Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 release candidates are available for download

Right now the downloads are only available to MSDN subscribers. On Wednesday February 10th the downloads will also be available to the general public

You can find the download links here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd582936.aspx

I went to a local MS launch event for Visual Studio today, mainly to see what was new with Team Foundation Server, but what really impressed me was some of the new architecture tools they've added. I admittedly haven't read too much about this before today (my needs have been well-served by NDepend) but I'm happy to see some improved architecture tools find their way into Visual Studio. Looking at the version comparison chart, it appears this is only available in ...

Here is your gift from Microsoft for the holidays: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Virtual Machines with Sample Data. Brian Keller writes

Just in time for the holidays, we have posted a brand new virtual machine (VM) which is pre-configured with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2, and sample data that you can use to help learn the product, perform demonstrations, etc. This VM included everything you need to learn and demonstrate the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) capabilities of Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 (with the excep...

Microsoft announced the immediate availability of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 to MSDN subscribers; general availability will follow on Oct. 21. The company also outlined a simplified product lineup and pricing options for Visual Studio 2010 as well as new benefits for MSDN subscribers, including the Ultimate Offer, available to all active MSDN Premium subscribers at the official product launch on March 22, 2010.

Those interested can download Beta 2 at...

I was thinking about writing a post about how C# is morphing into SQL because I noticed that C# has added named and optional arguments. Remember the Compound Operators Or How T-SQL Is Morphing Into VB Or C#? This is basically the same kind of thing only it goes into the other direction.

For some bizarre reason Chrissie had the same idea yesterday and posted the following post: