Paul Vick and Amanda Silver - VB Language Futures

I don't know the interviewer but he's not nearly as energetic as Robert in most other videos.   Sort of picky about details and no "Wow" or encouragement given.   Would likely be a poor manager.

I love the idea of the video though and look forward to anything for making queries easier.   Amanda is right.   The latest generation is way "search centric."

Oh Very well
I wait for your video. VB is my love. I can remember that I was 10 and I was programming with GWBasic and now I'm 21 and developing with VB.NET

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/future/

Check that for details on what is changing in VB.NET 9.0.

I (and many others, I'm sure) still haven't forgiven MS for what they did to VB 6.0 (or VB 3.0 for that matter), but I'm happy to see that VB.NET is getting closer to parity with C# on language features.

Edited my post... is that Ken Levy doing the interview ?

great Videos, VB.net is looking great, Amanda ROCKS as normal… always like watching her demos, Linq ROCKS. I like it better on VB.net then C# and I think some of the stuff they are doing is just awesome. I hope the C# team hops on some of that dynamic stuff

Yes, that's me (Ken Levy, VS Data Product Manager) doing the interview and camera work for this Channel 9 interview. I'll be doing more, and any feedback on the interview, camera work, or topics to be covered in the future with the VB team is greatly welcome.

You are correct in your comments about my lack of enthusiasm in the video interview. I've been interviewed for Channel 9 about 4 times now, and I usually have lots of enthusiasm in front of the camera. Being new to going behind the camera, I was thinking of making sure the camera work was good (stable for the demos) and that I let the people on camera talk as much as possible and let things flow naturally. Upon reflection, I think I can do more to spice up future Channel 9 interviews I record, and also be more fun, humorous, and enthusiastic behind the camera. I have more Channel 9 interviews lined up to record, and this feedback here will help improve the 'entertainment' quality of future videos.

The people you interviewed were boring. They showed absolutely no enthusiasm or excitement in their product {which is great by the way. The product, not the lack of.}

If they showed a bit more excitement I'd watch it again, until then I'm gonna' leave this video alone.

ps. Great job on the camera work, not as shaky as Scobles.
- Steve

This new "linq" stuff is pretty neat but as Wacko already mentioned the current C# implementation is kinda unintuitive, but still very cool. I hope they will come up with an easier syntax for C# before this stuff ship, that is, if it ship.

Btw, 1 is not considered a "true" prime number... Get the Dr. Math explanation here.

great job ken one thing I would do is ask more questions... we know your a smart guy, but sometimes you say something and its like "What is he talking about?" I think if maybe you phrased those into questions and allowed the person being interviewed to answer them it would make your points a lot stronger... Other then that great job.

As far as the people who they where interviewing where boring ? Where does that come off? I mean Amanda Silver was not boring, I did not think paul was that boring either I think they where just very into there demo's which is nice sometimes to see people really get into the stuff they are working on. anyways great job guys

I have one question on Amanda's code near the start of the video. It's where Amanda is assiging some values in the constructor of a customer class.

My question is why does the code say:

Dim cust as Customer ...

Rather than Dim cust as New Customer ...

Thanks.

That looks like the new Anonymous Type Syntax which is something new in both c# and vb.net in there next versions

Public Class Customers

    Private _name As String
    Private _address As String

    Public Property Name()
        Get
            Return _name
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value)
            _name = value
        End Set
    End Property

    Public Property Address()
        Get
            Return _address
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value)
            _address = value
        End Set
    End Property
End Class


Public Class Form1
    Dim C As New Customers

    Public Sub Frank()
        C.Name = "Frank"
        C.Address = "Address"
        'Then do what ever you need to do'
        'Notice we had to create a Class'
    End Sub

    'New Syntax allows for the following'
    Public Sub Anon()
        Dim a As Animal = {Name := "Animal",Location := "Africa"}
        a.Name = "Lion"
        a.Location = "Asia"
        'This is like is we had created an Animal Class and newed up a new Animal'
        'Both Subs are doing the same thing'
    End Sub
End Class

I hope this make some sence I have not gotten a chance to mess with it since I do not have the RC bits of VS 2k5 but from what I have read and how it works in c# and from what i gather from the two VB.net videos this is how it would look under old and new.

Re Amanda's comment at 56:34...


Garth: So, Wayne, who do we have on today?

Wayne: Well, Garth, today we're going to learn all about computer programming.  Please welcome our guest, Paul Vick from Microsoft.

[Amanda Silver walks on stage, takes a seat]

Wayne: You're not Paul Vick.  You're a babe.

Garth: If you were a statement, you'd be Person.Babe = True.

Wayne: Dim Guest as New Babe.  Okay, party.  Bonus.

Amanda: Uh... I'm Amanda Silver... Paul couldn't make it, so he sent me to teach you all about Visual Basic.

[Wayne and Garth glance nervously at each other]




We're not worthy!!!  We're not worthy!!!

Loved the demo, and Amanda isn't too hard on the eyes, either.
 
For VB programming videos, why don't they use interviewers who
are actual VB programmers?

It is painful watching this interview, where Ken Levy, chimes in
comments and questions that are irrelevant or newbie, because
he has just heard one of them say a term that he's heard before.
Amanda and Paul look at Ken, like deer in headlights.

A good example was his rambling XML question, where Amanda
nervously smiles and says, "Sorry?"

Is he a Manager, because I'm having flashbacks.

 

 

I said the same thing about Ken in the interview with Paul and Erik Meijer.  Scoble makes interviewing look easy when it isn't so I'm cutting Ken some slack.

Amanda is quite striking though I imagine it can get irritating to have geeks fawn over her appearance instead of what she is saying.

JChung2006 wrote:

Amanda is quite striking though I imagine it can get irritating to have geeks fawn over her appearance instead of what she is saying.

I have that same problem.  Sometimes... *sniff*... I just want women to love me for my MIND... *sniff*

[dabs corners of eyes with Kleenex]

Karim:  You sound ....ummm.... so sincere!

I agree Alex, the syntax:
Dim cust as New Customer = { .Name="Me", .Address="123 Main" }

makes more sense than
Dim cust as Customer = { .Name="Me", .Address="123 Main" }

Because the statement is creating an instance of the customer object, and then assigning property values to it, however, in this instance, I could also say that what should happen is that the compiler should create an anonymous class that contains a .Name and .Address property (of string), but then somehow the compiler would then try and set the new customer class to the anonymous class which obviously aren't the same type.  Unless of course you are saying that any class can be set to any anonymous class and VB will iterate through all the properties as it copies them, but why stop at anonymous classes then?  And of course that will lead to the idead that you should be able to set any class to any other class so long as they share the same (or a superset) of the properties.  Very messy.

Would this work:
Dim cust as Customer
cust = { .Name="Me", .Address="123 Main" }

I doubt it.  It would be nice sometimes to be able to do a shallow copy of one class to a differing class like that though, but using the equal sign to do so would cause many more problems than it is worth.  I would expect a different syntax like:
Dim cust as new Customer With {.Name="Me",.Address="123 Main"}
and
Dim cust as Customer
cust=new Customer with { .Name="Me",.Address="123 Main"}
as shorthand to:
dim cust as Customer
cust=new Customer
with cust
   .Name="Me"
   .Address="123 Main"
end with
Or possibly the syntax:
Dim cust as new Customer With {"Me" as Name, "123 Main" as Address}
Or both. Then you could use it as a short way of passing a class prefilled with properties to subs and function like:
Call MySub(new Customer with (.Name.....))

Now, that said, I find the shortcut to setting many properties to be far the least useful thing they showed, unless there was some very significant reason for it, like speed of setting many properties or some such.

Of course my next question would be what about the new nullable types?

Would these work:
dim x = {1,2,3?,4}
dim x = {1,2,null,4}
dim x? = {1,2,3,4}
dim y as integer? = 3: dim x ={1,2,y,4}
as shorthand for
dim x() as integer? = {1,2,3,4}

Would this make an array of chars:
Dim c = {"A"c,"B"c,"C"c}

jjones252 wrote:

I don't know the interviewer but he's not nearly as energetic as Robert in most other videos.   Sort of picky about details and no "Wow" or encouragement given.   Would likely be a poor manager.

I love the idea of the video though and look forward to anything for making queries easier.   Amanda is right.   The latest generation is way "search centric."

hey there,

are the "wows", "cools" and "yeahs" really necessary for you? i would not consider them as an encouragement anyway. Imho the people present their object in a concentrated pragmatic fashion, and I love that.

Thanks to the ones involved.

Motley wrote:

I agree Alex, the syntax:
Dim cust as New Customer = { .Name="Me", .Address="123 Main" }

What?

Would

 new int x = 5

also make sense to you then?

"as" specifies a TYPE, using new in that context doesn't make sense.

Maybe the following would be reasonable, though:

Dim cust as Customer = new { .Name="Me", .Adress="123 Main" }