If you’re anything like me, you’ve been enjoying the writings of Tim Patrick for many years. Sadly, your enjoyment has been limited to Tim’s mother tongue of English, since his publishers did not see fit to include a universal translator in each published work. Now there is good news for foreign language readers hungry for [...]

Last week I flew to Seattle to attend the Microsoft MVP 2009 Summit for its selected MVPs (“Most Valuable Professionals”) . Don’t let the fancy name fool you. Although those in attendance are most valuable to Microsoft, and despite what you may have heard, the MVPs are still fed buffet style, and without a team [...]

Since 1991, Visual Basic has held the hand of new and experienced programmers as they meandered their way through the minefield of Windows application development. That’s why we here at Microsoft are pleased to announce some of the exciting changes included in the upcoming release of Visual Basic 2010. These new features will simplify each [...]

When Microsoft moved Visual Basic from its version-6 roots to the new world of .NET in 2002, it endowed the language with a level of power and flexibility never before seen in a BASIC variant. But that move also brought a competitor on to the scene: C#. This new language-on-the-block is a formidable rival, especially [...]

My latest software development book, Programming Visual Basic 2008, is now available at better bookstores everywhere. If you don’t have one of those better bookstores in your neighborhood, you can also purchase the book online, from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, or other resellers of general and technical books. Programming Visual Basic 2008 by Tim Patrick [...]

The upcoming version of Visual Basic, formerly code-named “Orcas,” will be chock full of new technological breakthroughs and productivity features, but one standard feature will be absent. The commenting feature has been stricken from the final release of Visual Basic 2008. This commenting feature allowed you to insert descriptive content alongside source code by starting [...]

It’s just after lunchtime and I’m still installing Visual Studio 9.0 Beta 1 (codename “Orcas”). I started around 9:00am this morning by putting Windows XP Pro SP2 on a Microsoft Virtual PC drive. Virtual PC is a cool program, with its computer-in-a-computer abilities. In the real world, it would be like having a double-scoop ice [...]