Monday, December 22, 2008

“VS 2008 Kicks Off” and “The Road Ahead” make Visual Studio Magazine’s Top 5 Articles for 2008

My “Visual Studio 2008 Kicks Off” cover story for the January 2008 issue of Visual Studio Magazine hit second place in the Top 5 Articles for 2008 and “The Road Ahead” in the same issue made #4, according to Redmond Media Group’s .NET Insight newsletter, Vol. 9, No. 75 of December 18, 2008.

Both stories covered Microsoft’s release to manufacturing (RTM) of Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 on November 19, 2007. “VS 2008: The MIA Features,” my third story in that issue, described technologies that didn’t make the RTM cut. VS 2008 SP1 and .NET 3.5 SP1 included many formely MIA features.

Following are decks for the three stories:

Visual Studio 2008 Kicks Off: Visual Studio 2008 is all about integrating new .NET Framework 3.x Web and smart-client technology, increasing developer productivity, and managing the application lifecycle. Find out how VS 2008's greatly expanded feature set and new .NET Fx 3.5 namespaces can boost your career as a professional developer and add to your programming enjoyment.

VS 2008: The Road Ahead: Microsoft was already well on its way to creating the next version of Visual Studio (code-named "Hawaii") when it released VS 2008. Learn what the future holds for .NET developers.

VS 2008: The MIA Features: Visual Studio 2008 is an ambitious new release and it includes a slew of new language features and tools that were required to get LINQ up and running by itself and with SQL Server 200x. Of course, not everything planned made it into the product. Here's a description of the elements that were pared back and what their status is now.

The other three stories in the top five were:

#1: Create a Data-Driven Messaging System by Paul D. Sheriff (October 2008)
Hard-coded messages don't scale well, and .NET's inherent error messages are user-unfriendly. Learn how to create a more scalable and user-friendly data-driven messaging system.

#3: Ask Kathleen: Understand Your Code Better by Kathleen Dollard (October 2008)
Visual Studio Team System's Code Metrics feature isn't perfect, but if you understand what it's measuring and how, you can use it to gain insight into your apps' overall complexity and to spot potential problem areas.

#5: On VB: Add Distinction to Your Code by Bill McCarthy (November 2008)
Learn how LINQ, extension methods, and lambda functions can help you add a bit of distinction, simplicity, and robustness to your code.

0 comments: