Most Valuable Logo

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 of valets to shine their pocket protectors. And there were pocket protectors everywhere, because the MVP Summit is all about hardcore Microsoft geeks getting face time with the business and technical movers and shakers inside the company.

It’s my second year as an MVP, but this was my first time to attend the summit. More than just a chance to learn about new technology, the conference is a time when key supporters of Microsoft technologies can provide extreme feedback to Microsoft development teams, and vice versa. A lot of that feedback deals with products and features that Microsoft is designing for release over the next several years. Unfortunately for my avid readers, all of the happenings are covered by a Non-Disclosure Agreement. I could tell you what we discussed, but then I would have to have Bill Gates release a jar of mosquitoes on you.

There are approximately 4,200 MVPs worldwide, a large group of “technical community leaders from around the world who are awarded for voluntarily sharing their high quality, real world expertise in offline and online technical communities,” according to the well-crafted verbiage on the MVP web site. About 1,500 of these awardees spent four days at the Microsoft campus and in downtown Seattle talking technical turkey and rubbing elbows with the Big M’s leadership.

My award area is Visual Basic, granting me access to sessions led by program managers in the Server and Tools division. In addition to talking about upcoming releases of Visual Studio, Visual Basic, and C#, I sat in on presentations covering F# (Microsoft’s new functional programming language for .NET), Microsoft Surface (there’s one on display at the downtown Seattle Sheraton Hotel), the Managed Extensibility Framework (or MEF, an API that helps you design plug-ins for your applications), and Silverlight (Microsoft’s Flash-like web-centric application tool).

The half-week culminated in a rousing speech by Steve Ballmer, who stated in no uncertain terms, “I’m a PC.” He’s pretty big on Microsoft. But even more enjoyable than the cheerleading sessions was the ability to meet with other MVPs from around the world. I really enjoyed meeting the Japanese MVPs for Visual Basic, C++, ASP.NET, and C#, though not necessarily in that order. Many of them are members of two key technical support groups in Japan, COMU+ and Wankuma.

If you have time in your busy schedule, I highly recommend that you get selected by Microsoft as an MVP and take part in the annual summits. Not only will you get a front-row seat on some amazing and new technologies, you’ll get to wax rhapsodic about it on your blog.

(Image Credits: Microsoft)

New From Microsoft!

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 and every programming task you encounter, and will help bring about an age of language parity never before offered from any company that owned a collection of popular programming languages.

Here are just a few of the great changes included in Visual Basic 2010.

• No More Line Continuation Characters. Hit the Enter key whenever you want; we don’t care! To assist you in identifying the end of each line, use the new “Full Line Termination” character–the semicolon.

• Variable Declaration Simplification. As a Visual Basic programmer, you’re always looking to simplify your programming experience. So now, instead of the verbose, wasteful variable declaration syntax found in past editions, you’ll be able to use the new time-saving syntax. (Don’t forget that new Full Line Termination character.)

Old: Dim customerName As String

New: String customerName;

• Simplified Control Structure Syntax. Block statements such as If/End If and For/Next are great, but they don’t allow you to easily find the end of the block from the beginning, something that is especially vexing in large block statements. The new Block Match feature of Visual Studio lets you jump quickly between the start and end of a block. To support this feature, Visual Basic requires the new “Curly Brace” syntax for loops, conditions, and Select Case statements.

• Lower Case Alternatives. If your pinkie fingers are all tuckered out from typing the mixed-case keyword names that define Visual Basic, you’ll love our new lowercase alternatives. For instance, instead of “Imports,” try “using.”

These are just a few of the productivity enhancements you find in every box of Visual Basic–if we were still shipping physical boxes, that is. And remember, kids, the new version of Visual Basic makes a great gift for the C# programmers in your life.

(Text copyright (c) 2009 by Tim Patrick. Image Credits: Microsoft)

Programming Visual Basic 2008

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 in terms of perceived language value. Some commentators believe that C# will become so popular that Microsoft will discard its beloved Visual Basic into the ultimate bit bucket. What started out as an inside joke on C++ developers has turned into the VB community’s worst nightmare.

It’s not that C# is any better than Visual Basic; the very idea is laughable. But for some reason, people actually think that C# is more powerful. The root cause of this misperception has remained elusive, but after years of careful observation, I believe I have identified the core issue.

The Problem

The problem is one of productivity. For nearly two decades, Visual Basic programmers have written complex applications that ran the engines of industry and business, typically with little development effort, and often coming in under budget and in half the expected time. It was all thanks to that great VB feature set, and to the talents of programmers intelligent enough to select the best language. With all of that extra time and money on their hands, these developers were buying pinball machines for the office, searching for philosophical answers to life’s questions through Minesweeper, and performing other similar tasks that allowed them to maintain their competitive edge in the coding world.

Unfortunately, some of these developers lacked the professional business sense to make these off-project tasks look like real work. So when management came down the hallway, instead of seeing highly-productive software developers preparing emotionally for the next big project, they saw kids playing games on their computers. When those managers discussed the situation at the management lobster fest that night, they found that other departments had resolved the issue by replacing VB programmers with C# programmers. With C#, the development team had their faces to the screen 24/7/365, with worried looks and with a steady stream of requests for more money, more time, and more understanding. Clearly, these were real programmers with real problems to solve. For management, migrating their projects from Visual Basic to C# provided the urgency needed to hit up the company for a bigger budget.

The Solution

I am the first to admit that I didn’t take the warning signs seriously. But now that over-extended software projects have brought the economy to its knees, it’s time to act. There are clear actions that we, as Visual Basic developers, can take to restore the language to its rightful place in the minds and hearts of business leaders.

• Stop having so much fun. For instance, wear regular shoes to the office instead of roller skates. I know this is a painful decision, especially given the sense of euphoria that Visual Basic development brings to your daily routine. But it’s for the good of the VB community.
• Lower your productivity. You need to make development in Visual Basic look difficult. Try swapping out your standard English keyboard with a German-language model. Or better yet, develop prototypes of your new application in C# and then migrate these portions back to Visual Basic for the final release. This should more than double your development time.
• Lower your technical standards. Focus your less-than-rigorous efforts on the key areas of documentation, code comments, and code consistency. Unfortunately, Visual Basic includes a level of syntax standardization not fully enforced in C# applications, so your code is still going to look slick no matter how sloppy you are. But do your best. Click here to find out what Microsoft could do to assist you in this endeavor.
• Play Minesweeper: Visual Studio Edition. To the uninitiated, it looks just like Visual Studio, but it’s actually a highly addictive time waster that is guaranteed to increase IQ points.
• Sob audibly at your desk. Make it seem like developing in Visual Basic is a chore. We all know it’s not, but your boss needs some proof of your hard work that he can discuss at your next review. You’ll also make friends more easily with C# developers–if you want to, that is. They tend to be easily fooled; they already believe that C# is a superior language, so they’ll pretty much believe whatever you tell them.

Don’t expect things to change overnight. It has taken seven years of steady use for C# to exert its influence. But by engaging in a little faux misery now, you will have the inner peace of knowing that your productivity tool of choice will serve the computing needs of both major corporations and small businesses joyfully for decades to come.

For more great advice on Visual Basic development, click here to select and purchase one of Tim Patrick’s books on VB programming.