Visual Studio 2010 roadmap: final release dates now known
Posted on 19 October 2009
It’s been quiet around Visual Studio 2010 releases since the first official beta hit the market in March 2010. Not that quiet, there’ve been lively discussions on well known blogs like Scott Guthrie’s one and others, but Microsoft was very withholding towards giving out a roadmap or release dates. And there it is, Visual Studio 2010 is due to be released on:
April 12, 2010
which is almost a year after the first official beta came out.
UPDATE 2009-10-19: MSDN subscribers can start downloading Microsoft Visual Studio Beta 2 which is available for subscribers only through the MSDN Subscribers download page. Others will have to have a little bit more patience, till 21st Oct (EST) when the public beta will be released. Here’s the official announcement of today’s events.
UPDATE 2010-02-12: It’s official, Microsoft will release Visual Studio 2010 in a few weeks, at several spots around the globe at once:
- At Microsoft Tech-Ed India in Bangalore, April 12, 2010 (register from Rs. 7000)
- At Microsoft Tech-Ed Europe in London, April 12, 2010 (register, but there’s already a wait list)
- At Microsoft Tech-Ed America in Las Vegas, April 12, 2010 (register for $1.595)
- At Microsoft Tech-Ed Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, April 12, 2010 (register)
- At Microsoft Tech-Ed China in Beijing, April 12, 2010 (register, but registration is full — yes, I understand Chinese)
In other countries it may be held on different dates, or the same. Just a few:
- In Holland, Microsoft introduces VS2010 at April 20, 2010 with Sogeti, in Nootdorp (register)
- For the Benelux (incl. Holland), Microsoft introduces VS2010 in Antwerp at TechDays at March 30, 2010 (register)
- Australia, at the ALM Conference in Sydney, April 13 (register)
- Germany, multiple dates and locations, i.e., Hannover on April 15 (register)
- Sweden, multiple dates and locations, i.e., Stockholm on April 12 (register)
Roadmap of VS2010
Before the final release date is reached and the dvd masters are finalized and send to the presses, Microsoft still has a lot to do. After all, there’ve only been one official beta and a few preview releases thus far. The next six months will become real busy for the VS team! From the buzz from some employees, I gathered an unofficial roadmap, which bears no real status whatsoever. It’s based on past experience with Microsoft releases, and is nothing more then a few expected dates. I’ll update as soon as I find an official source commencing the real release dates:
- Definite: Visual Studio 2010 Community Technology Preview (CTP) was released 27th October 2008 (no download anymore).
- Definite: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 was released 13th May 2009 (link may invalidate when new betas come out)
- Definite: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 will be released by 21th October 2009 (no announcement yet on Microsoft-affiliated sites). MSDN subscribers were notified on May 19th 2009 that they can already download it via Microsoft Connect. So far only x86 editions have been released.
- Estimate: Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate: Visual Studio 2008 did not have a release candidate anymore (2005 did though), let’s assume that 2010 doesn’t get one either.
- Estimate: Visual Studio 2010 Release To Manufacturer: the RTM edition typically launches two or three months before it actually goes to the presses; my estimate is this’ll happen around February 2010 for VS2010.
- Definite (let’s hope so): Visual Studio Final release date: March 22nd 2010.
With VS2008 the Team Edition and the Database Edition were released substantially later. I’ve no idea whether such would happen again. But don’t wait for the Database Edition, there won’t be one anymore:
Visual Studio 2010 Editions overview
Instead of nine editions, Microsoft decided to make things a bit easier this time. Only three Visual Studio editions (SKUs) remain, the rest is no more:
- Visual Studio 2010 Professional (priced $799 atm) with MSDN (priced $1199 atm)
- Visual Studio 2010 Premium (priced $5469 atm)
- Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate (priced $11924 atm, $1000 increase on Team Suite 2008)
The Standard Edition, Development Edition, Database Edition, Architect Edition and Test Edition all go in favor of these big four. Start saving already, they don’t come cheap. Luckily for the poorer developers among us: the Express Editions remain as they were.
Note: after initial debate and unclarity from news sites, it’s official now, the Standard Edition as entry-level low-priced package is no more. This brings the entry-prize to $799, where it used to be $299. An increase of $500! For a little consort: the Express Editions still exist and are totally free.
What’s new
This article focuses on release dates, but for the curious among us, the most important features to be found in the new 2010 release are, in no particular order:
- The Dynamic Language Runtime for scripting languages
- Support and tools for Windows 7 and Sharepoint 2010
- Parallel programming directly from the CLR (finally!)
- Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) has been greatly improved
- Historical debugging (Premium and Ultimate only)
- F# now an official part
- MVC 2.0 becomes an official part
- C# 4.0, VB.NET 2010, ASP.NET 4.0, CLR 3.0: welcome to the new version nirwana
- Multiple screen support from the IDE
Of course, many more small and large features have been added, for the languages (VB.NET, C# and C++), the IDE, team support etc. Scott Guthrie keeps a blog and has recently started a long series of articles where each describes a new feature of the IDE, the CLR or the supported languages.
Have you ever received this error using Windows System Backup and Restore Center? Never managed to get rid of it or it mysteriously keeps coming back? Here’s a lightweight and easy solution — read article
The improvements that matter to you, focused on the .NET Framework in general and the CLR or CLI especially. Read about parallel computing and concurrency support that’s now available to everybody developing for .NET — read article
A quick overview of the new features of Visual Studio 2010 from the point of view of a professional programmer and to help you decide whether or not to upgrade yet — read article
5 responses to Visual Studio 2010 roadmap: final release dates now known
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Sadly, my current train of thought is very much along the lines of Mark Richman. I have been architecting and developing on MS stuff since MSC 3, but I have a crisis of confidence in the MS roadmap right now.
The Office 2010 team seems to think that a crude web based HTML editor for Word needs SharePoint 2010 64-bit to run, while VS is effectively tripling the price for something that is apparently tons slower than the already tedious 2008 edition.
Here in the UK, we end up paying a UK pound for each dollar you pay, so even with the poor exchange rate this makes the Pro version over $1000.
Developers are the lifeblood of any platform – witness the demise of Novell – so stacking the price and encouraging people to join the dark side it a seriously bad idea.
Things at MS seem to be getting steady worse since Bill gave up the day job. From the outside it looks process-rich, and inward looking.
In 1985 Dec VAXs were the absolute ‘business’. By 1995 Dec was effectively dead. By my reckoning, MS is at about 1988 right now, unless it get back to basics.
NOTE: the prices listed here are basically including MSDN, see this for more information.
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/msdn/default.mspx#compare
Thanks for the link. At the time of writing it was not fully clear yet how the licenses and prices would look like.
At $11,924, Visual Studio 2010 is yet another reason to switch to Ruby on Rails now!
@jeronevw @scottgu a release date was announced yesterday, see http://bit.ly/VS2010Beta2 (overview) and http://bit.ly/3fQwqF (MS) #VS2010
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