1.2. What Are .NET 4.0 and VS2010 All About?

VS2010 and .NET 4.0 lay the foundations for the next epoch of .NET development and correct a number of omissions. I consider that we can divide the changes into four main categories:

• Efficiency

• Maturation of existing technologies

• Extensibility

• Influence of current trends

Let's take a whirlwind tour of these now.

1.2.1. Efficiency

One of the first things you will notice in VS2010 is the shiny new integrated development environment (IDE) based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). The IDE contains some great features available previously only in add-on products such R# and Refactor (note that there is already a VS2010 version of R#). IDE highlights include box selection, snippets, class stub creation, call hierarchy, and quick search; we will look at these features in Chapter 2.

There are also some great language enhancements that can make code cleaner, such as optional and named parameters, dynamic functionality, and changes to variance that will be covered in Chapter 3. Some of these changes will also assist developers working with COM, who frankly need all the help they can get, poor guys and gals (a moment of respect, please).

1.2.2. Maturation of Existing Technologies

Many.NET–based technologies, such as ASP.NET, have been around for some time now and haven't changed hugely in this release. Microsoft has, however, fixed a number of long-term omissions in ASP.NET and introduced some useful tweaks, which I will cover in Chapter 10.

Toward the end of 2008, Microsoft announced that future versions of Visual Studio would include the popular JavaScript library, jQuery. Although not strictly a .NET change, jQuery is a very useful framework that you will defiantly want to make use of in your web applications. I cover it in Chapter 12. In Chapter 11 we'll look at the enhancements to Microsoft's own Ajax libraries, which make it very easy to bind to data with client scripts.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) are much more closely integrated in this release. WF undergoes a radical overhaul with a much-improved designer, introduction of new activities, and easier customization (Chapter 6). WCF becomes simpler to use and also introduces new service discovery functionality, which I will examine in Chapter 7.

WPF has some great additions, with an improved designer, multitouch, and Windows 7 taskbar support, all of which I will look into in Chapter 15. I will also be taking a quick look at Silverlight 3 in Chapter 15. Even through Silverlight is not a .NET 4.0 technology, I believe it is an important release. If you have never used Silverlight before, then take a look at Chapter 14, which contains a brief introduction to Silverlight.

The Entity Framework (EF) received much criticism when it was first released, and the team has attempted to address these criticisms in .NET 4.0. Find out if they have in Chapter 8.

1.2.3. Extensibility

VS2010 is your flexible and extensible friend. You may have already heard that much of the IDE is now written using WPF and can be customized with the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF). I will look at IDE customization and MEF in Chapter 2.

1.2.4. Influence of Current Trends

Software is not developed in a vacuum, and certain trends have undoubtedly influenced VS2010 and Microsoft's product line.

1.2.4.1. Multicore Shift

Due to various physical limitations, CPU manufacturers are now concentrating on releasing multicore processors. Writing programs to run in parallel is difficult, but fear not: VS2010 and .NET 4.0 have fantastic new parallelization constructs and debugging facilities, both of which will be covered in Chapter 5.

1.2.4.2. Unit Testing and Test-Driven Development

Unit testing and test-driven development (TDD) are becoming increasingly popular in software development. VS2010 contains a number of IDE enhancements to assist with these strategies. I cover these in Chapter 2. Other related changes that may be of interest are the new dynamic features and the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) (Chapter 3), and ASP.NET MVC (Chapter 13). While ASP.NET MVC isn't strictly .NET 4.0, it is an important interim release and version 2 of the framework will be included in VS2010 so deserves coverage.

1.2.4.3. Cloud Computing

Cloud computing must win the buzzword of the year award for 2008–2009. It is becoming an increasingly popular way to reduce costs and simplify management of infrastructure. Windows Azure is Microsoft's entry to this area, and I take a look at its capabilities and potential uses in Chapter 16. Note that if you purchased Visual Studio with MSDN, you even receive free Azure time.