Redmond again

Arrived on Friday in Seattle, for a MS-internal event. Staying at the Doubletree Hotel in Bellevue, quite acceptable.

The jet lag finally got me on Sunday afternoon; since then I'm in (kind of a) zombie mode ... :-)

Anyway, there's quite some interesting stuff to see here, so I try to stay awake. (Got to build a couple of code samples for the upcoming German Technical Summit 2004 event in Kassel, anyway, so little sleep available.)

Yesterday Hillel Cooperman gave an overview of the newest features that they are currently building into Longhorn. I can't talk about details here, but one word summarizes what I've seen: awesome. If you think you've got an idea of what Longhorn will be like, based on what what shown at the PDC last October, be assured that you have seen nothing yet.

Another interesting thing that I was made aware of today is the fact the Visual Studio Whidbey will support multi-language projects (not just solutions, as in v. 2002/2003). That means that you can mix & match C++, C#, VB, etc. in one project, and compile that into one assembly. Mindblowing.

And finally I have to mention Whitehorse, a new enterprise tool that will reshape the way enterprise apps are build. Stay tuned for that one which will probably be included in the first Whidbey beta.