SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 13, 2002 — According to Microsofts Marie Huwe, Visual Studio .NET marks the largest developer launch in Microsoft history, with 3.5 million betas issued; 350,000 customers receiving gold code in advance; 190 add-in tools, including components, launching simultaneously with Visual Studio .NET; 250,000 developers already trained, and more than 200 books and 200 courses on developing for Microsoft .NET currently in place. In addition to today’s VSLive! event in San Francisco, 150 other launch events are planned worldwide.
“Getting this development ecosystem in place is critical to the success of .NET,” says Huwe. “Thanks to our partners and the excitement of our developer community around .NET, getting this ecosystem jumpstarted has been not only easy, its been a lot of fun.”
Says Sax.net founder Mike Sax, “The platforms that Microsoft builds are only as successful as the applications that are created for them. Microsoft has a very strong interest in making sure there is a solid and productive development environment available to build solutions on top of the .NET platform. Visual Studio .NET is of great strategic importance to Microsoft, so it makes sense that Microsoft has invested its best development resources and most talented developers in this product.”
A huge part of that ecosystem requires putting Visual Studio .NET into developers hands. “The mind share is there, the awareness is there, and people are very interested,” says Huwe. “Having Visual Studio .NET ready now , and getting it out to customers now , is the key that will turn over the engine for .NET.”
