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Visual Studio .Net
Microsoft is planning to release Visual Studio .Net sometime in early 2002. The Beta 2 version, which is fairly stable, is available to everyone for a nominal fee. This is the first product to be developed for Microsoft’s new Net Framework. This article will cover interesting features of Visual Studio .Net and Visual Basic .Net, which is part of it.
Visual Studio .Net is the next version in the Visual Studio family and is the direct successor to Visual Studio 6.0. The new version differs from the prior version in significant ways.
First, there is a common Interactive Development Environment (IDE). This means that regardless of the language you are developing in, the visual portion of the systems are the same, the way forms are created, the way debugging is done, etc. This also means that code written in different languages can coexist in the same project. The languages that are available have changed. Visual FoxPro has been dropped and is now offered as a separate product. A new language C# (pronounced C sharp) has been added. C# is similar to C++, but more user friendly. Java users will recognize many of its features. C++ and Visual Basic are the languages that remain. While C++ is very similar to the 6.0 version, Visual Basic has changed dramatically.
Another major change is the use of an intermediate language. Any language code is first translated into an intermediate language that is like an assembler language. This language is then translated into machine code. This and the common IDE means it is very easy to add new languages. Many are already available as add-ins, including such diverse choices as COBOL, Perl and Java.
Currently VS.Net only deploys on Windows because of the intermediate language setup. That may change some day. It is possible to write to compiler to read the intermediate language and create machine code for another operating systems such as UNIX or Mac OS. If Microsoft does not do this, some third party will.
The Visual Basic language used in VS.Net has changed in some major ways. It is now completely object oriented. Full inheritance that has long been desired by the VB community is now part of the language, but it is not upwardly compatible with VB 6.0. While there is a conversion utility that does a pretty good job, it is not perfect. VB6.0 programmer will find the learning curve steeper than prior upgrades. Although the VB programmer will find the new language awkward to use at first, the many new features will make the change worthwhile.
For more of VS.Net and the Net framework, see the Microsoft web site (www.microsoft.com) or the many books and articles on the subject.
VB.Net Programming with the Public Beta by Hollis & Lhotka was used in part to prepare this article.