March 2005 - Posts

• Computerworld survey of language usage

  A recent Computerworld article contains some interesting data on language and platform usage. The lead of the story is "Microsoft's C# beat out Java as the preferred programming language in a recent developer survey conducted by Computerworld . " The Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2005 3:36 PM by scottwil | 2 Comments

• C# established as a JIS standard

  This week, C# was approved as a standard in Japan, and there was a joint press release from Microsoft Japan and JIS . Thanks to everyone who has helped C# 1.0 through the standardization process, including ECMA, ISO and now JIS! There's not an official Read More... Posted Friday, March 25, 2005 9:13 AM by scottwil | 5 Comments

• try/catch and scoping

  I received an interesting customer question last week, and thought it would be valuable to share the answer here. Here's the question: <question> On the subject of try/catch scope in C#, it would be useful if the scope of variables created in try{} Read More... Posted Monday, March 21, 2005 6:02 PM by scottwil | 13 Comments

• Visual Studio 2005 pricing and SKU plan announced

  We announced the pricing and SKU plan for Visual Studio 2005 today: Q&A with Soma " The Shape (and Cost) of Visual Studio to Come " on internetnews.com I had a chance to do some Seattle-area customer visits with Soma last week. There was a lot of Read More... Posted Monday, March 21, 2005 9:25 AM by scottwil | 9 Comments

• Transcript for today's chat with Eric Rudder

  As previously mentioned , I participated in a chat today with Eric Rudder and 200+ customers. The transcript has been posted on Channel9 . Besides the fact that I accidentally posted my bio in response to a question (rather than standalone, as an introduction) Read More... Posted Friday, March 18, 2005 4:35 PM by scottwil | 2 Comments

• Avalon and Indigo CTP

  The March 2005 Community Technology Preview (CTP) for Avalon and Indigo is now available to MSDN Subscribers. See the Longhorn Dev Center for details. This CTP enables C# developers to build rich UI with Avalon and secure, reliable and transactional web Read More... Posted Thursday, March 17, 2005 9:40 AM by scottwil | 2 Comments

• Chat with Eric Rudder on Friday 3/18

  I'll be participating in a chat on Friday 3/18 that includes Eric Rudder, who is the Senior VP for Server and Tools. The title in the chat is "What's New in Whidbey". Here is the description: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Code-Named "Whidbey", will radically Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 16, 2005 10:00 AM by scottwil | 1 Comments

• C# job openings

  C# has a number of job openings that people might be interested in. In particular, there are openings for both Software Design Engineer (aka "developer") and Software Development Engineer Test (aka "tester") spread fairly evenly across the compiler, debugger Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 15, 2005 4:04 PM by scottwil | 1 Comments

• Anders Hejlsberg interview in .NET Developer's Journal

  .NET Developer's Journal has an interview with Anders Hejlsberg. It's in text, not multi-media like my last few posts. Anders talks about a wide variety of topics, including some high-level comments about post-Whidbey work we are exploring. --Scott Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 15, 2005 2:47 PM by scottwil | 0 Comments

• Peter Golde on Power Collections

  Peter Golde is one of the original designers of the C# language. He left Microsoft awhile back and has been spending some time working on Power Collections Library , a generics-based collections library. This Channel9 interview of Peter and Krzysztof Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 15, 2005 2:25 PM by scottwil | 1 Comments

• "This American Life" on software

  I'm a big fan of the public radio show " This American Life ", and was pleasantly surprised to hear a software-based story this past weekend. Here's the teaser: Act Two. Not Far From The Tree. Amy O'Leary tells the story of a software writer at Apple Read More... Posted Tuesday, March 15, 2005 2:12 PM by scottwil | 1 Comments

• .NET Framework penetration

  Approximately three years ago, we shipped the first version of C# along with VS 2002 and .NET Framework 1.0. Early on, there was a lot of concern about how quickly we could get broad distribution of the framework so that application developers could reduce Read More... Posted Wednesday, March 09, 2005 1:41 PM by scottwil | 18 Comments

• February 2005 Tech Preview

  The Februrary 2005 Community Technical Preview (CTP) has been released. This CTP includes VS Pro and all of the Express SKU's (VC#, VB, VC++, VJ#, Visual Web Developer). The CTP releases have less quality assurance than betas, so for people who are more Read More... Posted Monday, March 07, 2005 10:00 AM by scottwil | 2 Comments