DevDays Day 2 Keynote

The keynote today was quite good. In about one and a half hour, Prashant Sridharan showed the Visual Studio road map, what audience each version of Visual Studio is for and showed Team System. Visual Studio Audiences Prashant began explaining that Microsoft was looking for what kids would like to see in a tool they’d use to develop applications in. You can probably not image what someone who has virtually no experience with tools like VS.NET will think of Visual Studio Team System. So many buttons and functions even professional developers can go mad. So that’s why they created the Express versions, like Prashant explained.

After that, they created the standard version, which is based more towards current php or macromedia developers. They need something more, but can’t be overthrown with buttons, keys, etc. Then us, the developers, get into the picture, with Visual Studio Professional. The name says it all! 😉 And of course when you’re working with large teams on big enterprise applications, you can have lots of fun with Team System. Of course I will be using that version all the time. I like my tools with lots of fancy buttons! 😉 **Visual Studio road map
** Nothing really fancy to tell you, just that the next version of Team System will also be based more towards the project managers and the likes. More based towards the software life cycle. Prashant explained, as Marcel de Vries did yesterday, that the development of the product is only a very small part of the total cost. The complete life cycle must be taken into consideration. **Team System
** I’ve already blogged a bit about the pre conference day, but left out a few things. Things that I think are worth mentioning.

• I haven’t heard Prashant about it today, but according to Marcel de Vries there will ship a stand alone tool with TS for project managers. Very cool, as I don’t think most will like a full TS install on their desk.
• Team System has more of what other tools lack. More information, more collaboration, more connected. Personalized information, at the time and place you need it. More collaboration in sharing work items, code, etc. More connected between the different Team System parts, all in one development studio. No need to go external for the most basic tools. More connected between MS Project, MS Excell and MS Outlook (via plugin once it ships).

• Webtesting, but no WinTesting?

  There’s no Windows Forms test project in Team System, to simulate user actions, like there is for web applications. As it seems, it’s because Microsoft won’t put an amount of effort into this tester, because they have set their hopes on Avalon forms. I have no idea if it’s possible or at least easy to do, for Windows forms, because I’ve never seen it work. I have seen it work perfectly for web, but only as http requests inside code. That’s a totally different way then actions on Windows forms. update: why did I add “TT” to the item title? Removed! 🙂