Introduction
Many developers are too busy (or lazy!) to learn new technologies and skills. This is a shame, as they miss out on
Producing better software
Making their lives easier through better and easier-to-maintain code
Opening up new promotion and job opportunities
Impressing people
First of all, let's get out of the way what this book is not.
This book is about breadth rather than depth, so it may not cover some areas in as much detail as you would want. Secondly, this book is written for Professional edition of Visual Studio 2010 (VS2010), so we will not be covering some of the great new features available in Premium and Ultimate editions of Visual Studio. It's not that these features are not important—it's more that I believe the majority of developers use Professional edition, and there's more than enough to cover already.
But We Will Give You All This!
This book will get you up to speed quickly on what's new, in just enough depth to get you going, but without getting bogged down with too much detail. When something big like VS2010 is released, I believe developers need and want an overview of what's new. Most of us have been developing software long enough now that we just need a lead-in to a new technology and can explore it in further detail ourselves. I don't believe it is necessary to read an entire 600-page book to begin benefiting from new technologies (although big tomes do look rather good on your desk).
This book will make you aware of the opportunities available in .NET 4 and VS2010, with the assumption that you will want and need to explore these further on your own.
When writing this book, I tried to keep in mind the following ideas:
Giving an introduction to new technologies
Showing the basics
Not getting too bogged down in detail so the book can still be easily read
Producing examples that are as simple as possible but not polluted with unnecessary detail
Code Examples
One of the things I find irritating about code examples on MSDN and in some books is that they often contain unnecessary code that obscures key concepts. When you are following an example, you don't care if it looks nice. The examples in this book are kept as short as possible, which I hope makes concepts easier to understand and reduces the amount of typing you have to do!
The other side of this, however, is that code in this book should definitely not be used as an example of good practice (e.g., the chapter on MVC). You should make sure that your code includes proper error handling, closing of connections, and so forth.
Danger—Work in Progress!
Much of this book has been written using prerelease versions of Visual Studio and .NET 4, which are, of course, subject to change. At the time of writing, documentation in some areas was very limited and some features didn't work, which limited the depth I could go into.
It is also likely that come final release, some of the code examples may need minor amendments and some screens may look slightly different. We will aim to update these in the future, but in the meantime, errata will be made available on the Apress web site at http://www.apress.com/book/errata/1247.
If you do find any omissions or errors, I would appreciate you letting me know by going to http://simpleisbest.co.uk/Home/VisualStudio2010, and I'll aim to let people know via my web site at http://simpleisbest.co.uk.