DevTopics

Nobody knows better than Microsoft that programming can be a drag.  Even with all of the amazing advances in software development, computer programming is still a relatively solitary process that requires deep expertise, logical and creative thinking, and lots of patience.

So Microsoft comes to the rescue with Small Basic, a project that’s “aimed at bringing fun back to programming.”  Small Basic provides a small and simple programming language in a friendly development environment.  Small Basic is targeted to both kids and novice adults, allowing them to “take the first step into the wonderful world of programming.”

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The .NET development team at Microsoft has created a new .NET logo (shown above).  Their goal was to create a logo “that was in sync with the key values that we want .NET to stand for: consistency, robustness and great user experiences.  The result is a design we refer to as the ‘wave.’  The design is strong, simple and distinctive.  The suggestion of the letter ‘N’ in the design will become instantly recognizable over time as shorthand for the .NET brand name.”

Mono is an open source implementation of the .NET framework for Linux, Windows, MacOS and other operating systems.  Mono v2.0 was just released and represents a major milestone in the Mono project.

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Microsoft announced the next version of its developer platform, which will be named Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0.  Microsoft said VS10 will focus on five key areas (in marketing-speak): riding the next-generation platform wave, inspiring developer delight, powering breakthrough departmental applications, enabling emerging trends such as cloud computing, and democratizing application life-cycle management (ALM).

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Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5.  This update patches numerous bugs, improves performance, and even adds a few new features. 

As a .NET commercial software developer, I am most excited that SP1 provides a .NET Framework installation optimized for client applications.  The optimized download is less than 28 MB, compared to the original 200 MB download that all but ensured consumers would not download .NET 3.5 and hence forced us to remain on .NET 2.0 (see FAT .NET).

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Life for .NET developers would be so much easier if the latest version of Microsoft .NET was automatically installed on every Windows PC as part of the normal Windows Update process.  Click here to see why.

“Hello, Mr. Consumer, we offer amazing new widget software that will save you time and money! It can do X, Y, and Z. You can download and install it from our website. Oh, and by the way, you need .NET 3.5. What’s that? It’s a 200MB separate download from Microsoft that takes an hour to install and… Hello? Hello? Mr. Consumer?”

Welcome to my world as a commercial software developer who uses Microsoft .NET. Continue reading »

Tags: .NET, Microsoft-.NET

Please check out C# 411, a new blog from the author of DevTopics that focuses on the C# programming language and .NET Framework and is full of C# information, news, tips and code.

Following are some simple but useful FREE tools for software developers.  Each tool is freely distributable and includes the original C# source code so you can modify the tool to your needs.  These tools are not supported.  Enjoy!
 

  Color Gadget

Select a .NET KnownColor or other color, copy RGB and hex values to the clipboard.

Free Download

  Guid Generator

Generate a new globally-unique ID and copy it to the clipboard.

Free Download

  Hex Converter

Quickly convert between hex and decimal numbers.

Free Download

  Shortcut Replace

Search/replace the path and working directory in a collection of shortcut (.lnk) files.

Free Download

  Visual Studio Toolbox Installer

Console program that installs/removes tabs and custom controls and components in the Visual Studio .NET Toolbox.

Free Download

  Window Watcher

Shows the form and client bounds of the active window.

Free Download

Tags: C#, Color, Guid, Hex, Search-Replace, Tools, Visual Studio

Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework v3.5.  These upgrades enable .NET software developers to rapidly create more secure, manageable, and reliable applications and take advantage of new features found in Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007.

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Tags: .NET, AJAX, C#, LINQ, Tools, Visual Basic, Visual Studio, Visual-Studio-.NET