Some of the early session preferences are rolling in for the PDC and, as expected, I’m getting spanked by Anders and Raymond. I guess that’s just what you get when you go up against a Distinguished Engineer and the most popular Microsoft blogger… Seriously, though, if you’re going to the PDC, do take a moment and...

Some of the early session preferences are rolling in for the PDC and, as expected, I’m getting spanked by Anders and Raymond. I guess that’s just what you get when you go up against a Distinguished Engineer and the most popular Microsoft blogger… Seriously, though, if you’re going to the PDC, do take a moment and...

In my recent entry on dynamism, I noted that one person we’ve been working a lot with lately is Erik Meijer, late of C?. Although Erik appears to be retaining a healthy dose of language agnosticism, it appears that we’ve started to turn him over to the dark side as he’s become quite enthusiastic about VB…...

As longtime readers may remember, I suggested a long time ago that if/when VB added refactoring we might not call it “refactoring.” This immediately raised a hue and cry about how I was saying that VB users were “dumb,” how I was turning my back on an industry term that “everybody knows,” how this was just...

As longtime readers may remember, I suggested a long time ago that if/when VB added refactoring we might not call it “refactoring.” This immediately raised a hue and cry about how I was saying that VB users were “dumb,” how I was turning my back on an industry term that “everybody knows,” how this was just...

So with tongue firmly in cheek, I complain about how some people get their names in their session titles and some don’t and then Brad has to go call my (fake) bluff and put my name in my abstract. So now I get to see just how little name recognition I really have out there compared to Anders and Raymond… Well, I’ll show him!...

So with tongue firmly in cheek, I complain about how some people get their names in their session titles and some don’t and then Brad has to go call my (fake) bluff and put my name in my abstract. So now I get to see just how little name recognition I really have out there compared to Anders and Raymond… Well, I’ll show him!...

Now that I know that Brad added Anders and Raymond's names to their talk titles to pique people's interest in their talks, I am shocked, shocked, that he didn't do the same to my session. Doesn't he know who I am?!? Doesn't he know that the mere mention of my name would cause thousands of people to flock to the PDC to hear whatever I might...

More information about the PDC continues to drip out drop by agonizing drop. As Brad notes, most of the PDC session abstracts are online, including: Visual Basic: Future Directions in Language InnovationVisual Basic is designed to be the most productive language for writing data-centric, solution-focused applications. Meet with the designers of...

Joel Pobar has posted an excellent start of what should be an interesting set of blog entries on how dynamic/scripting languages work on the CLR. When listing out the dynamic languages available on the CLR he includes among them VB, which may come as a surprise to some people. In many places the cult of Option Strict may have convinced...

Joel Pobar has posted an excellent start of what should be an interesting set of blog entries on how dynamic/scripting languages work on the CLR. When listing out the dynamic languages available on the CLR he includes among them VB, which may come as a surprise to some people. In many places the cult of Option Strict may have convinced...

A while ago I mentioned that the first computer I programmed was an IBM 5100. It was not, however, what got me into computing in the first place. For that I can thank the Coco: I can still remember seeing one of these in Radio Shack in a mall on the edge of Chapel Hill. I was 10 and was shopping with my mom and my grandmother. I wandered into...

In the Micronews (our internal newspaper), there was an article talking about teaching English that used the following quote from George Orwell: To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling...

In the Micronews (our internal newspaper), there was an article talking about teaching English that used the following quote from George Orwell: To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling...

Joe Binder, one of our PMs, has written an article on MSDN on how you can extend the ‘My’ namespace. The ‘My’ namespace is one of the cool new features that we’re introducing in VB 2005. If you’ve ever been interested in adding your own stuff to ‘My,’ check it out!