Q&A: What's ahead for Visual Studio and .Net

Matt Carter (left) and Jason Zander (right)

(Credit: ZDNet UK)

In the wake of the recent and TechEd developer events, Microsoft has decided to put some of its key executives out on the road to explain the innovations that Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4.0 have in store.

Microsoft is promoting the next version of its Visual Studio tool set, code-named Rosario, as offering new levels of analysis of the application development process.

On the back of a well-rehearsed pledge to democratize the application life cycle management process, the company is hedging its bets with a set of product enhancements it says will meet the software development needs arising from trends such as virtualization, cloud computing, and parallelism.

Attempting to shed light on the forthcoming tools with a visit to the U.K. were Redmond-based Jason Zander, general manager for Visual Studio, and Matt Carter, group product manager in the same division. ZDNet UK caught up with them both at Microsoft's London headquarters in Victoria.

Q: What's the core technology proposition for the new tools and how will the new releases simplify everyday development tasks?
Carter: with VS2010 (Visual Studio 2010) there will be a strong focus on providing insight into the development process in terms of the structure and function of the code. We're also concerned with making it easier to build web applications. We want to encourage the development of departmental business applications that utilize the Office UI and we want to make SharePoint development feel like Visual Studio development so that usability is improved.

We also want to reach out to C++ developers if they have a large investment in terms of lines of C++ code, so they can now carry those forward into a Visual Studio environment. There will also be evidence of our investments in Visual C++ to simplify development of native Windows 7-based applications, and this will mean support for innovations compliant with Windows 7, such as multitouch user interfaces.

Specifically, how will developers be able to work competently with increasingly complex applications if they adopt the forthcoming tools within the .Net 4.0 framework?
Zander: If you learn a language like C# or Visual Basic and you learn a framework like .Net and how to program against it and combine that with Visual Studio, then those three things together provide a very consistent environment for working towards numerous platforms that you may want to target--complex or otherwise.

This is already the case now, but it will be more so when .Net 4.0 arrives.

If we need the integration elements of Rosario so pressingly, why have the so-called development silos you often talk about developed to such a degree? Surely this segmentation has developed through the use of much of your existing technology.
Zander: In a big enterprise there will always be multiple tiers of development with externally facing elements sitting alongside internal business management needs, so silos will always exist to some degree. What we need to look at now is a situation where, let's say, a procurement department needs to build in a new external web service as well as form tighter links to the rest of the business. What we're trying to do with our tools is make sure the programming for those different segments--and, crucially, being able to stitch them together--becomes a simple task.

Your marketing people are fond of saying VS2010 will "democratize application lifecycle management from architects to developers, to project managers to testers." Where's the substance for that kind of statement?
Carter: The substance, for us, comes from the information share and insight improvements we've made. We've looked very hard at the problem of non-reproducible bugs--when a tester tries unsuccessfully to replicate reported defects. We have a new test tool that allows a developer to view a screen-captured video of the defect as recorded by the tester. At the same time, the developer can also view the historical debugging information and machine state at the time of the problem. By lowering barriers and making sure everyone works from the same repository of information, you get a far greater sense of a team and that, for us, represents democratization.

Visual Studio Team System [VSTS] 2010 architecture is claimed to bring non-technical users into the modelling process to define business and system functionality. How do we keep business managers reigned in to keep their requirement specifications under control?
Carter: It's all about transparency. Through VSTS we will aim to try and make available all the reporting and business intelligence necessary for business users to be able to view the status of a project. So if that reporting exists and is delivered to business users via tools they're used to, such as Excel and Outlook, it must represent a positive addition to the project at hand.

Your next Windows Azure tools are aligned to development for the cloud. How will they look and feel in practice?
Zander: We want to make it possible for developers to use all their .Net programming skills for the cloud. There will be a sandbox security model similar to that which we have provided with the ASP.Net web application framework. The best practices you can find with that technology will also extend to Azure on the cloud.

Carter: With Azure, the key thing is everything will look very familiar to you as a Visual Studio developer, because the programming model is the same. With the same components at hand, we hope developers will see a movement to the cloud as a natural and evolutionary extension.

What tools do you have to help developers with the techniques chip developers say are necessary for multicore?
Zander: In terms of VS2010 and parallel computing, there is a new set of libraries specifically built to enable to developers to write parallel code. At the base level we have a new runtime called the concurrency runtime, which allows me as a developer to take advantage of all the cores present on the machine. Secondly, the tooling inside VS2010 will be enhanced so both the debugger and the profiler are able to track all the extra work you're scheduling for the machine and see how well it is executing.

You're making a big play for Web developers with the new products. Other than full support for Silverlight, which we would have expected, what else is new?
Zander: Of course, it's more than just Silverlight support, but as we head towards version 3.0 that will be important. With the new products we have incorporated new model-view-controller (MVC) patterns and we're also shipping the JQuery JavaScript library with VS2010 including full IntelliSense support for auto-completion functions.

VSTS 2010's testing and debugging features have been described as a black-box recorder to help eliminate non-reproducible bugs. Do you think you'll "eat your own dog food" and improve your own beta releases with this technology?
Zander: Absolutely. One of the sessions people will have seen at PDC and TechEd delivered by Stephanie Saad was designed specifically so she could document all the instances where Microsoft is "dog-fooding" on the development of VS2010 and VSTS. It is used internally right across teams like the Microsoft Office division where thousand of developers will be contributing code at any one time. In fact using "dog-fooding" as a verb in this way has been the norm at Microsoft for some time now. We're pretty comfortable with it.

Adrian Bridgwater of ZDNet UK reported from London.

[Seaspray0]

And I thought the "flaming logo" was cool. Most of the apps I use today need net 2. I haven't even seen one require .net 3 and now we're going to net 4? I know it's good stuff, but I'm guessing the progammers are having a hard time keeping up with a new revision every couple of years.

[Mr. Dee]

At least the 'programmers' won't be complaining that Microsoft is not improving the Framework. I guess its used in different segments.

[The_Decider]

Improving it?

It is still a 3rd rate framework that can't do the simplest tasks that other environments can do.

.net is the ultimate lock in tool. There is no reason to use it.

[ranpha]

What is this 'simplest task' you are talking about. Care to give an example?

ANd BTW, did you ever heard of Mono? Mono 2 now supports System.Windows.Forms you know, amongst others.

[Penguinisto]

The only thing I've seen that requires .NET v3 and up is MSFT-built stuff (e.g. SharePoint).

I find it easier (and far, far more efficient on resources) to get the job done in something lower-level like C/C++, which has the added benefit of being cross-platform. :)

/P

[Orion Blastar]

Amen to that, pass the collection plate. :)

Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4 just mean that Legacy Windows operating systems won't be able to run those applications as they won't be able to run .Net 4 that is required.

But hey with C/C++, Python, Free Pascal, Java, and other open source programming languages you don't use .Net and you can technically run on Windows Vista, XP, 2000, ME, 98 at least, but Windows 95 is usually phased out of open source development programming languages for some reason.

I got a bad feeling that .Net 4 and Visual Studio 2010 will be Vista and Windows 7.0 only and shut out XP and under users.

Also with each new Visual Studio version, it breaks legacy code, forcing us developers to rewrite the entire program or fumble through trying to make legacy code from older Visual Studio versions work on the new version.

[chuchucuhi]

I think many companies haven't really changed how their application is setup so it's their traditional application programming against .NET. As the business models change to more of a service and applications move from a strictly client/server model to a remoting application model they will have more to take advantage of in the newer versions of .NET. Not every application will require these upgrades to the technology but for emerging software as a service industries these changes provide more tools to deliver an application that doesn't feel as if everything you're doing is done via a remoting service.

[The_Decider]

.net is the ultimate API monkey framework. It is written by amateurs, for amateurs. The fact that it is not cross platform just makes it a lock-in tool. It exists for the benefit of MS, not the benefit of programmers or their customers.

The hallmark of a .net programmer is their total inability to do anything that isn't done for them in the library.

Reinventing the wheel is bad, but these "programmers" need to learn how to problem solve.

[ranpha]

The same can also be said about those who use Java or any of those AJAX frameworks like jquery and Dojo. What is your point exactly. That those who use those frameworks are professional? That certainly is wrong.

[pcfish]

You must have no actual programming background because the API is not tight to any specific platform. In fact, you can use most of the .Net API under the Mono Runtime on Linux/Unix and Mac OSX (except for the System.Form.* namespace)

Microsoft .Net is a direct competitor to Sun Java, tell me what make you comes up with the not-cross-platform conclusion.

[cb3431]

It's hard to keep up with all the new stuff, but I'm not complaining because each addition makes it easier to get things done.

[Penguinisto]

If it's so hard to keep up with, how do you know that your code is secure?

/P

[FanBoy200]

.Net 4.0 = More MS Kluge

kludge?
?noun Computer Slang.
a software or hardware configuration that, while inelegant, inefficient, clumsy, or patched together, succeeds in solving a specific problem or performing a particular task.

See also Technical Debt
Technical debt and design debt are synonymous, neologistic metaphors referring to the eventual consequences of slapdash software architecture and hasty software development. Example .NET 4.0 is loaded with Technical Debt.

[JCCox]

Yawn! VisualStudio is so 2001.

[neongreen007]

Nice post truly...all lot of useful info can be found in this post...but I have to agree with someone here...about the fact that Framework 4 is coming and a lot of people still haven't even started using framework 3 ...I mean I am a programmer (I am program in Visual studio) and I haven't still started using <a href="http://www.notionsolutions.com">Framework 3</a> and now that Framework 4 is coming..I think I am going to skip the 3 ..and it's not just me..I have a lot of friend that are also programmers and non of them have ever used Framework 3 as well..I mean it's just a funny and interesting thought...at least to me..

[timhdm]

I think IMHO, that the development community is too stuck up, i have been a professional freelance web developer for about two years now, and have taken the time to buy books and training, to learn several languages over the past 5 years. I think that if one is to critisize a tool developer (microsoft) they should be able to provide an substantiated argument to support that criticism. having learnt to a reasonable degree of c#, php, and java, for the purposes of web development I feel that any improvments in the server side runtimes should be welcomed with open arms by the community. As far as i'm aware no server side or client side language provides well documented explanations for gaining the best efficiency for todays multicore systems, and I for one am looking forward to .net4 for this at least. I also look forward to the latest release of the mono as i use this runtime on my server to implement .net code. I find it worrying that people are so quick to seek allegiance against or for microsoft, ok it is a large company who has a considerable share of the computing industry. But as developers, shouldn't we be striving to create the best we can, using all the tools at our disposal? rather than dismissing a tool just because of who produced it? I hope to achive better written code and lower overheads with everything i develop, it seems that many of the commenters who have negative things to say about .net4 are not able to offer an alternative. I'm very interested to see how php and java along with other languages handle the new cloud and parallel processing challanges, but I have only read about .net and its attempts to supply a working framework. Lets hope that the open source community will better microsoft's efforts forcing them to try harder. competition gives us innovation, which in turn gives us, the developer, a greater and more comprehensive tool set. Don't bicker and gripe about something unless you use it, and if you use it, get involved in the framework development process, offer your comments and submit bug reports. In general stop acting like a bunch of 7yr old girls and take responsibility for your tools, by opting to participate. Rather than expecting the development solution of your dreams to be handed to you on a plate and be perfect and bug free in every aspect.

[elchalateco]

Amen to that timhdm. Well said.

[technogeist2k6]

If you don't know what PLINQ and Monads are, then it's a sure bet that you're going to fall behind.

Yesterdays heroes.