VS2005 RTM on MSDN 14th October!

VBASPCoder wrote:

October 14th eh? It's almost 5:00p.m. PDT, but I haven't seen the product uploaded on MSDN Subscription site as of yet...

The key phrase in my original post is "subject to any last minute hitches". 

If you look at postings made over the last 48 hours you will see there are differing theories on when exactly VS2005 will be made available on MSDN Universal.

In summary, there are claims over on LonghornBlogs that the VS2005 product manager has said it definitely won't be available on MSDN Universal before the official launch date of November 7th.

This contradicts not only the Microsoft-sourced email I extracted above, and the information we were given at the start of last week but also a Channel 9 video interview with Microsoft staff that said it would be on MSDN "before 7th November".  My sources told us at the beginning of last week that regression testing had revealed a problem and there would be a delay, probably of a few days. The truth is decisions get made on an almost daily basis (especially when looking at bugs, their likely impact and time to fix) and so it's hard to tell what the real story is.

I'm still optimistic that it will be up on MSDN Universal by next weekend, but I may be being overly optimistic (which as a self-proclaimed pessimist is rather worrying )

scobleizer wrote:

I'm hanging out with a C# team member. He says it'll be next week sometime.

Thanks for that, Robert.

I once got contacted by despair.com asking me if I'd talk to  the Wall Street Journal for an article they were writing about the new "pessimism" approach in the business world. It turns out that I'd ordered so many "Pessimism" awards and "Pessimism mugs" (they're goblets with a marker half way up and the slogan "This mug is half empty" alongside it) for my dev team I was considered one of their best customers! I've always taken the attitude "hope for the best but expect the worst" because I've got burnt way too often by the nascent optimism of developers and project managers that invariably screw up expectations, costs and delivery dates.

That being said, nihilism will doom a project before it's gotten off the ground, so being pessimistic all the time is NOT a solution to the problem.

When I left a client I'd contracted at for four years the head of architecture there said he would miss my "unique approach of  approaching each project with a sense of gloomy optimism" (although "happy pessimism" would probably fit just as well) which probably best describes the whole pessimism/optimism thing! The trick is to be optimistic and encouraging with your team members whilst making it clear to management when they are being blinded by their own hype and ridiculously over-the-top optimism.

As for VS2005 it's a bit more personal than that. I've just started a new project for a client as "technical lead".  It involves taking a large amount of existing framework code and adapting it for delivery of a new product for one of their clients around Christmas time, with a hidden objective of refactoring the code where possible to better position it for the future. I've fought quite hard for this to be the client's first VS2005 web project. There is, as you'd expect, considerable opposition, because it's seen as high risk. Fortunately, the CTO supports the use of VS2005 (although the CEO and BAs regard it as too high risk) and basically I think I've won agreement that I can have "one day" to get the code up and running ready for regression testing.

There is a LOT of code and a lot of changes to sort out and I've basically agreed that that "one day" will be a Friday or a Monday (which gives me a weekend in addition, albeit in my own time). The timescales really needed that "one day" to be this Monday!

The delay screws me somewhat in that it messes some very tight deadlines up and next weekend isn't a lot of use to me as I am away at the Developer Developer Developer day (early start to drive to Reading, late return after the geek dinner) so effectively I'm going to have a rather shortened Sunday to try and get up and running, assuming that VS2005 is not only uploaded but downloadable over my rather poor 512MB broadband connection before next weekend(assuming I can have it all downloaded by the Friday evening).

Truth is that if it doesn't get released in its RTM version before next weekend I'm not going to be doing any "real" work with VS2005 until next year. Hence the extreme interest in it being available early.

I had heard "Tuesday or Wednesday" on Wednesday last week but of course RTM could have been today with them needing three days to get it up on MSDN Universal, mirrored etc.

So your source could be correct in that it's ready now, but your earlier information could also be correct in that it won't be on MSDN Universal until Tuesday.

And an update received this morning:

"There have been some last minute things found which the SQL team want to resolve before release, so we can expect a delay of a week or two."