://www.unemployedunderscores.com/ Array Literals Collection Initializers Auto-implemented Properties Multi...

Talk: How to write an [Async] connected app for Windows Phone 7.1 This talk is all about writing a connected app for the Windows Phone. The talk covered: (1) Azure/WP7 toolkit for the server-side of the phone app. Most good phone apps will need some...

Talk: The [Async] Future of VB and C# I gave a C#-specific version of this talk at DevConnections in Las Vegas, USA on 2011.11.01 This talk is mainly about Async and goes into considerable technical depth. It also covers the new CallerInfo...

This blog article has been moved and enhanced: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lucian/archive/2011/05/20/talk-how-to-write-an-async-connected-app-for-windows-phone-7.aspx

Async CTP Refresh - mitigations when using the CTP The preceding four blog posts have outlined the known and unknown bug areas in the CTP. Now it's time to set out some concrete mitigation strategies. Use F# instead F# already shipped in VS2010...

Async CTP Refresh - what bugs remain in it? Q. How many bugs remain in the Async CTP Refresh? A. That's hard to know. Our QA efforts have been dedicated to testing our async codebase that will be part of the next Visual Studio. We've spent far...

Async CTP Refresh - Compiler Bug fixes The big news about the Async CTP Refresh is that it enabled development on SP1 and for Windows Phone 7, and came with a new EULA. But there were also a few bug fixes... We heard about some of these bugs from...

Async CTP Refresh - Design Changes The big news about the Async CTP Refresh is that it enabled development on SP1 and for Windows Phone 7, and came with a new EULA. But there were also a few design changes... Async is like the zombie virus ...

Async CTP Refresh - its state and direction We really appreciate everyone who has installed the Async CTP. It has given us tremendous feedback. We appreciate all the discussion and bug reports that have come from users. We made the CTP uninstallable...

Async CTP Refresh - installation The Async CTP Refresh was announced on 13th April 2011. It includes Visual Studio 2010 SP1 compatibility, enables Windows Phone 7 development, has a new EULA with updates regarding usage in production environments,...

I made this slide deck that covers all of the Async CTP technically. [powerpoint] A technical introduction to the Async CTP.pptx [pdf] A technical introduction to the Async CTP.pdf Here are its contents: [100-level] Straightforward...

We've shipped the Async CTP! And VB also has iterators! I'm writing this blog post at 8.30pm on the evening before the Async CTP will ship. We're all pretty nervous and excited. Most of the Async/VB/C# team are at an "MVP Insiders" party. I'm sitting...

I'm giving a talk at TechEd 2010 (New Orleans) now. I wrote a little VB app to display live tweets about #teched with "VB" in them. The source code's here.

Here's how to write a VS2010 extension (".vsix") in Visual Basic. The code is made a lot easier thanks to one of the major new features in Visual Basic 10, "statement lambdas". This extension renders comments in a new typeface, Comic Sans Bold Italic...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Allow you to override an event. This idea requires some explanation. Currently, both VB and C# allow you define events in interfaces, and implement them: Interface...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Allow "For Each x In collection Where x>10", and other query expressions. We should allow this kind of code: For Each x In collection Where x > 5 Currently...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: We should allow "With" as a modifier on expressions. Currently the "With" object-initializer syntax is only allowed on constructors, e.g. Dim x = New S With {.p =...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: With and From should be allowed together. It's just a silly oversight that they're not. For example, we should allow this: Dim x As New List ( Of Integer ) With {...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Emit a warning where "Nothing" is used in a likely-incorrect way. 99% of users think that "Nothing" means the same as C#'s "null", i.e. a null reference or empty nullable...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Make more keywords contextual, rather than reserved. At the moment lots of words like "Event" and "Next" and "AddHandler" are reserved keywords. If you want to have variables...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Allow unambiguous types from ambiguous namespaces. This request arises from VB's powerful "import" feature, which is more flexible than that of C#, but which introduces...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA 1: Allow range expressions as a literal for IEnumerable. For instance, ' This expression Dim x = 5 To 14 ' should be syntactic sugar for this one Dim x...

[This post is part of a series, " wish-list for future versions of VB "] IDEA: Allow statements to start with parentheses. Currently, every statement in VB must start with either an identifier or a keyword. We should allow statements to start with...