Enhancements of Visual Studio.Net 2005

In this article, we will come across in brief the different enhancement that has been incorporated in the new release of Microsoft - Visual Studio .net 2005 code named Whidbey, which is touted to have major improvements in the software development experience and productivity.

Compared to the previous versions of .net that were released, in the new version, Microsoft has added Express versions for each of the languages C#, VB, C++, J# along with ASP .Net and SQL Server 2005 separately. All these versions of Express editions are freely downloadable and can be used for learning and development.
Below is a brief look at some of the feature enhancements in the new version.

Visual basic:
Visual basic IDE has been enhanced with a lot of features to improve developer productivity. Microsoft has tried reducing the pains of syntax errors by making the IDE more intuitive while development thereby easing the task of coding for both new and experienced programmers.

The Visual Basic IDE also includes the ability to edit code and continue to run without restarting the program.

Reduction in syntax errors by intuitive Intelli-senseDebugging support without restarting the applications, thereby reducing the time required for debugging cycle.

Improved Exception handling mechanisms. Error reporting with clear messages, paving the way for clear detection of errors.

Better upgrade support from old Visual basic 6.0 apps, There are many other productivity enhancements, including the MyServices abstraction. MyServices is a series of coded shortcuts that make it easier to find system and application resources.

For example, code such as My.Computer and My.WebServices are programmatic shortcuts to system resources and Web service references respectively.

Visual C++:
Visual C++ will offer expanded support for the CLR and the .NET Framework.
Better optimization facilities when compared with other .Net languages namely Profile Guided Optimizations (POGO).

This POGO technology enables the compiler to instrument an application and collect details on how an application is being used at runtime. This will be used by Visual C++ to optimize the code generated based on the real world patterns.

This is supported for 64 bit apps currently and will also be available for 32 bit apps. This is available as a part of the Build Menu in Visual Studio .Net.

Availability of 64 bit compilers targeting support for both Intel and AMD based hardware.
It offers enhanced support for Standard Template Library. STL is tuned for interacting with both managed code and data.

Support for a new category of type called Handle. Handles are pointers but use the Carat (^) symbol for access.

Visual C#:
C# Rapid App Development gets a major boost with .net framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. The new features generics, iterators, anonymous methods, partial types and refactoring are some of the items which deserve to be highlighted.

Generics are a parallel for C++ templates. They allow high level of code reuse and further speed up the process of Software development.Anonymous methods are dynamic methods which need not be pre-defined. They can be defined at the point of need. They can be used in place of event handler delegates.

Another huge boost could be the support for Refactoring. Refactoring is one among the basic tenets of Test Driven Development. Visual C# 2005 automates this feature by providing support for this feature.

Visual Studio 2005 delivers a long-requested feature, which is the ability to correct programming errors during debugging and continue to run without restarting the program.

The C# IDE includes a suite of tools that automate many common refactoring code tasks.
Developers can easily rename classes, fields, properties, and methods, extract code into its own method, reorder or delete parameters to a method, promote a local variable to be a parameter, encapsulate fields, and perform many other refactoring tasks.

The tools ensure that when any change is made, all dependant modules are also updated.Web Development :

Apart from the above the support for Web development is also enhanced to a great extent.
Support for integrated database development with SQL Server 2005Personal Web starter kit enabling easier web application development, multi browser support.