Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 released

Posted on April 12, 2010 | 10:48:34 PM

The day finally has arrived! After two beta versions and one release candiate, Microsoft today announced the general availability of its highly anticipated (at least by me) development environment Visual Studio 2010 as well as the latest version of the .NET Framework.

A little bit more than two years after the release of Visual Studio 2008, the new IDE comes with quite a number of changes. While I am not able (nor willing) to outline every single change, I would like to point out some of the highlights—keep in mind that these are certainly subjective though...

1. IDE

  • New editor (WPF)
  • Support for multiple monitors
  • Multi-Targeting support (.NET Framework and C++ compiler toolset)
  • IntelliSense Suggestion Mode

2. Debugging

  • Parallel Debugging and Profiling
  • Floating DataTips
  • Parallel Tasks and Parallel Stacks debugger tool windows
  • WPF Tree Visualizer

3. Visual C++

  • Anonymous functions (a.k.a. Lambda expressions)
  • Rvalue references
  • A new build system (MSBuild)
  • Concurrency Runtime Libraries (Parallel Patterns, Asynchronous Agents etc.)
  • New MFC library (including the return of the class wizard!!!)

4. Visual C#

  • Support for dynamic types
  • Covariance and Contravariance
  • Type equivalence

5. Visual Basic

  • Support for dynamic types
  • Covariance and Contravariance
  • Implicit line continuation (Finally!!!)
  • Collection Initializers

6. .NET Framework

  • Dynamic Language Runtime (a.k.a. DLR)
  • Managed Extensibility Framework (a.k.a. MEF)
  • Parallel LINQ
  • Code Contracts
  • Memory-Mapped Files
  • Covariance and Contravariance

For a more detailed list (including links to further reading) take a look at: What's New in Visual Studio 2010.

Developers without a MSDN subscription can either download the free express editions or the trial versions: