TABLE OF CONTENTS
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 | Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Basic 2008 |
This section of the Visual Studio 2008 Learning Guide looks at the new and improved features of Visual Basic 2008. As the previous section indicated, the introduction of LINQ had a lot to do with how the language changed. After reading this section, you can read about the changes Microsoft made to C#.
Visual Basic 2008 language specifications (Microsoft)
This Word document, based on VS 2008 Beta 2, provides an exhaustive list of Visual Basic 2008's language specifications.
Visual Studio 2008 Programmer's Guide: Visual Basic 2008 (MSDN)
This serves as a landing page for Microsoft's reference material for VB 2008 programmers.
Visual Basic 2008 "Feature Focus" series (Bart De Smet)
This blogger -- a C# MVP -- is writing a series of articles based on the VB 2008 feature set. He has penned 10 so far, covering topics such as XML support, partial methods and object initializers.
LINQ and XML programming in Visual Basic 2008 (SearchWinDevelopment.com)
As Visual Basic 9 nears its release, Microsoft is making a concerted effort to introduce developers to its new features. The combination of LINQ, IntelliSense and XML programming is quite possibly enough to make the release of Visual Basic 9 bigger than VB's move to the .NET Framework.
Visual Basic's future: LINQ, Orcas and, yes, VB 6 (SearchWinDevelopment.com)
Microsoft is working both on its next version of VB, which promises better data query capabilities, and on ensuring that VB 6 apps will run in Vista.
Visual Basic LINQ syntax in Visual Studio 2008 (MSDN Channel 9)
In this video, Amanda Silver, a lead program manager in the VB group, explains the Joins and Aggregates syntax options that were introduced in VS 2008 Beta 2.
Learning LINQ from SQL using Visual Basic 2008 (Jagadish Chararji)
As the title of the entry indicates, this blogger decided to build an application (in this case, an ASP.NET 3.5 Web site project), plug in several SQL SELECT statements and see how they could be expressed using LINQ.
Visual Basic team offering Extension Methods tutorials (SearchWinDevelopment.com)
Extension Methods allow Visual Basic 2008 developers to put custom functionality into types authored by someone else. Here we link to a six-part Extension Methods tutorial.
Introducing Extension Methods in Visual Basic 2008 (Mike McIntyre)
As this blogger put it, "Extension Methods enable [programmers] to "add" functionality to existing types without creating a new derived type." Here he identifies the seven types that can be extended, provides an example and offers some notes of caution.
Lambda Expressions in Visual Basic 2008 (MSDN Magazine)
Lambda Expressions are callable entities defined within a function and can be used the same way programmers use delegates. This article shows how they are related to Type Inference, to LINQ and to a concept called "variable lifting."
Type Inference in Visual Basic 2008 (MSDN Magazine)
This article explains why Type Inference is necessary in VB 2008 -- think LINQ -- and shows where it can be quite useful -- think Lambda Expressions and initializing anonymous types.
Visual Basic 2008 books (Mike McIntyre)
This blogger has provided a list of 11 VB 2008 books that have been published already or should be published in the next few months.
*** Go on to the next section of the Visual Studio 2008 Learning Guide: Visual Studio 2008 and C# 3.0
