Visual Studio 2008

Well, lots of other folks beat me to the punch about the announcement, but I was busy installing the product yesterday :) It's a popular product *inside* the company as well, and it took about 5 hours to grab from our internal share ... You can grab trial copies from here, and you can download the free (Express) editions from here.

I want to point out the single most useful feature of VS 2008: the CTRL key. The next time you've got an Intellisense tool tip / drop down obscuring the view of some other thing that you want to see, just press and *hold* the CTRL key. You'll see the obscuring window go translucent so that you can see what's behind. Wonderful feature.

If you want to see the full list of the new C# 2008 key bindings, you can download the poster. If you want even more productive key bindings, make sure you go grab yourself a copy of viemu, which brings vim emulation to VS.

Oh, and you can download my updated vssettings file if you want the minimalist black background that all of the cool kids are using these days.

Comments

[Fredrik]

Hi John,

Great to know that VS2008 has arrived with .net 3.5 framework, which is a must for DLR.

Can you guide us, how many months are we still away for final release of IronRuby or IronRuby version 1.0.

when can we start coding in VWD express with IronRuby.

[John Lam]

@Fredrik:

I wouldn't expect to see us going 1.0 before the second half of next year.

[Fredrik]

Thanks John,

Can you give us a round about date for CTP or Beta, where we can lay our hands to actually learn it and explore more.

[Maccari Claudio]

And what about VS2008 support for IronRuby ?

[IronRuby]

Please Focus more on IronRuby.

(1) CTP Date
(2) Beta Version
(3) IDE for IronRuby Planned
(4) Rails Support
(4) MySql/SQl 2005 support
(5) Futuristic IronRuby Plans.

Thanks

[A.Tripathy]

Hi John:

Is IronRuby not being offered on the VisualStudio Express 2008 edition.

I have been using using ruby quite emphatically these days at work and at home, and was wondering, if the visual studio 2008 express was going to include or offer IronRuby at some point.

It would be nice.

[Andrew Robinson]

John, have you ever tried flipping the color channels on your monitor? You get just about the same affect that your vssettings file produces but everything is reversed (start menu, vs menus, outlook, etc.) About the only thing that doesn't look good are pictures on the web, but if you are using a pure dev machine, it might be worth a try.

[IronRuby]

Hi John,

I just found this comment on " Rob Conery's " Blog about IronRuby and SubSonic. This blog also holds your name.

Perhaps you can answer this..

----------------------------
Hi Rob,

Very good informative blog indeed.

I am curious to know one step ahead, since after few months DLR would be the preferred way for other dynamic languages to enter .net world.

As per John Lam, the person behind IronRuby… He says…” My mission would not be complete, if i cannot run Ruby on rails with Iron Ruby “. I want to make Ruby as Class 1 language for DLR.

Ok great move by MS for porting all other good languages to DLR.

But the question that arises is… ” How will IronRuby run Ruby on rails on DLR without Active Record….?

(1) Will they develop new Active Record type tool that runs only on DLR.

(2) Will they utilize SubSonic in a different way, that runs as totally Active Record Solution for DLR.

(3) Ruby On Rails is also an MVC… Will IronRuby create a different Ruby on rails MVC for DLR. that supports SubSonic…

OK… it sounds to early now… But worth thinking whats going to happen in future. SilverLight 2.0 is based on DLR and arrives almost in March 2008, so my question is only 3 months ahead not very far…

Hope i am able to clarify few things.

Thanks
---------------------------
The answer from Rob is here...
@Paraag: Rails is simply a stack that runs on Rubyw.exe - in other words a bunch of scripted commands that live in a directory. The thing here is that the Rails app is handled (as of now) by Rubyw.exe (through CGI).

The thing Jon is making is (essentially) a replacement for Rubyw.exe - so in essence a Rails app should be “droppable” onto the DLR.

Now I’ve never played with IronRuby - this is just what I’m guessing at. If I’m wrong - someone out there lemme know cause my whole thought here is you can still do Rails - just execute it (5 times faster) using the DLR.

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Hi John,

Per haps you can focus more on this. Here's the original thread...
http://blog.wekeroad.com/2007/12/14/aspnet-mvc-choosing-your-data-access-method/#comments

Thanks

IronRuby