Chapter 22. Visual Basic 10.0 Language Improvements
In Chapter 21, you learned that Visual Basic has a 19-year history under the Windows platform. During this long time, Visual Basic evolved from a general-purpose, high-level programming language to a multi-paradigm one. The first version of Visual Basic.NET turned the language into a real object-oriented one, and also launched debates within the community as to whether it is still the same Visual Basic or a new language.
Visual Basic 2005 added support for generic types, and got great performance-boosting features (such as partial types, operator declarations, Using statement, and nullable types). Visual Basic 2008 started embracing functional programming principles, such as LINQ and query expressions, and added XLM literal expressions to the language — which is unique among the core .NET languages.
The newest version, Visual Basic 2010, is about enhancing its functional features and providing seamless cooperation with dynamic programming languages. While a few years ago there were separate teams in Microsoft responsible for Visual Basic and C#, today the Managed Languages Team makes tremendous efforts toward the co-evolution of these two languages. Compare the new Visual Basic 2010 features with the new C# 4.0 improvements in Chapter 24 and you can see this co-evolution.
After reading this chapter, you will be familiar with the following improvements of the Visual Basic 2010 language:
Implicit line continuation — You can get rid of ...
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