The beta isn't out yet, and I don't think the VS 2010 CTP has F# in.

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I'd imagine VS2010 will be the best environment, although 2008 will be supported.

The only thing that'd make me hesitate with VS2010 (Beta 1, whenever that is) is the WPF usage. WPF does a horrible job rendering text. It was designed with the idea that everyone would have 150+ DPI displays so they could do accurate sub-pixel placement of text and anti-alias as needed. Unfortunately, 96dpi isn't going anywhere this decade, and the text looks like crap. Reported before WPF first shipped, text rendering is supposed to be at .NET 4 RTM (not in prereleases). If VS uses WPF like Expression does, I can't imagine I'd actually be able to work in it all day. (We're creating a WPF right now, and the text just looks atrocious.)

Otherwise, if it's like other VS Betas, it should be reasonably high quality. Let's hope so :).

By on 3/24/2009 6:10 PM ()

WPF guys say they're cooking up a fix for that blurry text problem. See here:

[link:connect.microsoft.com]

As far as I can tell, this isn't going to happen in beta1 timeframe, though.

On a side note, even with present-day WPF antialiasing, some font faces and sizes look better than others. In particular, Consolas 13pt seems to look just as well with WPF. Note that you can test it for yourself already with the CTP - the editor in it is WPF-based already, even if the rest of the UI isn't.

By on 3/25/2009 3:58 PM ()

Yea, I heard Consolas isn't that bad, although I can't imagine going above 11 points. Let alone menus and whatnot. Apparently I'm more sensitive to such things than some people. Then again, some folks can actually use a CRT under 80Hz without screaming in pain :P. I haven't tried the CTP -- no F#, and quite frankly, the 4.0 release of everything is underwhelming at best. From what I can tell, there's next to no changes at all in the actual runtime (exception handling and GC notifications (um, yea...) are all I saw).

I sure hope there's some sort of mitigation in the Beta, since I really, really want to use the product. Guess we'll see soon, for some value of soon.

By on 3/25/2009 4:38 PM ()

From what I can tell, there's next to no changes at all in the actual runtime (exception handling and GC notifications (um, yea...) are all I saw)

There's also NoPIA. Also, while I may be wrong about this, I would expect a lot of optimizations, particularly in areas important for F# (such as tail calls).

By on 3/26/2009 11:28 AM ()

Well I see a lot of improvements in .net 4.0 (but you might be right with the CLR - but we get the DLR ;) ):

- maybe(?) we get an working WF

- F# ;)

- I'm no big dynamic fan but willing to try

- contravariance in C# looks promissing

Of course there are a lot of things I would have wanted instead of the dynamic-things - for example better generics (or at least some long wanted interfaces like IArithmetic) or still better type-class support (to much to hope for even for further releases I gues), const parameters and local variables, interface support for static functions, property-extensions, support for abstract or virtual static methods, etc.

By on 3/25/2009 10:54 PM ()

Sorry, yes, I was referring just to the runtime engine, not the libraries. I've yet to see any list of new stuff there. MSIL wasn't even touched, I've heard. I'm hoping they didn't spend all their time with the multi-version loading (but maybe the 3rd approach to versioning is the charm, eh?). I'm secretly hoping there's no new flashy features 'cause performance is gonna get a big boost.

Maybe I'm just ignorant, but apart from actual metaprogramming some folks do (which is not the majority of people who go on about dynamic typing, afaik), a fully dynamic typechecked language seems like a hack for "we couldn't figure out a decent type system with inference" :) If there were easier metaprogramming in static languages, I think that'd take care of most of the need for dynamic checking.

I'm sure there will be nice stuff in the framework, but for once, I've not seen anything so compelling as to make me switch. Compare this to 2.0 (generics), 3.0 (WCF, WPF), 3.5 (more functional C#). In each one of those releases, I was using the betas as my day-to-day environment. 4.0's draw seems to be limited to whatever cool new stuff VS can provide. As such, the CTP, being not nearly complete, held little to interest me.

By on 3/25/2009 11:08 PM ()

The only thing that'd make me hesitate with VS2010 (Beta 1, whenever that is) is the WPF usage. WPF does a horrible job rendering text. It was designed with the idea that everyone would have 150+ DPI displays so they could do accurate sub-pixel placement of text and anti-alias as needed. Unfortunately, 96dpi isn't going anywhere this decade, and the text looks like crap. Reported before WPF first shipped, text rendering is supposed to be at .NET 4 RTM (not in prereleases). If VS uses WPF like Expression does, I can't imagine I'd actually be able to work in it all day. (We're creating a WPF right now, and the text just looks atrocious.)

Interessting - I was not aware of this problem till now (I don't use the text editor in Blend).

This would indeed be a major "no-go" for VS2010 but I honestly can't believe that MS will ship their major programming tool with a bad text rendering - it's like shiping Word without printing capabilities ;)

But I guess we will all see in time (ok maybe we all could have seen if we had the time to toy with the betas, CTPs etc. - maybe someone here can give us some BETA-inside on this matter?)

By on 3/24/2009 10:34 PM ()

The beta isn't out yet, and I don't think the VS 2010 CTP has F# in.

Ah - I had missed that minor little detail - I had thought it had F#. Oh well.

By on 3/24/2009 6:23 PM ()
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