Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, .Net 4 generally available as of April 12
It's launch day for Visual Studio 2010, and Microsoft is making Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4 generally available for purchase as of today, April 12.
(Update: It looks like MSDN subscribers will be able to get the final bits as of 1 p.m. ET today, according to a tweet from Softie Scott Hanselman.)
Microsoft's latest tool suite is available in four versions: Professional, Premium, Ultimate and Test Professional. Microsoft announced in October last year it would sweeten the deal for some of these versions by including subscriptions to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) as part of the price.
Microsoft is positioning Visual Studio 2010 as its tool platform to support Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Azure, SQL Server, Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. The suite includes new drag and drop bindings for Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation; interoperability with the ASP.Net model view controller (MVC), better multicore support and UML support.
Microsoft is touting .Net 4 as being 81 percent smaller than its predecessors, making it quicker and easier to download and install. .Net 4 adds support for the Microsoft Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), giving programmers more language choices; and is more suited for parallel-programming, workflow-centric and service-oriented application development, according to the company.
Microsoft is offering an add in for its Windows Azure Tools platform that allows developers who want to use Visual Studio 2008 and/or Visual Studio 2010 to develop and maintain applications running on Microsoft's cloud platform.
Microsoft has been beta testing Visual Studio 2010 since May 2009. The company pushed out the final launch date from March 2010 to April 2010, adding one final Release Candidate, to improve the suite's performance and reduce its size.
Microsoft is set to launch Silverlight 4 on April 13 and is expected to make the final Silverlight 4 bits available this week, as well.