Episodes

  •  Welcome to the Visual Studio Documentary. This is an hour long documentary that is split into two parts. Roughly a half hour each. Welcome to part two, where we dive straight into life at Microsoft during the Java Lawsuit.  Here is Part One in case you missed it.  Next week we will begin to publish each interviewee's full length interview for an even deeper look. 

    Not only did we sift through hundreds of videos and assets but we sat down for an intimate conversation with those that were there since the very beginning and those that are taking us into the future. 

    Scott Guthrie, Dan Fernandez, Jason Zander, Tim Huckaby
    S. Somasegar, Dave Mendlen, Dee Dee Walsh, Mardi Brekke, Jeff Hadfield, Alan Cooper, Anders Hejlsberg, and Tony Goodhew

    We hope you enjoy!

  • Welcome to the first installment of the Visual Studio Documentary.This is an hour long documentary that is split into two parts, roughly a half hour each. Welcome to part one, where we take you back to the days of MS-DOS and Alan Cooper who originally sold Visual Basic to Bill Gates back in 1988.  Next week we will feature Part Two but for those that would like to watch it sooner, here is Part Two. In addition, each week we will post a longer and more in-depth stand alone interview from the interviewees that were featured in the documentary.

    Not only did we sift through hundreds of videos and assets but we sat down for an intimate conversation with those that were there since the very beginning:

    Scott Guthrie, Dan Fernandez, Jason Zander, Tim Huckaby
    S. Somasegar, Dave Mendlen, Dee Dee Walsh, Mardi Brekke, Jeff Hadfield, Alan Cooper, Anders Hejlsberg, and Tony Goodhew

    Part One dives into MS-DOS, OS/2, Windows, Microsoft Visual Basic, Visual Basic 2.0, Visual Basic 3.0, Microsoft Visual C++, Visual Interdev, FoxPro, Visual Studio 97, ASP.NET and the early days of Microsoft's Dev community. 

    We hope you enjoy! 


    TIMELINE

    Products and Milestones

    1975 – Bill Gates and Paul Allen write a version of Basic for Altair 8080

    1982 – IBM releases BASCOM 1.0 (developed by Microsoft)

    1983 – Microsoft Basic Compiler System v5.35 for MS-DOS release

    1984 - Microsoft Basic Compiler System v5.36 release

    1985 – Microsoft QuickBASIC 1.0

    1986 – Microsoft QuickBASIC 1.01, 1.02, 2.00

    1987 – Microsoft QuickBASIC 2.01, 3.00, 4.00

    1987 – Microsoft BASIC 6.0

    1988 – Microsoft QuickBASIC 4.00, 4.00b, 4.50

    1989 – Microsoft BASIC Professional Development System 7.0

    1990 - Microsoft BASIC Professional Development System 7.1

    1991 – Microsoft Visual Basic released May 20-Windows World Convention –Atlanta

    1992 – Microsoft Visual Basic 2.0

    1993 – Microsoft Visual Basic 3.0 in Standard and Professional versions

    1995 – Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 released, supported the new Windows 95

    1997 – Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 – introduction of IntelliSense

    1998 – Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 that included Visual Basic 6.0 released (first VS)

    2002 – Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 7.0

    2002 – Visual Studio .NET

    2003 – Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 7.1

    2003 – Microsoft Visual Studio w/Intellisense

    2003 – Visual Studio .NET

    2004 – Announce Visual Studios 2005 – Code name Whidbey

    2005 – Visual Studio 2005 release w/Extensibility

    2005 – Visual Studio Express released

    2006 - Expression Tool Set released - devs and designers work together

    2006 – Visual Studio Team release – November 30th

    2007 – Visual Studio 2008 (code name Orcas) ships November = Video Studio Shell

    2010 - Visual Studios (code name Rosario)


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  • The Visual Studio Documentary Part One and Part Two.
    S. Somasegar's Full Length Interview
    Jason Zander Full Length Interview
    Tim Huckaby Full Length Interview
    Scott Guthrie Full Length Interview
    Anders Hejlsberg Full Length Interview
    Alan Cooper Full Length Interview
    Jeff Hadfield Full Length Interview
    Dan Fernandez Full Length Interview

    Tony Goodhew Full Length Interview

    Mardi came to Microsoft in 1993 and in the last 16 years at Microsoft has spent much of her time in the Developer Division (which has had many names through the years).  Currently, she is working on the Windows Embedded Marketing team spreading the good word about Windows on specialized devices. 

    Dee Dee has been in the industry for nearly thirty years in technical, marketing and biz dev roles.  She has worked at Microsoft for 18 years and 11.5 of those years were in developer tools where she did product planning, marketing, biz dev and business management.  She has spent the past several years working on ecommerce technologies (currently working on online Microsoft Store).  Prior to Microsoft she worked at the first shareware company, ButtonWare, for 8 years in technical support, product planning and marketing.

  • The Visual Studio Documentary Part One and Part Two.
    S. Somasegar's Full Length Interview
    Jason Zander Full Length Interview
    Tim Huckaby Full Length Interview
    Scott Guthrie Full Length Interview
    Anders Hejlsberg Full Length Interview
    Alan Cooper Full Length Interview
    Jeff Hadfield Full Length Interview
    Dan Fernandez Full Length Interview

    Tony Goodhew has been a major part of the success of the Visual Studio franchise and is one of the fan favorites from The Visual Studio Documentary.  He has some wonderful quotes about old times at Microsoft and helps take us into the future with the next version of Visual Studio. 

  • The Visual Studio Documentary Part One and Part Two.
    S. Somasegar's Full Length Interview
    Jason Zander Full Length Interview
    Tim Huckaby Full Length Interview
    Scott Guthrie Full Length Interview
    Anders Hejlsberg Full Length Interview
    Alan Cooper Full Length Interview
    Jeff Hadfield Full Length Interview

    Dan Fernandez is a Director in the Developer and Platform Evangelism team at Microsoft.  Dan has been with Microsoft since July 2001, working in multiple roles including the Lead Product Manager for Visual Studio Express and Microsoft Popfly, the Visual C# Product Manager, and as a Developer Evangelist in the Mid-Atlantic district. Prior to joining Microsoft, he worked as a developer at several consulting firms including IBM Global Services specializing in web-based and mobile application development. You can read more about Dan on his blog at https://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/

  • The Visual Studio Documentary Part One and Part Two.
    S. Somasegar's Full Length Interview
    Jason Zander Full Length Interview
    Tim Huckaby Full Length Interview
    Scott Guthrie Full Length Interview
    Anders Hejlsberg Full Length Interview
    Alan Cooper Full Length Interview

    Jeff has worked with personal computers since the late seventies, when he learned to program BASIC on an Apple II (not an Apple II Plus, mind you). Since then, he’s learned Pascal, Fortran and VB/VB.NET – all of which have been enough to show him that he’s not a born developer, but he can play one on TV, so to speak. He's working to make The Code Project even more valuable to community members and help bring new services online to make The Code Project even better.

    Jeff has worked with developers and developer communities for over a decade.

    All things considered, he'd rather be cycling.

  • The Visual Studio Documentary Part One and Part Two.
    S. Somasegar's Full Length Interview
    Jason Zander Full Length Interview
    Tim Huckaby Full Length Interview
    Scott Guthrie Full Length Interview
    Anders Hejlsberg Full Length Interview

    For over 30 years Alan Cooper has been a pioneer of the modern computing era. His groundbreaking work in software invention, design and construction has influenced a generation of programmers and business people—and helped a generation of users. Alan is the author of two best-selling books, About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design and The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, and his visionary ideas and outspoken style make him a popular speaker. Whether you know him as the "Father of Visual Basic," the inventor of personas, or the guy who thinks software should be spanked, we know him as the man whose ideas are the foundation of what we do.

     

  • The Visual Studio Documentary Part One and Part Two.
    S. Somasegar's Full Length Interview
    Jason Zander Full Length Interview
    Tim Huckaby Full Length Interview
    Scott Guthrie Full Length Interview

    Anders Hejlsberg is a Technical Fellow in the Developer Division. He is an influential creator of development tools and programming languages. He is the chief designer of the C# programming language and a key participant in the development of the Microsoft .NET framework. Since its initial release in 2000, the C# programming language has been widely adopted and is now standardized by ECMA and ISO. Before his work on C# and the .NET framework, Hejlsberg was an architect for Visual J++ development and the Windows Foundation classes. Before joining Microsoft in 1996, Hejlsberg was one of the first employees of Borland International Inc. As principal engineer, he was the original author of Turbo Pascal, a revolutionary integrated development environment, and chief architect of its successor, Delphi. Hejlsberg co-authored "The C# Programming Language", published by Addison Wesley, and has received numerous software patents. In 2001, he was the recipient of the prestigious Dr. Dobbs Excellence in Programming Award. He studied engineering at the Technical University of Denmark.

  • The Visual Studio Documentary Part One and Part Two.
    S. Somasegar's Full Length Interview
    Jason Zander Full Length Interview
    Tim Huckaby Full Length Interview

    Scott Guthrie sits down and talks to us about his History with Visual Studio, .NET and what Life at Microsoft used to be like. 

    Scott Guthrie is corporate vice president of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform, where he runs the development teams responsible for delivering Microsoft Visual Studio developer tools and Microsoft .NET Framework technologies for building client and Web applications.

    A founding member of the .NET project, Guthrie has played a key role in the design and development of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework since 1999. Guthrie is also responsible for Microsoft's Web server platform and development tools teams. He has also more recently driven the development of Silverlight – a cross browser, cross platform plug-in for delivering next generation media experiences and rich internet applications for the Web.

    Today, Guthrie directly manages the development teams that build the Common Language Runtime (CLR), ASP.NET, Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), IIS, Commerce Server and the Visual Studio Tools for Web, Client and Silverlight development.

    Guthrie graduated with a degree in computer science from Duke University.

  • The Visual Studio Documentary Part One and Part Two.
    S. Somasegar's Full Length Interview
    Jason Zander Full Length Interview

    Tim Huckaby is currently focused on RIA & Rich Client Technologies like WPF, VSTO, Surface, Silverlight and Windows 7 Touch.  He has been called a “Pioneer of the Smart Client Revolution” by the press. 

     Tim has been awarded multiple times for the highest rated Keynote and technical presentations for Microsoft and numerous other technology conferences around the world by Microsoft Corporation.  Tim has done presentations on Microsoft Technologies at technology events all over the world and is consistently rated in the top 10% of all speakers at these events.  Tim has done keynote demos for numerous Microsoft executives including Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.   

    Tim founded InterKnowlogy, experts in Microsoft .NET and Microsoft Platforms, in 1999 and has 25+ years experience including serving on a Microsoft product team as a development lead on an architecture team.  Tim is a Microsoft Regional Director, an MVP and serves on multiple Microsoft councils and boards. 

     

  •  

    The Visual Studio Documentary Part One and

    Part Two. 
    S. Somasegar's Full Length Interview 

    Jason Zander is the General Manager for the Visual Studio Team here at Microsoft.  He was an enormous asset to The Visual Studio Documentary

    Part One and
    Part Two.   Here is Jason Zander in his own words from
    his blog: 

     

    I'm the General Manager for the Visual Studio team in the Developer Division at Microsoft, including Visual Studio Pro and Visual Studio Team System. I've been in the Developer Division for a long time (back to ODBC).  I was lucky to be one of a
    small handful of folks who started working on what would become the CLR back in '97.  I worked primarily on the metadata, file formats, and compiler integration.  I was the first dev lead for those features as well as the debugger/profiler.  I was the Development
    Manager for V1.1 and the first part of V2.0, and ultimately became the PUM of the team before taking the GM role first in .NET and then for Visual Studio. 

    I love writing code!  And it is an amazing opportunity to work on a team where dogfooding my product requires means writing code.  Please enjoy the .NET Framework and Visual Studio and make sure to send us your feedback!

     

  • S. Somasegar made an enormous impact in The Visual Studio Documentary and talks deeply and passionately about the future of Visual Studio. He dives into the features, direction and tools.  He gets into productivity, team systems, IDE and the brand new shell, code focused productivity and enhancements, test driven development, VB, C#, functional programming, F#, C++, Java Script and so much more.  This video is his full video from The Visual Studio Documentary. 

    Part One:  The Visual Studio Documentary
    Part Two:  The Visual Studio Documentary

    S. Somasegar is also an avid blogger. 

    BIO
    S. Somasegar is the senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, S. Somasegar leads the teams responsible for providing tools and developer platform technologies targeted at developers, designers and teams involved in software development. This includes the Microsoft .NET developer platform that provides a consistent programming model spanning client, Web, server, device and services platform, Silverlight, the Visual Studio family of products, and Expression Studio.

    Somasegar is also responsible for the Web server platform including Internet Information Services (IIS), Media Server and Commerce Server. His team also owns MSDN and TechNet online properties to enable a deep connection with the developer and IT professional audience.

    In addition, Somasegar oversees the Microsoft India Development Center (IDC) in Hyderabad, India, and the Microsoft Canada Development Center (MCDC) in Vancouver, British Columbia.

    Somasegar joined Microsoft in 1989, and worked on eight different operating system releases before heading up the Developer Division.