I've spent some quality time with Visual Studio 2008 now after two weeks, and I feel like I can give a more extensive impression of the product. Aside from my previous complaint about the FTP browser, I've really enjoyed working with it, but I do sometimes feel a little underwhelmed.

Let me get some of the negatives out of the way up front. At first there was no usable build of ReSharper, and going back to life without it isn't fun. Sure, it doesn't yet support the new features of C#, but the refactoring, formatting and inspection tools that the product brings to VS really are essential. While VS has a lot of tools to isolate you from coding (as is expected of an IDE), ReSharper has a lot of tools that help you write better and cleaner code. I mean, Alt+Enter alone is worth the price of admission (adds an import statement for the namespace of the type you just tried to type automagically).

I was really hoping that the giant web.config would go away with the integration of the AJAX stuff, but it's actually bigger than ever. I expected that at least the various HttpHandler overrides would go away, but apparently that wasn't in the cards. 

The new CSS stuff is surprisingly not as useful as I expected it might be. That's kind of a buzz kill. In fact, there are times when I experimented with the designer and was surprised to see that what I was composing was not how the page actually appeared in IE. It also seems to crash, a lot, when I'm editing a style sheet. That might be ReSharper causing that, which is a little weird since I don't think it touches CSS, but I'm sure the validation engine has something to do with it.

The killer feature is easily the client-side script debugging. If you really embrace the coding model that the AJAX framework uses, this feature is gold. If you've read one of the AJAX books and still can't wrap your head around it, read it again or read another, because once you get it and use it, it's amazing stuff. It's a little annoying to have to use IE, but I'm mostly over it.

I've only toyed with LINQ, and I guess I still haven't learned enough about it to make me say, "Wow, that's awesome stuff I must use as much as possible!" I'm sure that's just a matter of time. The general improvements to C#, like the automatic properties for example, are big time savers. I feel like I haven't explored those enough.

Other than that, it does feel a little more snappy and building seems to be much faster. It's not a huge upgrade, but definitely one you should consider if you haven't already, if for the script stuff alone (assuming you're an ASP.NET developer). Like I said, I feel a little underwhelmed, but it's familiar and fast and generally steady. I like that they're practically giving it away at various Microsoft events too. Giving it away to sell server product is a wise strategy.

It's finally starting to cool off a bit at work (dispite a recent promotion to management), so my focus can be put back on Eels! A lot has changed over the past few months, and the site redesign and update is definately long overdue.

JC Money on the Rise

For those of you who don't already know, a good friend of mine (Jonathan Carter) is now a softy (meaning, he works for Microsoft). His new roll is very exciting; coming from being a developer and architect to his new job of Technical Evangelist, I know he's going to bring some great things to the table (and possibly hook a brother up with some insider trading tips and a free XBox!)... we'll see how that last part goes.

.NET 3.5 is Beautiful

If you haven't already heard, the .NET framework version 3.5 is fully released (since November 16th actually). So if you haven't already done so, you really need to click that link, install the new framework, download Visual Studio 2008 (which comes with the 3.5 framework, so skip my previous step), and start doing some great 3.5, C# 3, VB 9, LINQ goodness!

I have to say that while I have a few issues with LINQ to SQL not translating 100%, LINQ in general is amazing, as well as Visual Studio 2008's beatiful new features (JavaScript debugging and intellisense, ASP.NET AJAX integration and a lot more).

By the way, I never spout fluff about MS products, nor will I list featuers that I've seen other people blogging about just to be cool... VS 2008, LINQ, C# 3.0, ASP.NET AJAX... those are truely awesome tools.

Microsoft and the Open Source Community

Something that many of you probably don't know (as my longest lasting "Poll of the Day" has shown) is that Microsoft is HUGELY in love with the open source community. They are not only embracing it full heartedly (one such way is to hire some big names in the open-source community to have them keep doing their greatness), but they are also learning from it.

LINQ is beautiful, and segways into the Entity Framework beautifuly... but EF is "new" only to Microsoft... there have been other similar and great products (cue N-Hibernate) that MS is learning from. I'm not a guru on either product, but I can tell you that the future is bright. Which brings me to my next rant.

The Future - Astoria!

I'm also very impressed with some of the NEW products that Microsoft is coming up with. Astoria is a new way of getting to your data that embraces WCF, AJAX, and clean design. I hope to get into it more in the near future.

All in all, I hope to have an updated design of Eels out soon enough, and some new content on the way. This site has been a very successful test run of how I want to embrace the community, and I hope to really get to my goals in the soon.

Yesterday, Volta was made publicly available for the first time.  It is an experimental project in the early stages of development.  The team decided to release an early technology preview so that developers everywhere can help guide the project through experience and feedback.  We want your feedback.

The first release provides the basic feature set that will be improved upon with time.  It has some obvious shortcomings that we are aware of and are actively addressing.  But really, at this stage, the preview is more concerned with sparking your imagination about what is possible than ironing out all of the details.

Perhaps you disagree.  Maybe the most important feature to you is the completeness of a final product.  If that is the case, then say so and we will seriously consider making it a higher priority for the upcoming early experimental releases.

At some point, Volta may become, feed into, or inform a product, but that is a little way off yet.  So let's enjoy the unique opportunity of working together to make something great.

In the coming months, I will alternate between three types of posts:

1.  Volta focused posts: explaining the motivation, features, and technical details

2.  C#: this includes both 3.0 and eventually 4.0 features

3.  Random thoughts: like it says; two that will be discussed soon are programmer tests and continuations

I hope you enjoy the posts and I look forward to engaging with you in discussion.

Anyone out there got a copy of the Terrarium client and server they can flip me? I'm working on something new and need to find a copy of it. It seems to all but vanished from any Microsoft site I can find. For example, the download page is here on the WindowsClient.NET site but doesn't work. It continues to be listed as a Starter Kit for Windows Form (it hasn't been updated since .NET 1.1) but I can't seem to track it down anywhere. If you have a copy let me know via email and if you can send it that would be great, or I can provide a place for you to upload it to. Thanks in advance.

ASP.NET 2.0 applications on IIS 7.0 are hosted using the ASP.NET Integrated mode by default. This new mode enables a myriad of exciting scenarios including using super-valuable ASP.NET features like Forms Authentication for your entire Web site, and developing new ASP.NET modules to do things like URL rewriting, authorization, logging, and more at the IIS level. As you know, with great power comes great responsibility. Similarly, with making ASP.NET applications more powerful in IIS 7.0 comes the...(read more)

If you are an ADO.NET Entity Framework kinda person, here are the latest bits:

·         Entity Framework Beta 3 runtime

 

·         Entity Framework Tools CTP 2 and this update to VS 2008 is needed also.

From Wriju's Blog.

 

I will find many, many uses for this ... maybe someone else will too!

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;

internal static class StringExtensions
{
    public static T ToEnum<T>(this string value)
        where T : struct
    {
        Debug.Assert(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(value));
        return (T)Enum.Parse(typeof(T), value, true);
    }
}