There was lots of snow today. The Microsoft campus was almost empty as everyone worked from home. This picture shows what it's like to develop Visual Studio in the snow... Wallpaper sized: http://www.wischik.com/lu/programmer/vbdev/vs_snow_1600x1200...

We we released a new community article onto the Visual Basic Developer Center by one of our MVPs, Jeff Certain , called Scaling ADO.NET DataTables . In this article Jeff shows shows us how to query and aggregate data using the built in DataTable methods...

This blog post is part of a series on the walkthroughs included in the October VS2010 CTP . Each walkthrough guides you through a series of steps, to help you experience the new features coming up in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0. Even if...

This is another walkthrough , demonstrating how to use some new Visual Studio 2010 features available in the October VS2010 CTP . It provides steps to follow in the CTP build; however, you may find that you are able to give feedback on the descriptions...

As part of the October VS 2010 CTP , we also shipped a set of walkthrough documents explaining how to use the product to experience the new features. The CTP was released as a Virtual PC image, and can be a pretty hefty download to undertake. So for those...

Some of you may be using the 2005 posters we released last year. There is now a 2008 version available as well! There aren't too many changes. We've actually tried to stay pretty consistent with the VB keybindings (going back to at least VB6), since...

It's common today to switch back and forth between VB.Net and C# for different projects, jobs, teams, etc. VB MVP Kathleen Dollard and C# MVP Bill Wagner have gathered some tips to keep in mind when you make these transitions. They both write for Visual...

M. G. Phone Home (Matt Gertz) I have a slight problem with my cell phone. It’s a smartphone; I love it, I use it all the time, and I don’t what I’d do without it, but I’ve been pretty aggravated with its support of Bluetooth. It will fail to pair with...

The ability to unwind the call stack from exceptions is one of the debugger features that was newly introduced in Visual Basic.NET 2005. When the debugger hits a first-chance exception, you can unwind the call stack in order to make code edits to fix...

"Visual Basic Tips & Tricks" is an Italian online community that was started 10 years ago today. To be exact, the first tips were actually published in 1996 on a personal web page of the founder and leader, Gianluca Cannalire. However, the group recognizes...

Code snippets were introduced in the Visual Basic 2005 release. They provide an easy way to learn how to do a particular coding task, or to re-use a piece of code in various parts of your application. Code snippets can be inserted in a variety of ways...

I've blogged the session materials for this presentation before, but now we finally have the video available too! Here are some section markers: Enjoy! http://www.microsoft.com/emea/teched2008/developer/tv/default.aspx?vid=79

We've had a couple recent posts about the Code Focused development experience coming up in the Visual Studio 2010 IDE: Code Focus Announcements in the TechEd EMEA Keynote Code Focus Videos on Channel 9 Now for the ultimate coverage (a complete TechEd...

There's a great Channel9 series that was recently released, with lots of videos on what to look forward to in VS 2010 and .Net Framework 4.0! The landing page is here ; full lineup is below. Intro (Monday, November 10th): - Visual Studio 2010 Overview...

That's right... Just downstairs from our offices there is a VB user group that meets the fourth Monday each month. It's let by Robert Green , a former Microsoft employee, who used to work on the VB team! There are a lot of Microsoft speakers at this user...

Do you spend a lot of your day in code? (Writing code, navigating code, modifying code, understanding code, testing code, debugging code, etc.) If so, then the Visual Studio 2010 IDE has got a lot in store for you! In this release we're focusing on optimizing...

TechEd EMEA kicked off on November 10th with an announcement-packed keynote by Visual Studio General Manager, Jason Zander! The 82min video has been made available for public viewing here . Below are some minute markers as well, in case you don't have...

I just posted a new Channel 9 video with Milind Lele , Program Manager on the Visual Studio Pro Tools team.  In this interview Milind shows one of the new RAD improvements I was talking about that is coming to WPF in Visual Studio 2010 -- Drag-Drop...

Visual Basic 9.0 introduces a feature called XML Literals , which makes programming against XML a lot more natural, and dramatically decreases the number of lines of code you need to write. In fact, it makes working with XML in Visual Basic *so* much...

After three and a half days visiting user groups through Spain, Jon and I have flown back to the US. We got to meet some great people and had lots of fun talking about VB. The slide decks that we used on the trip are attached at the end of this post....

Using Visual Basic, and thinking about Functional Programming? Here's an excerpt from Eric White's blog , explaining why you should: Functional Programming (FP) has the potential to reduce program line count by 20% to 50%, reduce bugs and increase...

One of the improvements in VS2010 (CTP available for download here ) is drag and drop data binding for WPF. Drag-drop data binding has been available for WinForms since Visual Studio 2005. So those of you that are familiar with that will find the WPF...

By now, you have heard of all the great new features in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 .  Now that you've developed your new applications, you want to include the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 as a prerequisite in your Setup project or...

Yesterday I turned a year older, and spent the day meeting new people at user groups in Spain. Here's how the day went: 07:45 Meet our host, VB MVP Pep Lluis Blano. Leave the hotel in Barcelona and head to Vic in our van, rented for the week. 09...

This week Jonathan Aneja and I are traveling from city to city, and presenting to VB.Net user groups in Spain. We began the tour in Barcelona where we were speaking at TechEd EMEA, and will finish in Madrid. VB MVP Pep Lluis Blano organized the entire...