Visual Studio Team Interviews

ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria) in Visual Studio 2008 SP1

funkyonex — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:07:00 GMT

In this interview Saaid Kahn, a Program Manager on the Visual Studio Pro Tools team, shows us how to create an n-tier application against a database using ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria) and an Entity Data Model, both now available in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.

ADO.NET Data Services use WCF REST-ful services and provides all the plumbing so you can focus on the program logic by programming against a service proxy. ADO.NET Data Services allow you to easily create data services exposed on the web using URIs to point to pieces of data and simple, well-known formats to represent that data.

Saaid shows us how to create a simple service and then consume it using a Windows client via the "Add Service Reference" dialog in Visual Studio. He also walks through the client proxy methods that work with the data service.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Meet the Visual Studio Managed Languages Development Experience Team

funkyonex — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:45:00 GMT

In this interview I meet with the team that brings us the "experience" of coding in Visual Studio, also sometimes referred to as the VS IDE Team. I ask them how their design process works, what the top requested features are for the code editors, how they work with the language teams as well as what their favorite and hardest features are to build and test.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

New Features for Visual Studio 2008 Office Projects in SP1

funkyonex — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:49:00 GMT

In this interview, Kris Makey, a Developer on the Office Client team, shows us a couple new features of Office projects in Visual Studio 2008 SP1. First he demonstrates a new error logging feature that will log any end-user install errors to the Event Log making it much easier to tell what went wrong. He also shows us how you can place Winforms controls directly on document surfaces.

For more information on Office Development with Visual Studio visit the developer portal http://msdn.com/vsto and the team blog http://blogs.msdn.com/vsto/.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

New Editor Features in Visual Studio 2008 SP1

funkyonex — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:57:00 GMT

In this short interview, Yang Xiao, a tester on the VB IDE team is back demonstrating new improvements to the "Go To Definition", "Find All References" and Rename capabilities in the editor when flipping between code and XAML in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

XML Schema Explorer in Visual Studio 2008 SP1

funkyonex — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:03:00 GMT

In this interview, Yang Xiao, a tester on the Visual Basic IDE shows us the new XML Schema Explorer in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. This new window is invoked when you right-click on an XML literal element or namespace and select "Show in XML Schema Explorer" in Visual Basic programs. It's a nice way to visually display the structure of your schema sets which makes you even more productive when working with XML in Visual Basic.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

SQL 2008 & Occasionally Connected Client Support in Visual Studio SP1

funkyonex — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:07:00 GMT

In this interview, Milind Lele, a PM on the Visual Studio Pro Tools team shows us the improvements made to the tooling in Visual Studio SP1 for occasionally connected clients as well as the new data type support for SQL Server 2008. Using SQL 2008 built-in change tracking, you don't need to make modifications to your table schemas like you have to do with SQL 2005. Additionally he shows off a "smarter" DataSet designer where you can have tables coming from server and client data stores all contained within one model.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, VS Community

The P-Invoke Interop Assistant

funkyonex — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:14:00 GMT

In this interview, Jared Parsons, a Developer on the Visual Basic IDE, shows us the P/Invoke Interop Assistant available on CodePlex. The tool helps with converting unmanaged C code to managed P/Invoke signatures and vice versa. Say goodbye to digging through random header files or MSDN documentation to find the right constants, structures and signatures. The P/Invoke Interop Assistant does a smarter translation for you using SAL (Source Code Annotation Language).

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Visual Basic Language Design Meeting

funkyonex — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:21:00 GMT

I sat down with the VB Language design team and asked them about their design process, favorite features, their thoughts on other languages, as well as what the Visual Basic language strategy really is. It was a fun and enlightening interview with a group of really smart people lead by Paul Vick. You can find most of the team members on the Visual Basic Team Blog.

And as for the "grey shirt joke" that's mentioned in the interview, see this post on the VB Team Blog.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Tips and Tricks with the Interop Forms Toolkit

funkyonex — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:00:39 GMT

In this interview, Todd Apley, Senior Test Lead on the VB Team, shows us a variety of tips and tricks with using the Interop Forms Toolkit on Visual Studio 2008. He also shows us how to deploy a hybrid application built with VB 6 and VB.NET using XCopy deployment and RegFree-COM.

The Interop Forms Toolkit, available from the Visual Basic Developer Center, enables you to take a phased migration approach to upgrading your VB 6 applications. Instead of having to do a complete rewrite, you can instead create .NET user controls and forms that can be run from within your current VB 6 applications.

Todd will also be posting follow-up information on the VB Team blog.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

The New DataRepeater Control in the Latest Power Packs Release

funkyonex — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:41:46 GMT

In this interview John Hart, QA Lead on the Visual Basic Team, shows us the new DataRepeater control that has just been added to the latest Power Packs release on the Visual Basic Developer Center. Power Packs are free Add-Ins, Controls, Components, and Tools for you to use with Visual Basic to make developing applications even easier.

The new DataRepeater control allows you use standard Windows Forms controls to display rows of your data in a scrollable container giving you more flexibility and customization than standard grid controls.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

XML Properties and Enabling IntelliSense

funkyonex — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 01:36:02 GMT

Join me and Avner Aharoni, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, as he shows us how to enable XML IntelliSense in Visual Basic using the XML to Schema Wizard. Avner shows the differences between how IntelliSense works with axis properties on XDocument and XElement objects and speaks to how the wizard can infer multiple schemas from multiple sources as well as the affect XML namespaces have on IntelliSense.

Get started with LINQ to XML in Visual Basic with these How-to Videos. And here are some good articles too.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, VS Community

Brian Beckman Does Higher Algebra with Visual Basic

funkyonex — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:19:29 GMT

In this interview, Brian Beckman, Principal Developer (currently working with Erik Meijer), attempts to teach me higher algebra using Visual Basic, generics, and operator overloading. Brian is a wonderful person and brilliant physicist and we have a lot of fun with vectors and matrices and VB. I actually think I understood some of what Brian showed me ;).

Visual Basic is a great language for mathematics as well as all kinds of other applications. Brian makes the point that he has fun coding in VB because of its intuitive style and how easy it is to be immediately productive. Check out Brian's blog post on the VB Team blog! And for all you abstract algebra aficionados, here's the code to play with.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, VS Community

XML Literals Performance and Namespaces Explained

funkyonex — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:54:40 GMT

Join me and Avner Aharoni, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, as he dives into LINQ to XML and XML Literals in Visual Basic 9 and explains namespace bubbling and the performance gains you may see using XML Literals. This is a good interview to pay attention to if you are struggling with how XML namespaces work in Visual Basic.

One funny note here about the interview -- I was having a hard time pronouncing Avner's last name so when I introduced him I was so focused on getting his name pronounced correctly (which I did) that I messed up and said "feature related to SQL to XML" instead of "feature related to LINQ to XML" Doh!

Get started with LINQ to XML in Visual Basic with these How-to Videos. And here are some good articles too.

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, VS Community

Refactoring in Visual Basic with Refactor!

funkyonex — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 01:39:45 GMT

Join me and Lisa Feigenbaum, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, as she shows us how to use Refactor!, the free add-in for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 that provides over 30 refactorings for Visual Basic. Lisa walks us through all the new refactorings that were added for the latest version of Visual Basic 2008. You can download Refactor! here. You can get the demo code she used here.

Enjoy!
-Beth Massi, VS Community

Type Inference in Visual Basic with Bill Horst

funkyonex — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:20:43 GMT

In this interview Bill Horst, a member of the Visual Basic QA team, shows us the ins and outs type inference in the newest version of Visual Basic in Visual Studio 2008. He shows us how the new Option Infer works and how various types are inferred by the compiler without having to explicitly declare them. Type inference is one of the new features in Visual Basic to support LINQ.

Also make sure to check out these LINQ How-Do-I videos on the VB Dev Center.

Enjoy!
-Beth Massi, VS Community

Matt Gertz Plays Cards with Visual Basic

funkyonex — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:05:31 GMT

Matt Gertz, Development Manager on the Visual Basic team (well former Dev Manager, I'll let him explain ;)) shows off a Euchre game he's developed in Visual Basic that includes speech and sound. Matt is one of our best bloggers on the VB Team and he loves game programming as well as the VB Community. Matt talks about his experiences at Microsoft and the Visual Basic team, and what he'll be doing going forward.

Offline Data Synchronization Services in Visual Studio 2008

funkyonex — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:35:38 GMT

In this interview Milind Lele, Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, shows us his favorite features - the new Data Synchronization designer in Visual Studio 2008 and how the sync services for ADO.NET work to support occasionally connected scenarios. He shows us how to set up a local database cache using SQL Compact Edition and how to use it to store read-only data caches as well as how to add the code to support two-way synchronization.

If anyone's ever tried to implement an occasionally connected smart client, they'll very much appreciate this new tooling and framework in Visual Studio 2008. For more information on sync services catch up on The Synchronizer blog.

Building N-Tier Applications in Visual Studio 2008

funkyonex — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:39:42 GMT

In this in interview John Stallo, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, talks about WCF and simple N-Tier applications. He talks about a specific architecture scenario and some of the pain points we have building n-tier applications today. He then walks us through the improvements made in the DataSet Designer that physically separates the data access from the structure and validation code and then quickly creates a WCF service and a client that demonstrates this architecture.

Here's the step-by-step walkthrough of what John demonstrates.

0:00 – 1:33	Intro
1:33	Architecture discussion
6:30	N-tier project layout
7:15	Separating data access code (TableAdapters) from the structure (DataSet)
10:36	Adding validation code
12:55	Creating the WCF service
15:31	Adding the service reference on the client and reusing types
19:17	Databinding to the client form and calling the service

LINQ to SQL and the O/R Designer in VS 2008

funkyonex — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:53:56 GMT

In this in interview Young Joo, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, talks about LINQ to SQL and the new O/R Designer in Visual Studio 2008. He demos a typical business client-server scenario and shows how LINQ to SQL classes make it much easier to work with relational data in SQL Server 2005. Young also talks about architectures where he sees using LINQ to SQL having the most benefits.

Learn more about the O\R Designer and LINQ to SQL by viewing our "How Do I" video LINQ series on the Visual Basic Developer Center.

0:00 – 2:48	Intro
2:48	Demo Starts
3:22	Create LINQ to SQL classes
7:50	Adding Stored Procs on DataContext
9:06	Setting namespaces on the entity classes and browsing the generated code
12:20	Partial Methods
15:55	Databinding to LINQ to SQL objects
18:40	Loading customer classes and lazy loading related orders
21:02	Submitting changes
24:15	Using Stored Procs when submitting changes
27:45	Writing a LINQ to SQL queries
31:55	Calling stored procs through the Datacontext
36:06	Architecture usage discussion

Amanda Silver on Visual Basic LINQ Syntax in Visual Studio 2008

funkyonex — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:12:35 GMT

In this interview, Amanda Silver, a Lead Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, demonstrates new LINQ syntax around Joins and Aggregates that is now available in Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2. Amanda is a guru of LINQ in Visual Basic and gives insightful explanations of how to use this new syntax. Also check out new How Do I videos on LINQ to help get you started with LINQ in Visual Basic. More are added weekly!!

The interview starts out a little funny because the first 20 seconds of my video tape got chewed up so we had to reshoot the intro later in the day. Amanda thought of a funny way to make the transition as you'll see. See if you can pinpoint the movie that inspired her!

Visual Basic Intellisense Improvements in VS 2008

funkyonex — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 23:14:18 GMT

In this interview Lisa Feigenbaum, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Editor, shows us all the improvements made to the Intellisense support in Visual Basic including keyword and local variable Intellisense, new language feature support, and top customer requests. Although every feature is important, the biggest chunk of the work this cycle was supporting the new language features including LINQ. As Lisa puts it, "The most time was actually spent on the language features because the compiler team went crazy this release" [laughter ensues].

Join Lisa and I as she demonstrates exactly what we can look forward to with Visual Basic Intellisense in Visual Studio 2008!

Extension Methods in Visual Basic 9.0

funkyonex — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:36:35 GMT

In this in interview Scott Wisniewski, a Developer on the Visual Basic Team, talks about Extension Methods and shows us a couple interesting LINQ providers. In his own unique way, Scott dives into the meaning of Extension Methods and how they can extend types with discoverable methods which are part of the underpinnings of LINQ. He walks through some code written as an extension to LINQ query results to generate pie charts and then dives into a LINQ provider he built that hooks into Performance Monitor to give you real-time statistics on your LINQ queries. You can also read Scott's MSDN Magazine article here.

0:00 – 1:15	Intro
1:15	Simple Extension Method on a string
4:34	Pie chart extension
6:32	Discussion of Lambda expression/Inline Functions
9:39	Custom LINQ Provider utilizing Performance Monitor

TechEd Booth Demo: LINQ to XML in VB 9.0

funkyonex — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 20:15:44 GMT

In this quick TechEd booth demo, Chris Smith, a Developer on the Visual Basic Team, gives us a whirlwind tour of some of the unique features coming in Visual Basic related to XML.

Enabling LINQ: Kit George Shows Off His Favorite VB 9.0 Language Features

funkyonex — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 19:57:46 GMT

In this in interview Kit George, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team and a former member of the CLR Team, shows us his favorite language features that enable LINQ without actually talking about the queries themselves. His excitement about Extension Methods, Anonymous Types, Object Initializers, Type Inference and the new Refactor! shows through in typical Kit fashion. It's an interview that's as much fun to watch as it was to produce!

0:00 – 0:53	Intro
1:22	Extension Methods
7:31	Anonymous Types and Refactor!
13:16	Object Initializers
14:15	Type Inference
17:30	Option Infer
21:41	Making Inferred Types Explicit with Refactor!

Performance Improvements in Visual Studio 2008

funkyonex — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:40:50 GMT

In this in interview Cameron McColl, a Developer on the Visual Basic Team, shows us what kinds of performance improvements were made in Visual Studio 2008. He walks us through a set of scenarios that suffered from performance issues and then shows us the same scenarios in Visual Studio 2008 describing what was happening and how they fixed the issues.

0:00 – 1:45	Intro / History
1:45	Stepping in the IDE
4:08	Too Many Errors in the Task List
6:18	Favorite Fix
7:48	IDE Locks Up on Large Solutions
11:42	Editor Delay with Large Web Apps
13:56	Rebuild All on Large Web Apps