By almost any measure, the Microsoft BUILD Conference was big. As attendees return home and digest all that Microsoft has presented, I’m reaching out to key experts and capturing their impressions. Today, I sit down with Andrew Brust, founder of Blue...

Visual Studio 11 Developer Edition was released with a pre-release version of F# 3.0, the latest version of Microsoft’s functional programming language, designed to, as the F# team put it, let developers “write simple code to solve complex problems.”...

I asked last week whether or not the BUILD Conference could possibly live up to the hype and anticipation that had grown around it. With the formal reveal of Windows 8, the technical detail released around the new Windows Runtime stack, and the release...

Watching Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer cap the Day 2 keynote address at the Microsoft BUILD Conference, I couldn't help but feel a strong sense of déjà vu. Despite the touch-sensitive tablets, the cloud-savvy tool demos...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, Microsoft drops yet another developer preview -- this time a preview version of the F# 3.0 programming language. The Visual Studio F# Team Blog offers plenty of detail on the new preview release...

Scott Guthrie may be corporate vice president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, where he heads up Windows Azure app development, but that didn't stop him from giving an action-packed demo of the new capabilities coming to ASP.NET MVC. Async functionality...

The BUILD Conference in Anaheim may have people's heads spinning, but that doesn't mean all the other folks at Microsoft aren't hard at work. Case in point: The people at MSDN Library recently posted a series of Agile focused articles, adapted from the...

Microsoft sure knows how to fill a room. The company has had September 13 circled on everyone's calendar for months, promising to lift the veil on a host of strategically important technologies and initiatives at this week's show . Whether you are anxious...

Every month, the 5 Questions blog series follows up on features and columns published in the current issue of MSDN Magazine. This month, I follow up with Brandon Satrom, Microsoft developer evangelist and author of this month's feature on HTML5 development...

During his 15 years at Microsoft, Dave Mendlen has become something of a fixture in the development tools business at Microsoft. At one time a speechwriter for Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Mendlen first got his start in Redmond as a product manager for...

Last week, the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) group in Microsoft released an update to three of its tools -- Threat Modeling, MiniFuzz and RegExFuzz -- incorporating feedback from the field and adding robust support for Visual Studio 2010...

No, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. The MSDN Magazine Web site has gotten a makeover. One that we hope will do an even better job of serving our readers and making accessible the valuable how-to features and columns published in every issue of...

The September issue of MSDN Magazine is on its way out as I write this and includes a trifecta of data-focused features, leading off with Jamie Laflen and Barclay Hill's dive into the SQL Server "Juneau" database project. The new release enables developers...

As most everyone knows, Hurricane Irene thundered up the Eastern Seaboard on Saturday and Sunday, wreaking havoc across some of the most densely-populated areas of the United States. Some of the worst damage from the storm actually struck closer to home...

In the current (August 2011) issue of MSDN Magazine, Mohammad Jalloul wrote a feature titled " Build a Ticketing System Using Exchange and Team Foundation Server ," which looks at how Team Foundation Server and Exchange can be used together to bridge...

Don't look now, but Microsoft is peeling back the layers on Windows 8. In June, developers got back-to-back demos and discussion of Windows 8 at the COMPUTEX partner conference in Tapei, Taiwan, and the All Things Digital event near Los Angeles. These...

I'm just returned from a week-long family trip to the coast of Maine, where we stayed in a seaside cottage near Boothbay Harbor. As with any vacation, a lot depends on the weather, and as it turned out we were pretty fortunate. We had just one rainy day...

I'm registered to attend the highly-anticipated Microsoft BUILD conference, scheduled for September 13-16 in Anaheim, California. But I seem to be one of the lucky ones. According to the registration page , BUILD has already sold out. This, despite the...

There's nothing like starting a new job. Like the first day at a new school, suddenly all the hard-won savvy and schoolyard instincts are up to question. You can't even find your locker, much less remember the combination on the lock. I feel a bit like...

My March Editor’s Note column contains a how-to if you want to ensure you don’t get your article into the magazine. As I was looking it over, I felt a clarification was in order. In it, I talk about the proper way to query us about your story idea. “Brevity...

I recently wrote a blog entry about the use of contractions in MSDN Magazine . First, I want to thank the many, many responders to that – I’m amazed, and quite happy, that so many of you took the time to tell me what you thought. I love how engaged you...

I was told by an author that using contractions (e.g. “we’ll” instead of “we will”, “you’re” instead of “you are”) in MSDN Magazine can cause confusion in readers for whom English is not their native tongue. I haven’t heard this as a general complaint...

Several readers have pointed out an inaccuracy in my January Editor’s Note column, and I thought it was worth mentioning here. They said, correctly, that Tim Berners-Lee did not invent the Internet, but rather, the World Wide Web. The Internet, of course...

I recently got an email from Sean Iannuzzi, a veteran developer who’s now doing work on Windows Phone 7. He’s enjoying his experience, and passed along a few tips for writing Windows Phone software. I thought they were worth sharing. Here’s what Sean...

It’s finally here. Windows Phone 7 was announced Monday, with a host of vendor partners ready to ship devices. I think what I like most about the phone is that it’s the complete opposite of a “me-too” device. Microsoft didn’t just copy what Apple or Google...