After popping into New York City Thursday to launch the
Tablet PC, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates
headed back to Washington state to give developers, computer scientists and
students a window into the future of the C++ and C# programming languages.
On Friday afternoon, Gates will give a keynote at the venerable Association
for Computing Machinery’s 17th annual Object-Oriented Programming, Systems,
Languages and Applications (OOPSLA) conference in Seattle. During his
keynote, Gates plans to announce the road map for the Microsoft Visual C#
.NET and Visual C++ .NET programming languages, and will also demonstrate a
new test-prioritization system that can help development teams locate,
prioritize and address product vulnerabilities.
For C++ adherents, the big news is a new version of Visual C++ .NET “that
will be 98 percent conformant to the public International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) C++ standard.” That means Windows developers, for the
first time, will be able to use advanced ISO-defined C++ language features
while also compiling and using modern C++ libraries.
“Microsoft started out as a developer-tools company, and we recognize the
incredible importance of great tools that support a range of programming
languages,” Gates said. “Today, we are delighted to announce an even deeper
commitment to C++, in the form of greater ISO standard conformity and an
emphasis on building standard libraries.”
New features in the next version of Visual C++ will also include
performance improvements for floating point operations, increased
productivity for Windows Form-based development, and improved security.
Gates will also propose specifications for new features in C#, including
“generics,” a feature which would give C# developers the ability to create
modern business frameworks using a language construct similar to that used
in C++. Other proposals include anonymous methods, iterators and partial
types.
Also, in an effort to help developers secure their code, Gates will unveil
the new test-prioritization system, code-named “Scout.” Scout, an internal
tool developed by Microsoft Research, allows development teams to track
in-process testing, prevent defects from entering the system through early
detection, and shorten the repair process.
Finally, Gates plans to demonstrate new programmability features for the
Microsoft Tablet PC.
