Visual Basic Language - Whidbey and Beyond
Rob Windsor, G6 Consulting
www.g6consulting.com
In this session we will discuss the additions made to the Visual Basic
language in both the upcoming Whidbey version, now called Visual Basic 2005,
and the following Orcas version which is also know as Visual Basic 9.0.
For VB 2005 we will focus on the three most significant additions: Generics,
the My namespace, and Code Snippets. Generics allow classes to be parameterized
by the types of data they store and manipulate, the most common example being
a strongly typed collection. The My namespace gives quick access to the most
commonly used funtionality from the Framework Class Libraries (FCL). Because this
functionality is centralized under the one namespace it is much easier to explore
using Intellisense. Finally, Code Snippets allow you to quickly add
a commonly used snippet of code (e.g. delcaring a property and it's backing field)
and then easily edit the parts that are unique for what you're currently coding (e.g.
the name and type of the field and the name of the property).
If time allows we will also take a look at the plans Microsoft recently unvieled for
VB 9.0 (or Orcas). The most significant addition being Language Integrated Query (LINQ). This
addition to the framework will allow languages to use SQL like synatx to query data from
im-memory objects, XML, and traditional relational data. For more information on the long-term
future of Visual Basic, check out this site.