Interestingly , Microsoft has spent the past few years encouraging
Visual Basic 6 programmers to migrate to the new Visual Basic .Net
platform, which has had its share of complications. Microsoft’s plan to stop support has
been discussed for almost three years and the deadline already has been
extended once, said the press representative, who requested anonymity.
Visual Basic 6 has been supported longer than any other Microsoft
product, according to the representative. “Extended” support, which is
fee-based, will continue through 2008.
So I wonder if the next version,would add some refuge for the classical VB 6 developers.Especially with the Visual Studio Future and Live being talked bout.
source
Visual Studio Future ?!
Microsoft
may have just shipped Visual Studio 2005, but the company is already
starting to discuss its future plans for the development suite. Service
Pack 1 is in the works for next summer, says Visual C# product manager
Scott Wiltamuth, and Orcas -- the next VS release -- is being hashed
out.
The first service pack for the older Visual Studio 2003 will also ship
in the first half of next year, with Wiltamuth estimating an April
release. Soma Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft's
Developer Division, echoed those timeframes, saying the company would
provide hotfixes in the interim.
"My current thinking is that we will target the first service pack for
Visual Studio 2005 around summer next year," Somasegar wrote on his Web
log. "As we get more mileage on the product usage in your production
environment and get your feedback, we will firm up our plans here."
But Visual Studio 2005, known by its code-name "Whidbey," still has
some work ahead despite officially launching this week at a special
event in San Francisco. International versions of the product are
currently being completed, and the Team Foundation Server component
won't be ready until the first quarter of 2006.
Acknowledging that Microsoft took too long getting Whidbey out the
door, Somasegar says his division will now embark on a 3-4 month-long
milestone known as "MQ" that will attempt to fix those development
problems.
"MQ is a milestone that is post-Whidbey and pre-Orcas that will focus
on quality," explained C# team member Eric Malno. "We have learned a
lot from the previous 3 versions of Visual Studio that were built
around the .NET Framework, the biggest lesson that we learned on this
most recent version was that we were not agile enough and we took too
long to ship."
Malno added, however, that "MQ is not about servicing Whidbey. The MQ
milestone is about changing processes and making improvements on these
processes. It is NOT about code churn, adding features, or fixing known
bugs in VS2005."
After MQ, Orcas will begin to swim. "Orcas is all about enabling
platform adoption for Windows Vista, for Office 12 and for WinFX," says
Somasegar. "You can use Whidbey today to build Vista applications, for
example. But Orcas will make it a whole lot easier for people to build
Vista applications through easy to use designers and the like."
In a growing trend at the once-secretive company, Microsoft will
boost transparency during the development of Orcas. The company will
share specific feature plans and request feedback from customers before
details are set into stone.
Somasegar also says his division will begin work on a number of
incubation experiments -- a concept that has become a veritable
requirement within MSN and Microsoft search rival Google.
"In light of the 'Live' announcements last week, we are starting to
think about what it means for us in the Developer world," he explained.
"There are two things that we need to think about -- the kind of tools
support that we need to provide for our 'Live' services platform and
what does 'Visual Studio Live' look like."
Resources
1. Microsoft Talks Up Visual Studio Future
2.A PETITION FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNMANAGED VISUAL BASIC AND VISUAL BASIC FOR APPLICATIONS
3.Campaign to save Visual Basic 6 gathers support
4.Microsoft MVPs revolt
No matter what the result, it will turn out a a telling tale of
the three avtars ... Visual Basic ,Visual Studio Express and Visual
Basic Future. Thats not keeping in mind the compact and devices
versions !
KEep Clicking,
Bhasker