I just got notice that I’ve been renewed as an MVP for the 5th year!

Congrats to all the other MVPs that got renewal notices – or awarded for the first time – today.

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I just got a nice little e-mail from Microsoft. Despite the timing, it’s not an April Fools joke… I’ve been renewed as an MVP for another year.

Congrats to all the other MVPs being renewed today.

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Just got the e-mail from Microsoft, so it’s official. I’ve been renewed as a Microsoft MVP for another year!

And, no.. this isn’t an April Fools’ Day joke. I’m an April 1 MVP.

Congrats to all those renewed, and especially to those who were awarded for the first time.

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Ted Neward posted this blog entry on his thoughts after PDC 2008. Specifically, Ted said: The language world was a bit abuzz at the barely-concealed C# 4.0 features, mostly centering around the new "dynamic" keyword and the C# REPL loop capabilities, but noticeably absent was any similar kind of talk or buzz around VB 10. Even C++ got more attention than VB did, with a presentation clearly intending to call out a direct reference to Visual C++'s heyday, "Visual C++: Why 10 is the new 6". Conversations ......

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At the C#/VB MVP dinner on Monday night, Billy Hollis offered a toast to “the language leads, who reflect the beauty and elegance of their respective languages.”

'Nuff said.

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(Yay!! Finally, some VB!!) Where is Visual Basic headed? Let’s look at where it’s been and what role it plays at Microsoft. It’s been the primary way that the platform has been made easy to use for all programmers. Seventeen years ago, Visual Basic (VB1-VB3) played a key role in making Windows the premier platform. From VB4 to VB6, the focua was on making COM programming possible for normal, mortal human beings. VB7 was the first .NET release, helping establish the CLR as the premier runtime. VB8 ......

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So far, I’m a couple days intll that cloud services can, in fact, be ao PDC. The only VB code I’ve seen anywhere was code that I wrote myself. None of the presentations have been VB. There are very few labs that are VB. Having said that, I can assure you that cloud services can, in fact, be written using VB.NET. Doing the lab in C# (as it was written) would have been too easy. So, despite having no support from Microsoft, I did it in VB.NET. I’ve also been talking to a few people to make sure those ......

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Maybe I’m hyper-sensitive to it, being a VB MVP and all. But it sure would have been nice to see at least one line of VB in the keynote demos. The unintended message is pretty clear: Microsoft uses C# and doesn’t care about VB.

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For those of you (like me!) that were unaware of it, Microsoft has released a CTP of Rosario (the next version of Visual Studio). Jeff Beehler (lead program manager on VSTS) blogged about this release a while ago. I attended the Rosario Architecture Edition preview yesterday. Frankly, I'm two orders of magnitude more excited about this than I am about anything else I've seen here at the summit yet. This past week, I came across an interesting piece of irony. I just left a job as a "software developer" ......

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Got to start yesterday with the VB Insider's get-together.

Then went from there to Party with Palermo.

Played pool with an Israeli C# MVP (Justin).... during which he made a comment about karma. Had to laugh... of all things I expected from this week, a conversation with an Israeli in a bar about karma wasn't on the list.

And I'm sure that won't be my only surprise this week...

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Yes, I know this is old news by now. I got renewed 1 April for another year as an MVP. Yes, I'm one of the April Fools' Day MVPs. (And this year, Microsoft let me sweat for several hours before letting me know that I had been renewed.) This week, I'm at the MVP summit for the first time. Seventeen hundred MVPs here this year, from all over the world. Very well run, and the quality of the people -- both the MVPs and the MIcrosoft employees -- is even more impressive than I expected. Of course, the ......

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