Writing
Since I’m joining the T-SQL community, I thought I’d try my hand at a “T-SQL Tuesday” that I could actually have an opinion about. This week’s question (hosted by Robert Davis, a.k.a. @SQLSoldier on Twitter) is “How do you learn? How do you teach? What are you learning or teaching?” and is very relevant for me because, of course, I just joined the T-SQL team a short while ago and am doing a whole lot of learning at the moment. How I learn I was going to say “by doing,” but I don’t think...
While I was visiting MSR Cambridge this week with some other people from Redmond, Beth put up the Beta 2 version of the Visual Basic Language specification on our developer center--so she got to beat me to the announcement! This updated language specification corresponds to Visual Studio 2008 and covers the following major new features: Friend assemblies (InternalsVisibleTo) Relaxed delegates Local type inferencing Anonymous types Extension methods Nullable types Ternary operator Query expressions Object initializers Expression trees Lambda expressions Generic type inferencing Partial methods The following features are not covered but should be shortly: XML Members...
Random question for people: how many people out there actually ever look at the VB language specification? The original purpose of writing the language specification was purely for internal use, done so we'd have a reasonably authoritative explanation of the language aside from "whatever the compiler does" and "whatever MSDN happens to say." And to have a place where historical thinking could be preserved for future generations of VB team members, so there'd be some chance in hell that we could avoid making the same mistakes twice. But how useful is it for the public? Not that much, I would...
Dan Mabbutt has some very nice things to say about The Visual Basic .NET Programming Language. Keep it up and maybe there'll be a new edition sooner rather than later!
Over the past several months, I’ve been getting questions as to whether I’m going to be updating my book, The Visual Basic .NET Language, for VB 2005. The unfortunate answer is: not at the moment.
The first problem is that the VB .NET book market has been quite soft over the past year or two. This is not entirely surprising — although uptake on VB .NET has been very good considering the fact that the shift from VB6 to VB 2002 or VB 2003 was significant, it’s been (as I’ve always said it would be) a long-term process. We’re seeing continuously growing...
Now I know that you're all saying to yourselves: "Paul, I read your blog religiously, I've bought your book, I've gone to all the talks you've given, I've listened to the .NET Rocks show you were on, I'm even considering getting your name tattooed across my... What else can I possibly do to show my love for you?"I'm glad you asked!My friends at Addison-Wesley let me know that my book, The Visual Basic .NET Programming Language, has been nominated for a Sys-Con Reader's Choice award! I'm up against some pretty stiff competition, so I urge everyone who liked my book...
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