Downloaded Visual Studio 2010 Beta

So I just downloaded Visual Studio 2010 and I have to say first impressions are good.  The start page looks much better than before, but especially because you can customize it.  I doubt I'll ever have the time to delve into doing that, but I can definitely see some creative people coming up with some good stuff there.

The first thing I did was start a C# project and do the following

dynamic name = "Chris";

dynamic age = 23.45;

dynamic str =  name.ToUpper() + " " + age;

It worked!!  I started trying to create my own custom type derived from IDynamicObject, but couldn't find what namespace it was in.  (Anyone know?)  I was going to try and implement a Python style dictionary type so I could do something like:

dynamic grades = new GradeBook();

grades.Chris = 98.4;

grades.David = 456.2;

float classAvg = grades.ClassAverage();

But I suppose that will have to wait.  Not to mention that just looks odd in C#.

I created a C++ project next and found that there was no .ncb file anymore! There also is no .vcproj file anymore either, but there is:

• sln - Same strange and inflexible format as before
• vcxproj - New msbuild compatible file for build settings only
• vcxproj.filters - msbuild file containing only the included file
• vcxproj.user - User settings in XML format this time (!)

Finally!, msbuild integrated and an actual seperation between compilation options and the physical contents in a project.  Now if only Solution Files did the same thing...  but I suppose that would be asking for too much :)

More later.