Robert Green's Visual Basic Blog

My new role and my new blog

2005-04-28T19:44:00Z

I have joined MCW Technologies as a senior consultant. Very exciting and quite an honor.

This blog is moving to http://www.mcwtech.com/CS/blogs/rgreen/default.aspx

See ya there!

Leaving Microsoft

2005-04-11T21:08:00Z

After 8 ½ years at Microsoft it is time to move on to the next phase of my career. April 15 is my last full day at Microsoft. I am going to pursue the life of the independent contractor and return to something that has been a passion of mine since before I came to Microsoft: teaching developers how to use our products.

I think Visual Studio 2005, aka Whidbey, is a fantastic product and I believe it is going to be a smash hit. I think there is an important role to be played by people who help others learn how to use it to its fullest. I want to be one of those people.

I plan on staying part of the developer community. You’ll see me on the newsgroups and forums. You’ll see me speaking at conferences and writing articles (and maybe a book?). And I will create a new blog and post to it on a regular basis.

See you soon!

Robert

Smart Client Bug Reporting Challenge is now open

2004-11-23T03:08:00Z

The Windows Forms team is having a contest to see who can enter the most bugs related to Windows Forms, Windows Forms controls or ClickOnce deployment. Check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/smartclient/challenge/default.aspx for official rules.

To get credit for a bug, you must enter it on the MSDN Product Feedback Center and be the first person to enter it. And of course it needs to be reproducable. And it needs to be something we can either fix or postpone in Whidbey. So suggestions don't count. And neither do bugs that get resolved Won't Fix.

It doesn't matter what language you use. And it doesn't matter when you enter the bug if you choose Windows Forms as the technology or if you choose VB or C# as the Technology and Windows Forms as the category. The PFC is smart enough to route WinForms and ClickOnce bugs to the Client team.

There are monthly prizes for most bugs. The contest runs through the end of May. I am one of the judges. Hope to see you entered!

VB Suggestions Update Sept 16

2004-09-17T00:35:00Z

As of this afternoon the VB team has 232 suggestions entered through the MSDN Product Feedback Center. This is up from 186 the last time I reported, which was August 25. Over the past two weeks we have made a serious effort to reduce our backlog on these and have now resolved 166 of the suggestions, up from 104. By the end of next week we hope to have the backlog mostly eliminated and moving forward we hope to respond to suggestions within a week of receiving them.

Status	Total
Not yet resolved	66
By Design	43
Won’t Fix	38
Fixed	35
Postponed	34
Duplicate	8
Not Repro	6
External	2

See my August 25 entry for detailed explanations on all of these categories. In a nutshell, By Design means we did it this way on purpose and there is nothing to consider changing. Won't Fix means someone asked for a change and we won't/can't change it. Fixed means it was either in there all along or we're adding it to VB 2005. Postponed means it's a good idea that won't happen in VB 2005 but we'll consider it for versions after that. A Duplicate could mean the suggestion is actually a bug that was already entered or it could be a duplicate of another suggestion. Not Repro means either we couldn't see what you see or we don't understand and you didn't respond to our request for more info. External means some other team is being counted on to do the work.

Watch VSLive Keynotes

2004-09-14T20:51:00Z

The videos of the VSLive Keynotes are on the Fawcette web site.

Soma announced VS 2005 Standard in his keynote and has the latest dev tools roadmap. There is also a seperate link to the reg-free COM demo in his keynote. Reg-free COM is coming in Whidbey and is an important piece of ClickOnce. This lets you install (on a Windows XP machine) any COM components in your application without having to write to the Registry. Dave Templin of the VB team is working on an article explaining this in detail.

Dave Mendlen, who is now the Director of Web Services Technical Marketing, talks about Web services and SOA in his keynote. This is a good opportunity for you to get an understanding of what these are going to mean to VS developers today and over the next few years.

Visual Studio Standard announced

2004-09-14T19:34:00Z

Jay Roxe explains VS Standard in eWeek
"With Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition we've recognized there is no one right tool for all developers and we've tried to target the line at the different types of developers," said Jay Roxe, product manager for Visual Basic, in an interview with eWEEK. "With Standard Edition we're targeting individuals who develop professional commercial quality applications but who develop on their own. The announcement of Standard Edition completes the picture for the Visual Studio product line."

and in InfoWorld
“With the Standard product, we’re looking to move the Visual Basic 6.0 developer forward and also looking at Web developers who might be using, say, [Macromedia’s] Dreamweaver,” for Web development, said Jay Roxe, Microsoft product marketing manager for Visual Studio.

Good ink Jay!!

I ran a half marathon yesterday

2004-09-08T03:28:00Z

Dim whatAboutMe as ShamelessSelfPromotion = True

Yesterday I ran the Super Jock 'n Jill Half Marathon. 13.1 miles in 1:43:20, or a pace of 7:53 per mile. I was shooting for a 1:45:00 (8:00 per mile) and I beat that, in spite of it being quite sunny and warm (nice day yes, but warmer weather drains you faster as a runner) and in spite of undertraining the past 10 days due to a sore Achilles tendon. I finished 331 out of 1193 total runners. Today I have stiff quads and calves, but all in all I feel great.

whatAboutMe = Nothing

VB used in Ferrari's F1 efforts

2004-09-04T02:42:00Z

Control software for the car is C and assembler. Analysis and simulation is mainly done with Matlab. Other projects are written in object-oriented languages (C++, Delphi and Visual Basic, depending on preference).

This is from a very interesting article on CNET where Dieter Gundel, head of racetrack electronics at Ferrari, talks about Ferrari's use of software in Formula One.

Interview with Soma

2004-09-04T02:37:00Z

Visual Studio magazine has an interview with S. Somasegar, aka "Soma", the corporate VP of the Developer Division. Soma will be keynoting at VSLive! in Orlando the week after next.

VB Dev Center Community page updates

2004-08-31T18:59:00Z

Check out the VB Dev Center Community page. Duncan and I have spend a lot of time lately talking about this page and what we can do to make it more of a community page. The ultimate goal is to make this page more of a community portal, a front door to what's happening in the VB community. Sites like www.asp.net and www.windowsforms.net serve this purpose. Without going off and creating a separate site we want to bring this to the VB Dev Center.

Yesterday we updated the Community page and have taken the first steps to where we want to be. The Community page headlines today list upcoming 3rd party conferences (VSLive, VSConnections, .NET Advisor Live) that the VB team and other VB luminaries will be speaking at. Also on the page are links to VB articles on various VB sites. And we also have links to VB videos and Webcasts featuring VB team members.

In the next week we'll be adding a more comprehensive list of VB bloggers and VB sites. We'll be refreshing the list of articles on a weekly basis. We'll have a feed from this blog. The cool thing about that is I can add a blog entry about something interesting I read in somebody else's blog, a new or old article I ran across, or news about who is appearing at what user group and it will automatically appear on the VB Community page. That lets me keep the page up to date and changing without having to edit the actual page. This by the way, is already done with Duncan's blog on the VB Dev Center page.

Over the course of the next several months we will introduce user submitted article links, which www.asp.net and www.windowsforms.net have already. We will have feeds from the MSDN Product Feedback Center (top VB bugs and suggestions). We'll be looking into listing top newsgroup postings from not only the Microsoft newsgroups, but also forums on vbCity and other sites. And in the longer term we have other ideas which right now are top secret.

What do you think of these ideas? What do you want to see on the VB Community page? Let me know.