It's a holiday miracle! OK, maybe not a miracle, but folks have been working hard on Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1. The BETA was released today. See how BETA is in RED? That's because it's a beta . Funny thing about beta service packs. They are Service Packs so there are lots of good bug fixes. But it's beta , which means we, Dear Reader, are not sure if they've missed some. It's beta software, so be careful. Back things up, maybe take a disk image. There is a go-live license, which means you can use this software today and use it in production. Upgrading from SP1 Beta to SP1 "final" will be one step. If you hate betas, feel overwhelmed, don't like being on the cutting edge and don't want obscure...
Do you like a big pile of source code? Well, there is an imperial buttload of source in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit . It's actually a 178 meg download, which is insane. Perhaps start your download now and get it in the morning when you get up. It's extremely well put together and I say Kudos to the folks that did it. They are better people than I. I like to explore it while watching TV myself and found myself looking through tonight. I checked my blog and while I thought I'd shared this with you before, Dear Reader, I hadn't. My bad, because it's pure gold . With C# and VB, natch. Here's an outline of what's inside. I've heard of folks setting up lunch-time study groups and going through...
Last November, Microsoft started a new program called BizSpark for startups that's pretty sweet. It's pretty not-too-evil also. If you are a small business and you sell a product or service to your customers, you might want to check it out. Here's the criteria: Actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that will form a core piece of its current or intended business. Privately held, and in business for less than 3 years. Less than US $1 million in annual revenue. What do you get? Here's what you get from the program: Development Tools, Platform Technologies and Production Licenses All the software included in the Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System Team Suite (VSTS) with MSDN Premium subscription...