The Visual Basic Team : Beth Massi

How We Do It: Building the Visual Studio Product Line (Beth Massi, Matt Gertz)

VBTeam — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:51:00 GMT

Ever wonder how we build Visual Studio and the .NET Framework? I mean literally. You know, the build process that spits out a product at the other end? Well I sure did and it's not just hitting F5 people ;-).

In this interview I sit down with Matt Gertz, frequent VB blogger and also the guy in charge of the builds in Developer Division (he has a long title, but I forget what it is :-)). He explains how the build and test processes work on a team of two thousand people all on Team Foundation Server. I must say it's pretty darn impressive. Many thanks to Matt for taking time out of his busy schedule to do this interview!

How We Do It: Building the Visual Studio Product Line

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

CodeCast Episode 20: Biz Apps Team and VB with Beth Massi (Lisa Feigenbaum, Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Thu, 07 May 2009 09:26:41 GMT

Code Cast Episode 20: Interview with Beth Massi

This show's interview is Ken interviewing Beth Massi, Microsoft, program manager on Microsoft’s BizApps team in the VS group. Beth discusses her work over the past two years at Microsoft on the VB team and now on the BizApps team, and chats about some cool new features and content in Visual Studio 2010.

Topics

· Beth Massi (@ 27:28) – Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/bethmassi

Links

· VB Team Blog – http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam

· VB Developer Center – http://msdn.com/vbasic

· VSTO Developer Center – http://msdn.com/vsto

· Beth Massi on Channel 9

Length: 42:00

Follow CodeCast at http://twitter.com/CodeCast

.NET Rocks! with Beth Massi on the Open XML SDK and XML Literals (Lisa Feigenbaum)

VBTeam — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:37:39 GMT

Beth Massi shot a couple of great episodes last month on dnrTV! If you are interested in learning more about the Open XML SDK, and how to easily access it using VB.NET XML Literals, be sure to check them out.

dnrTV Show #137: Beth Massi on the Open XML SDK
Our good friend Beth Massi returns to dnrTV to introduce us to the Open XML SDK, Microsoft's tool kit for creating and manipulating Office 2007 documents.

dnrTV Show #138: Beth Massi on Open XML and Office
Beth Massi is back to talk about how to generate custom Word documents and Excel spreadsheets with LINQ to SQL and XML Literals in Visual Basic .NET.

Links from the shows:

About dnrTV!:

dnrTv is a fusion of a training video and an interview show. Training videos are typically sterile and one-way. Let's face it, you can only take so much. But you need to see the code! In this format, you get the spontaneity of an interview talk show, and the detail of a webcast or training video.

Carl Franklin is the host of the wildly popular mp3 talk show .NET Rocks!, which he started recording in August, 2002. dnrTV launched on January 12th, 2006, the same week as .NET Rocks! show number 159!

Channel 9 Interview: No More Underscores in Visual Basic 10 (Beth Massi, Tyler Whitney)

VBTeam — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:56:31 GMT

I just posted a new Channel 9 interview. This time it's with Tyler Whitney, a developer on the Visual Basic compiler team. Here he demonstrates how line termination has changed in the Visual Basic 10 compiler making underscores unnecessary as line continuation indicators. This makes your code more readable especially when writing multi-line LINQ queries.

Yes it's true, many underscores are unemployed so the team has created a support group for them at www.unemployedunderscores.com :-)

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Channel 9 Interview: WPF Improvements in VS2010 for Business Apps (Beth Massi, Milind Lele)

VBTeam — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:01:08 GMT

Today I posted a new interview on Channel 9 on WPF Improvements in Visual Studio 2010 for Building Business Apps.

At the MVP Summit a few weeks ago, Italian MVP Alessandro del Sole was so excited about the new WPF features in Visual Studio 2010 that he asked me if he could interview Milind Lele himself to get the low-down -- I said sure!

Milind is a Program Manager on the Visual Studio Pro Tools team. In this interview he chats with Alessandro about the new WPF improvements in Visual Studio 2010 for building business applications. This time Milind shows off the new Visual Studio UI and the new WPF data grid as he quickly builds a master-details form against an Entity Data Model using the new RAD drag-drop data binding features for WPF.

Also check out Milind's blog post on this topic for more information.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Channel 9 Interview: Using the Touchless SDK with Visual Basic (Beth Massi, Lucian Wischik)

VBTeam — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:03:25 GMT

Today I posted a new interview on Channel 9 on using the Touchless SDK.

The Touchless SDK enables developers to create multi-touch based applications using a webcam for input. "Touch without touching." It's actually pretty cool! In this interview I meet up with Touchless SDK creator, Mike Wasserman and Visual Basic Spec Lead, Lucian Wischik. They explain the project and show off a game they developed using Visual Basic 9 in Visual Studio 2008. I almost got my block knocked off playing the game but you'll see how it was worth it ;-)

For additional information mentioned in the video check out:

Touchless SDK: http://touchless.codeplex.com/
SDK Video: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=a89a217b-fc38-4a6c-87f8-ab59a2028391
VB Game Source code: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vbtouchless
VB Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam
VB Dev Center: http://msdn.com/vbasic
Office Labs: http://www.officelabs.com/

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Channel 9 Interview: ASP.NET MVC using Visual Basic XML Literals (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:22:32 GMT

Today I posted an interview on Channel 9 with Dmitry Robsman, the Product Unit Manager for ASP.NET. In this interview he shows us how he implemented ASP.NET MVC views using Visual Basic's XML Literals instead of .aspx pages. Dmitry shows us how this makes coding the views much cleaner using standard OOP principals. He also makes some very interesting observations about DSLs and Visual Basic XML literals. You can download the code Dmitry shows in the interview from his blog here.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

New WPF "How Do I" Video on Formatting Data Entry (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:14:06 GMT

Today we released a new How Do I Video onto the VB Dev Center on how to format controls on data entry forms using the IValueConverter like I showed on my blog here. The IValueConverter allows you full control over the display of the data as well as the editing of that data by users in the controls.

Check out all the WPF Forms over Data videos here.

Enjoy!

Community Article: Scaling ADO.NET DataTables (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

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 as well as LINQ to DataSets. He compares the performance on indexed and non indexed DataTables in a variety of scenarios. See for yourself what Jeff recommends on large sets of data.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Channel 9 Interview: WPF Drag-Drop Data Binding in Visual Studio 2010 (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:00:04 GMT

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 Data Binding.

Also check out his blog post on this topic for more information. His team is looking for feedback on this feature so visit the Visual Studio 2010 CTP page to download the CTP and visit the feedback forums.

See it in action for yourself on Channel 9.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Panel: Developers moving to VB.Net for projects using XML (Lisa Feigenbaum)

VBTeam — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 02:54:00 GMT

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 easier that many C# developers are moving to VB.Net for their XML work! To learn more about this phenomenon, watch the following panel from TechEd US, entitled:

"VB XML Literals for C# developers or: How I learned to stop worrying and love Dim"

Community Interview with Doug Rothaus (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:00:03 GMT

This past month we've been posting interviews with the team from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole. This time we have Doug Rothaus, a writer on the documentation side. Doug has blogged up an XML cookbook here on the team blog with a bunch of "recipes" on how to use different features of XML Literals and LINQ to XML in Visual Basic.

Check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Doug:

1. Nice to meet you Doug! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?

I live in Woodinville, in Washington State. It’s about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the main Microsoft campus in Redmond. I grew up in Washington, so it’s nice to work so close to home.

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about your role inside the Team?

My official title is “Programmer/Writer”. I write reference, samples, and so on that you read in the product documentation. I feel very strongly about getting useful documentation out to the community and customers. If we don’t document it, how are you going to use it?

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature regarding the language and/or the IDE?

Being a “data guy” from way back, I love LINQ. To be more specific, though, I love the XML Literals and XML Axis properties that come with VB and LINQ to XML. Most of the source data that I work with is stored in XML and XML literals make my life much easier.

4. How long have you been working for Microsoft and what was your occupation before joining the VB Team?

I have worked for Microsoft for almost eleven years. I started in Developer Support answering questions and troubleshooting problems over the phone, by e-mail, and in chat sessions for customers working with ASP, ADO, and Visual Interdev. For the last seven years I have been writing documentation and samples for ADO.NET, ASP.NET/Visual Web Developer, and for the last (almost) two years, Visual Basic and Visual Studio.

Before Microsoft, I worked as an application developer, security analyst, and instructor for a large aerospace company in the Northwest US that you may have heard of.

5. Why do you think VB is such a great language?

I love that VB serves all developers well from the novice to the expert. I think one reason for this is the way VB is descriptive in much of the language. For example, “NotInheritable” is more descriptive than “sealed”.

6. Have you ever been to Italy?

I did take a trip to Italy (and other European countries) when I was seventeen years old. I visited Florence, Venice, Pisa, Rome, Naples, Pompeii, and Sorrento. I loved Sorrento. Someday I plan on visiting there again. Of course, everywhere I went in Italy the food was delicious. (My friends tell me I describe every place I’ve been to in terms of food)

7. Would you like to tell us something about your life outside the office (how do you like to spend your free time, what do you like to do when/if you go out in the evening or when you’re at home and so on)?

Most of my time is spent with my wife and three children. I also play/sing quite a bit of music in my free time. I have a small home studio and a collection of instruments (2 electric basses, four guitars, one mandolin, one keyboard/workstation, congas/percussion). My other hobby is motorcycles. I ride them and race them at the track. I’m a MotoGP and World Superbike fan as well. Have they heard of Valentino Rossi in Italy? :-)

8. Who is your favorite musician?

I have to pick one? Out of a very long list, I will submit Mark King (of Level 42). Awesome bass player—and he flawlessly sings lines counter to what he’s playing.

9. What’s your favorite food?

Pizza. It contains all of the four necessary food groups!

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and telling us more about you!

New WPF How Do I Videos Released! (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:02:32 GMT

I posted two more WPF "Forms over Data" videos onto the Developer Center that you should check out.

How Do I: Edit Tabular Data in WPF? - learn how to create a simple data grid in WPF for editing tabular data using Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.

How Do I: Create a Master-Detail Data Entry Form in WPF? - learn how to create a master-detail (or one-to-many) data entry form in WPF using Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.

Subscribe to the How Do I video feed.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Community Interview with Lucian Wischik (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:00:34 GMT

Here's a community interview from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time with Lucian Wischik, a Developer on the team. I'm just getting to know Lucian but he is a very interesting and bright person who is just a pleasure to talk with (I hope he starts blogging a lot more). When I told him that out Italian community had sent some interview questions over he responded to them in Italian! I feel totally lame that he speaks fluently and I don't, although he had the benefit of actually living there... oops I don't want to ruin the interview.

Anyway, please check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Lucian (in English and his own Italian):

1. Nice to meet you! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: Where are you from?

· Hello! I'm Lucian Wischik. I was born in Australia and lived in England for twenty years.

· Ciao! Mi chiamo Luciano. Sono nato in Australia. Scusa mi per il mio italiano... non l’ho parlato per cinque ani.

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic team member, but can you tell us something more about your role inside the team?

· Spec maintainer. Also developer - implementing new features and bug-fixing.

· Programmatore! Creo nuovi features, e faccio lo bug-fixing.

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature, in the language and/or the IDE? What makes VB a great programming language?

· It's hard to pin it down. Once I used to be a C# and C++ programmer. But, working with VB, each day I'm reminded that there's something uniquely pleasing about it. Most of all, VB is the integration between the IDE and the language -- this is what made it great 20 years ago, and it's still going today, and it's beneficial for new programmers and experts alike. In its guts, VB has already anticipated to some extent modern scripting languages. And, more and more, VB gives practical fun programming that's founded on solid modern computer science theory - "monads" gave us linq, also "list comprehensions", and comega/xduce gave us xml literals. It makes me excited about the future of VB.

· É dificile identificarlo. Una volta ero un programmatore di C# e C++. Ma, lavorando con VB, ho ogni giorni il senso che sia qualcosa specialment piacevole con VB… Soppratutto, VB è l’integrazione tra IDE è linguaggio: era questo il triomfo di VB venti ani fa, e continua oggi, e aiuta i nuovi programmatori ed i esperti insieme. Dentro il cuore del linguaggio, VB ha già anticipato (per esempio) i moderni scripting languages. E, sempre più, VB si basa su dimostrati, solidi concetti teorici – “monads” ci hanno dato linq, anche “list comprehensions”, comega/xduce ci hanno dato xml literals. Sono molto eccitato per il futuro di VB.

5. What brought you to Microsoft, and how long have you been working there?

· I was a university researcher in Italy with a small group working on concurrency. Five years ago I got a phone call from Redmond asking me to come do the same work at Microsoft, so I did!

· Era ricercatore à Bologna per un pò, con Professore Cosimo Laneve. Ricordo che una volta in inverno, il primo giorno di neve, egli avuto bisogna di visitare la famiglia à Puglia. Ho devuto scusarsi ai suoi studenti. “Boungiornio” gli ho detto. “Laneve non c’è oggi!” Cosimo era un professore splendido. Sono arrivato à Microsoft cinque ani fa.

6. What’s it like working for Microsoft?

· Stimulating. I get to work with intelligent and fun people. The company has generous benefits, and America is still a land of opportunity.

· Stimolante. Lavoro con gente intelligente e divertente. La firma ci da compensi generosi, e America è ancora una terra d’opportunità.

7. Tell us something about your life outside of the office (how do you like to spend your free time, when you go out, when you’re at home, etc.)?

· Here in Seattle I've discovered a passion for sailing. I bought a small sailboat, and dream of one day sailing the Northwest Passage.

· Qui à Seattle ho scoperto una passione per le barche a velo. Ne ho comprato uno, e sogno di navigare il Northwest Passage.

8. Who is your favorite musician?

· Bach, Morricone.

9. What’s your favorite food?

· Buffalo Mozarella.

· Mozarella di buffola.

10. Have you ever been to Italy?

· Yes!

· Si!

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and telling us more about you!

Community Interview with Adrian 'Spotty' Bowles (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:00:25 GMT

This past month we've been posting interviews with the team from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole. This time we have Adrian Bowles (who's nickname is Spotty), a Tester on the VB Compiler. Someday Spotty will have to tell us how he got his nickname.

Please check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.

Here's the interview with Spotty:

1. Nice to meet you Spotty! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: Where are you from?

England via Philadelphia (9 years prior to moving to Redmond)

2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic team member, but can you tell us something more about your role inside the team?

I’m a tester on the Visual Basic Language and Compiler team. I’m Involved in testing extension Methods, UAC Manifest functionality, Collection Initializers during the Orcas and current product cycles.

3. What’s your favorite Visual Basic feature, in the language and/or the IDE?

Extension methods – it’s the greatest feature ever !!!! :-) Both me and developer of the feature agree on this. It’s used extensively to provide the LINQ functionality but provides so much more. XML literals is pretty cool as well.

4. What makes VB a great programming language?

VB is a great language, it’s easy to use and allows for a huge range of users (from complete novices to experts) to easily develop a wide range of applications. This has been evident over the years from VB 1.0 and has been a constantly evolving product. The language has English like syntax making code easy to understand and providing the vast majority of functionality as other languages. VB users are passionate about the product – it allows them to get the job done quickly and easily.

5. What brought you to Microsoft, and how long have you been working there? What was your occupation before joining the VB team?

I was a developer using VB and did some work with Microsoft trying to identify performance problems with an application I started work on. I loved the experience of working with smart guys and the environment. Applied for a position and got an offer. I’ve been working here for 3 years but used VB since V1.0 / VB for DOS

6. What’s it like working for Microsoft?

Best company I’ve ever worked for, super smart people and constant new development taking place. It’s a place where the teams work hard, but enjoy the work – this is not a 9-5 job as such but one where people get carried away with their work and the next thing you know its 9pm – time flies by when you’re having fun and having fun at work makes you to look forward to each day at work.

7. Tell us something about your life outside of the office (how do you like to spend your free time, when you go out, when you’re at home, etc.)?

I’m pretty active, I’m a skydiving instructor, with over 4500 jumps and used to compete when I live in UK – with 13 national titles, I ski with the mountains in Washington only 70 minutes away and whistler,BC a not much further. Since living in WA, I’ve developed a love of wine and often visit the wineries/vineyard.

8. Who is your favorite musician?

I like lots of music and don’t really have a favorite as such but U2 would be up on the list of always in my music collection.

9. What’s your favorite food?

All sorts of food – I’ve traveled quite a bit and will eat most things. I like eating real “foreign” food. That is authentic non-generic American food. It’s unfortunate that a lot of food becomes Americanized over in the US. So I enjoy seeking out authentic local food and treat oversees trips as truly an opportunity to try local foods – you won’t see me running to the nearest generic fast food chains. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy - I’d be happy with a simple fresh baguette, some cheese and a glass of wine.

10. Have you ever been to Italy?

Yes, but not recently. When I lived in UK I traveled around Europe a lot and have been to Italy a couple of times. My grandmother was in fact Italian.

Thank you very much for taking time to answer these questions and telling us more about you!