At InnerWorkings, we’ve been tracking the progress of Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) for most of this year. While the official ‘release’ and ‘launch’ dates continue to confuse my addled brain (release party in November, launch party in February), there’s no doubt that VS 2008 will be making a significant splash. Coupled with the launch of SQL Server 2008, the next 6 months promise to be a wild time for .NET developers everywhere.
To stay on top of Microsoft’s planned developer tool releases, we completed a roadmap survey with our customers and partners in April of this year. The results of that web survey made it abundantly clear that the following topics were high on the minds of our .NET developer audience.
As you can see from the survey data, C# 3.0 came out on top of the list with a 70% first preference rating from those surveyed, followed by LINQ and VB 9.0. It was fitting that ADO Entities came in last as Microsoft still has some work to do with ADO on the .NET Framework 3.5.
With the release of Visual Studio 2008 (Beta 2), we decided to get serious about Orcas and release some early learning content. Just to prove that we actually listen to our customers, our very first Drill is titled New Features in C# 3.0 and it’s available today. Check it out!
If you’re a .NET developer looking to learn C# 3.0 off-the-bat and gain (legitimate) bragging rights, we’ve got you covered. New Features in C# 3.0 runs to 3 hours of coding time and it covers the following essentials to help you get up to speed:
- Anonymous types
- Object and Collection initializers
- Extension methods
- Auto-Implemented Properties
- Lambda Expressions
- LINQ Extension Methods with Lambda Expressions
- Basic LINQ queries
- Advanced LINQ queries
As usual, we’re tackling C# 3.0 with our rigorous array of coding challenges that are 100% practice-based and must be completed directly in Visual Studio 2008 (Beta 2). No wishy-washy simulations or slow virtual environments here; you’ll build code solutions directly in the IDE and get immediate feedback on your work from our code checking engine.
We bring you the latest .NET training all in the comfort of your own living room, den, deck, attic, or wherever you happen to be. If that wireless connection is spotty out in your tree house, don’t worry - you can work offline and we’ll synchronize your solution files, progress, and scores when you’re back with a nice stable internet connection.
Enjoy our latest venture in C# 3.0 and the next time I’ll be talking about our LINQ releases.
