InfoQ Homepage Visual Basic.NET Content on InfoQ
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A look at Visual Basic 11
Visual Basic 11 brings with it several new features including asynchronous functions and the long awaited iterators.
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Behind the Scenes of Roslyn
Microsoft's Channel 9 has released an interview with the principal developers of the Roslyn project. Karen Ng, Matt Warren, Peter Golde, Anders Hejlsberg provides some useful information on the project's goals and what the team is trying to accomplish.
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Building Visual Studio Extensions with Roslyn
Yesterday we talked about the Roslyn Compiler and Workspace APIs. Today we take a look at the Roslyn Service APIs and how they can be used to extend Visual Studio. The extensions we will look at today are Code Issue, Quick Fix, Code Refactoring, Completion Provider, and Outliner.
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Microsoft Unveils its Compiler as a Service
Early reports suggested that the Rosyln project would just be a better runtime-accessible compiler and REPL-style interpreter, but it turns out that it is much more ambitious. By opening up the entire compiler pipeline Microsoft hopes that developers will create a wide variety of tools at many levels.
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The Cost of Async and Await
Asynchronous techniques can offer significant improvements in an application’s overall throughput, but it isn’t free. An asynchronous function is often slower than its synchronous alternative. Stephen Toub of MSDN Magazine has recently covered this topic in an article titled “Async Performance: Understanding the Costs of Async and Await”.
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C# and Visual Basic on the WinRT API
While Win32 APIs can be called from .NET languages, doing so can be quite difficult. So for the last two year Microsoft has been building a replacement known as Windows Runtime or WinRT with cross-language support in mind. WinRT components can be created in both C++ and .NET and may be consumed by both of those as well as JavaScript.
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.NET Micro Framework now supports Visual Basic, Remote Software Updates
The open source platform for embedded devices, .NET Micro Framework, has begun beta testing of version 4.2. This build includes the work of both Microsoft and third-party developers, something that is becoming increasingly common as Microsoft redefines its role in the open source community.
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Update to .NET Framework 4
A General Distribution Release of .NET 4 was published on the 11th of June. This includes numerous fixes and features, many of which were previously published as individual hot fixes. There are also updates to the HTML 5 and portable library support. For your convenience we have sorted the fix list by technology. For the complete list, including file versions, see KB 2468871.
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New.NET Async Control Flow Explained
Alan Berman recently explained the details of how the new Async and Await keywords impact the flow of control. Using these keywords allows an asynchronous function's return values to be processed without using explicitly defined callbacks. This allows for more natural code grouping, as calling and processing of an asynchronous function can occur in the same function.
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Visual Basic is Losing Its Runtime Library
The rather extensive runtime library used by Visual Basic and its compiler has been a major stumbling block for the language. Both the Windows Phone 7 and the XBox 360 don’t support the library, making clumsy workarounds necessary. With Visual Basic 10 SP 1, Microsoft once again tries to get it right.
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Why Microsoft Believes that VB and C# Need an Asynchronous Syntax
The new Async CPT for VB and C# looks like it may actually make it into the core language. But with all the emphasis on multi-core systems, why is Microsoft investing so heavily in syntax for designed specifically for making single-threaded asynchronous programming easier?
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Sneak Peak: Asynchronous Syntax for Visual Basic and C#
In a recent blog post the Visual Basic team let slip an announcement that Visual Basic and C# would be getting a new syntax for asynchronous programming. Built on top of the Task Parallel Library that was introduced in .NET 4, this adds the Async and Await keywords to both languages.
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Windows Phone 7 has put the .NET Language Coevolution Promise in Doubt
In 2009 Microsoft’s Lucas Bolognese announced a commitment to co-evolution for C# and Visual Basic. And the productization of F#, some have assumed it extends to that language as well. But by only offering C# in the initial release of WP7, this promise has been brought into doubt.
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Optional Parameters Are Gaining Ground in .NET
Optional parameters have always been part of .NET, but with C# unwilling to support it, using them was generally considered taboo unless work with COM libraries. Now that C# 4 does support them, we are starting to see them used for a lot more than just legacy code. Other uses include interoperability with dynamic languages, immutable data structures, and various parts of ASP.NET MVC.
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A Short History of Dynamic Typing in Visual Basic
Visual Basic has always been on the fence between static and dynamic typing. In the beginning VB supported late binding, which is known today as “duck typing”. Through the years it has adopted support for stricter typing, though recently it has swung the other way with full support for the dynamic language runtime.