Microsoft Ships Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1, .NET Framework 4.0

As expected, Microsoft has released Beta 1 of its Visual Studio 2010 tool set along with the first beta of the .NET Framework 4.0.

Microsoft released the code to its MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) on May 18 and plans to release the code to the public at large May 20, company officials said.

S. Somasegar, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Developer Division, said in a blog post:

“Over the last many months I had blogged about a lot of new and interesting features that are in VS 2010 and .NET 4. You can see those features and many more in Beta 1. We have more work to do in terms of finishing up the feature work for some of the scenarios and getting to the right levels of quality and performance, but we have made enough progress that we wanted to start getting your feedback.“

Somasegar emphasized Microsoft’s interest in developer feedback about the new beta release. “As with any software development process, getting customer feedback in a timely manner helps us make better products,” he said.

In another blog post, Mike Ormond, a developer evangelist at Microsoft, praised the performance of the new release. “Performance is much better than the CTP [Community Technology Preview] and earlier interim builds that I had access to,” Ormond wrote.

For more information on Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0, developers can go to the Visual Studio 2010 product page. MSDN and TechNet subscribers can download the code from the MSDN and TechNet download pages.