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What's New With Visual Studio 2005
Get in-depth information from this exclusive interview with Microsoft's S. "Soma" Somasegar.

November 7, 2005

S. "Soma" Somasegar Corporate Vice President, Developer Division, Microsoft

S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, talks to VSM Editor in Chief Patrick Meader about the imminent release of Visual Studio 2005. In part 1, Soma discusses the different skews available to developers, the design process that led to choosing VS 2005's specific features, and the differences between C# and VB. Read Part 2 here.

PM: There are about 10,000 new skews for the next version of Visual Studio 2005, exaggerating only slightly. What motivated your general approach in designing the skews for Visual Studio 2005?

Soma: One of things we determined early on as we thought about what became Visual Studio 2005 and what we wanted to accomplish is this: We wanted to always bear in mind that the developer is our customer. Previous to Visual Studio 2005, we always thought: A developer is a developer is a developer. We want to build a great set of tools for the developer, and this will make him happy.

As we started to think about Visual Studio 2005, we had a realization. A developer is a developer is developer, but different kinds of developers have different requirements. For example, a person who is entering the field of programming, a hobbyist, or would-be developer has a different set of expectations and requirements from someone who is a professional developer, or from someone who is customizing Office, or from someone who is working in an enterprise environment with a team of developers.

So we decided to build a set of tools that is targeted at each major segment of the developer community. We wanted to make sure that we enabled the right set of experiences for each developer segment. So if you look at the skew platform for Visual Studio 2005, I call it the Russian doll skew platform. It's all about enabling personalized productivity with a set of products based on how you actually use a developer tool.

PM: Walk me through the main skews, what they consist of, and who they are for.

Soma: The Express skew targets the hobbyist or beginning developer; the Standard edition targets the person starting to get into the .NET programming world. This person is often the classic VB developer or the classic ASP developer. The Professional edition is targeted at the professional developer. This person is typically working by himself or with one or two other people. We also have the Visual Studio for Office skew, which is targeted toward people who want to do application customization on Office. Finally, we have Visual Studio Team System, which is targeted at teams of software engineers coming together to create software applications.

PM: Various versions of Visual Studio 2005 have been available in CTPs for a couple years now, which can take the edge off the excitement for a newly released tool. I think the CTPs are great on the whole for developers, but how do you reinvigorate interest in the tool in this circumstance?

Soma: I disagree with the premise of your question. The fact we've been open and transparent with giving people early bits, with getting their feedback so we can make the product better—I think excitement has intensified because of this practice. I don't know how much you follow the blogging community, but recently I posted a simple message that we are done, and the response to that post is huge. To me, the excitement over the release of this tool is almost palpable. A lot of developers know enough about this tool in advance of its shipping that they are excited to be able to use it in production. They don't know the features as some kind of abstract list; they've used the features. They know precisely what they are getting.

We will continue to step up our openness and transparency, and I think this will continue to make the product releases that much more exciting.