Code 'less' with Visual Basic 2005

CHENNAI: The development team of the new product Visual Basic 2005 — Visual Basic group program manager Steven Lees and Visual Studio Data Group group manager Alan Griver were in Chennai recently for their road show on Visual Basic .NET. They are part of the world tour being organized by Microsoft Corporation to popularize the use of the new tool, which is to be launched mid next year.

In an exclusive chat, the team spoke about the new tool and its features and their worldwide campaign in popularizing this development tool. According to them, the tool was designed and developed by around 1,000 developers over a span of three years and implemented within Microsoft before being taken to the open market.

Enumerating some of the additional features of Visual Basic 2005, Griver said, "VB 2005 takes productivity, ease of use and power to the next level for the .Net developers and it also reduces the amount of code that a developer writes by 50 percent or more in many common scenarios."

"Besides, this has been developed for Visual Basic developers by adding innovative language constructs, new compiler features, dramatically enhanced productivity and an improved debugging experience. It also includes several productivity enhancements including IntelliSense code snippets, Windows forms designer updates, IntelliSense filtering, debugger data tips, Exception Assistant," he added.

"One of the other main features of this product is that it adds many data-related features — DataSources window and drag-and-drop data binding. With Clickonce Deployment functionality, one can create and deploy desktop applications using safe and simple system-controlled installation and update mechanism, allowing for updates, as needed, from a central location," Lees said.

He further informed that for those who are using the Visual Basic 6 and are moving towards incorporating in .Net applications, Microsoft has launched a devise 'VB6 coded advisor,' which can run the existing VB6 application giving advise of how to improve the coding for a smoother transition.