New Visual Studio, .NET Framework Previews

Community Technology Previews (CTPs) of Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio Team System 2010, and the .NET Framework 4 were released in Oct. 2008. New tools and technologies in these preview releases support emerging computing trends such as parallelism; better support for the different development team roles, such as testers and architects; and support for developing applications for the newest Microsoft platforms, such as Windows 7 and Windows Azure. However, the releases are planned for late 2009, so some features could still be delayed or removed.

The Core Developer Platform

The previews show that Microsoft plans major updates to three core pieces of its developer platform by late 2009.

Visual Studio (VS) is the most popular integrated development environment (IDE) for Microsoft’s platforms. The product supports the C#, Visual Basic, and C++ programming languages with graphical tools and wizards for designing, coding, debugging, and testing applications.

Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) enables application life-cycle management by improving collaboration and communication among developers, testers, architects, and project managers. It supports source code control, software project management, software build management, testing, and other group development tasks. VSTS consists of Team Foundation Server and a set of specialized editions of the VS IDE that support specific development roles, such as architects, developers, and testers, as well as Web-based access to many of the same features.