Balmer's VB 7.0 webcast

[chiph]

Was anyone able to get the VB 7.0 webcast intact, and can give a report on what Steve Balmer said? There were so many dropouts here at work that it was too painful to watch or listen.<br>
<br>
Chip H.<br>

 

[chiph]

OK - I finally got to see the webcast last night (you can too at <A HREF="

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/nextgen/"

TARGET="_new">

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/nextgen/</A>).<br>

<br>
What Steve Balmer said was :<br>
<br>
1) VB is critical to Microsoft's success.<br>
2) XML is critical to Microsoft's success.<br>
3) Be prepared to use XML as another source of data for your programs<br>
<br>
There was a demo by a guy named Dave (I think that was his name) of how to add a column to a grid (on a ASP page, I think it was) that gets it's data from a XML file on another computer. Crashed the first time, but worked the 2nd time (isn't pre-release code fun!)<br>
<br>
New language features:<br>
<br>
1) Free threading<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You 'new' a thread object, then 'new' a threadstartobject, passing in the public function you want to run in it's own thread. Sort of like this:<br>
<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dim T as Thread<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dim W as MyWorkerObject<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Set W = new MyWorkerObject()<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Set T = new Thread(new ThreadStart(AddressOf W.MyFunction))<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;T.start<br>
<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;and MyFunction then runs on it's own.<br>
<br>
2) Structured Exception Handling<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No more 'On Error Resume Next'! You write your code like this:<br>
<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Try<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Do Something Dangerous<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Catch<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Handle the exceptional cases that get kicked out<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Finally<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Clean up any resources allocated<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;End Try<br>
<br>
3) Code-based inheiritance<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yes, it's finally here! You can have one class inherit from another. Single inheritance only, as far as I can tell. You can also do overloading, polymorphism, and hide functions in inherited classes. Parameterized constructors are also included.<br>
<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Class1<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Public Function GetCustomer()<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Public Function GetCustomer(CustCode as integer)<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Public Function GetCustomer(CustName as String)<br>
<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Class2<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Inherits Class1<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;public Overloads Function GetCustomer()<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;public Overloads Function GetCustomer(CustCode as integer)<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;DoBase<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;End Function<br>
<br>
<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So, you can now do something like:<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Dim C as new class2<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;C.GetCustomer &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 'calls class2's function<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;C.GetCustomer(1) &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 'calls class2's function that accepts an integer, which in turn calls class1's function via the DoBase keyword<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;C.GetCustomer(&quot;Acme&quot &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 'calls class1's function that accepts a string<br>
<br>
4) Visual inheritance<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;VB will allow you to have one form inherit from another. They kind of implied that you also get functionality as well. So you could have a form with your corporate logo and a hyperlink for going to the corporate website. Every form you create that inherits from your base form will get the logo plus the hyperlink action.<br>
<br>
5) Increased type checking<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;VB today will promote pretty much any type into a different type automatically. You will be able to set a compilation option to do stricter type checking (yippee!)<br>
<br>
Very cool stuff, and looks really exciting. Steve said availability was &quot;End of this year&quot;.<br>
<br>
Chip H.<br>

 

[Alt255]

Probably a dumb question: is that the end of the calendar year or the end of the Microsoft year? The difference is subtle and the implications have a major effect on planning.<br>