Jesse Ezell Blog

"Paul D. Sheriff is a recognized leader in the Visual Basic industry and the Microsoft Regional Director for Southern California. Paul is a frequent speaker at Microsoft Developer Days, Microsoft Tech Ed, Microsoft "MSDN Presents", Access/VBA Advisor Developer Conferences, and user groups across the country. Paul is a contributing editor to Access/VBA Advisor magazine. You can also see Paul teaching .NET on Microsoft WebCasts and with Blast Through Learning videos. Check out Paul's new book "ASP.NET Developer's Jumpstart" with co-author Ken Getz.

VS 2003 is great. I love the new C# autocomplete stuff, but one thing I can't stand is how they implemented the override autocomplete. Unlike every single other autocomplete function in VS.NET, where you type like you normally would and then hit tab or alt-space to complete, you have to type override to get it to come up, and then it automatically does. So, if you are used to typing something like:

"Dieses Buch bietet eine ausführliche und praxisorientierte Einführung in die Programmierung von .NET-kompatiblen Anwendungen mit Mono unter C#. Nach einer klassisch strukturierten Spracheinführung in C# und in das Arbeiten mit dem Mono-eigenen C#-Compiler vertiefen die Autoren anhand von Themen wie Threads, Netzwerkprogrammierung, Sicherheit, Interaktion mit Datenbanken, XML u.v.a.m. Ein ausführlicher Praxisteil zeigt, wie mit Mono Webanwendungen erstellt, via gtk GUIs programmiert und unter MS.NET geschriebene Anwendungen im Rahmen von Mono (wie auch unter Mono geschriebene Anwendungen unter MS.NET) betrieben werden können."
[Amazon]

If you want to get ahold of VS.NET 2003 and don't have an MSDN subscription yet, you should check ebay's prices. I know someone that picked up a complete MSDN Universal Subscription for about $500 this week. Definately worth every penny.

This month's Visual Studio Magazine includes an MSDE admin tool with source (VB.NET). Could be useful if you don't have SQL (and hence Enterprise Manager). I assume that for most people that read this feed, that isn't an issue, but I do know there are a lot of people out there who haven't dished out the cash for VS.NET / SQL yet and are running Web Matrix and MSDE (speaking of Web Matrix...some very cool stuff coming down the pipe for v.2 that I wish we had in VS.NET 2003).

"..Although it's true that Microsoft's products are universally unloved by their users, they're quite loved by the people who buy them: IT managers, VARs, and OEMs. Microsoft knows this and works tirelessly to address the biggest issues, which don't include pleasing users, who have little say in the selection of business software. The buyers don't see an upside in providing lovable software, but they do see a downside in selecting the wrong software..."
[VSM March 2003]

"...Still, they are making headway — the Coast Guard has established radio facilities, and cleaned up enough rooms to make their stay slightly more comfortable. And the computers are working — about the only things on the terminal that didn’t require a massive overhaul when they arrived.
       “We came here and found all the computer systems up,” Shea said. “All we had to do was change the language from Arabic to English. It’s Microsoft!”
[MSNBC]

"The Framework is really cool part of .NET.  The languages are just there to help you do your job with the Framework in the best way possible for you."
[Erik Porter]