Developers get to put their feet up Microsoft has promised to dramatically cut the amount of coding developers will need to carry out with the forthcoming version of Visual Studio. Andrew Lees, corporate vice president of server tools at Microsoft, said during his keynote address at the TechEd conference in Amsterdam that Visual Studio 2005 would cut the amount of new code by up to 70 per cent by automating processes. He added that applications could be configured to automatically update themselves from a website to ensure fast, automatic distribution of patches and revisions. "The problem for many is managing applications in deployment," said Lees. " Now you can post code up to a website so that users can install and download software automatically. Every time the application starts it checks for new code and downloads it if possible." Other improvements will be the inclusion of XML smart tags, similar to those found in the current Office suite, that allow quick linking through to sites or databases. Microsoft is hoping that this will encourage greater take up of smart tags, which developers have so far been slow to use. Also to be included is the first incarnation of Microsoft's radio frequency ID software. This was demonstrated in an application that tracked TechEd visitors around the exhibition centre using tags built into the conference badges. Source: VNUNet
I like the Visual Studio range, it makes development much easier when you don't have to code every single part of the program. But i haven't got the 2005 .NET one properly so i'll get that.
