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CHAPTER 1 HISTORY OF VISUAL STUDIO
and a half, but, in February 2002, .NET Framework 1.0 was released as part of a pair with Visual
Studio.NET (the latter of which is often referred as Visual Studio .NET 2002).
Visual Studio.NET had an IDE that fi nally integrated the tools and languages into the same
environment. Because (except for Visual C++) all the languages were new (even Visual Basic .NET
could be considered as new, because it had been fundamentally changed), the toolset had to be
re - designed and re - implemented. Microsoft had a better chance to ultimately integrate the pieces
into a single IDE, and it did so remarkably. Figure 1 - 2 shows the splash screen of Visual Studio.NET
Enterprise Architect Edition, which indicates that constituent languages and tools share a
common IDE.
FIGURE 1 - 2: Visual Studio.NET splash screen
The set of languages Microsoft integrated into the product were established with long - term support
for the .NET Framework in mind. At that time, developers could use four languages out - of - the - box:
Visual C# — This completely new language was developed (by a team led by Anders
Hejlsberg) and enormously used by Microsoft itself to develop the Base Class Library of the
framework. This new language attracted a lot of developers both from the former Visual
Basic and C++ camps, and became very popular. It uses C - like syntax ( “ curly - braced -
language ” ), but its constructs are more readable than those of C or C++.
Visual Basic .NET — The former Visual Basic versions just scratched the surface of
object - oriented programming (OOP), but the real innovations were missing from the
language for a long time. The clear object - oriented nature of .NET required a new Visual
Basic. Microsoft recognized the popularity of the language and created Visual Basic .NET
with full .NET and OOP support.
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