John,

>>Based on what I saw during the Summit, VB.net will ROCK. The team is working on some stuff for after Orcas that is way cool and expands on things in VFP.
>
>Well, are you under NDA on this or what? Tell us more!

Yes, under NDA. VB 10 (beyond Orcas/VB9) features cannot be talked about yet. However, as Craig said, there are some way cool things there that will seem very familiar to VFP developers.

The VB team (which now includes Calvin and Aleksey) is very focused on adding RAD features into the development process and not being afraid to "pollute" the language with ease of use features.

For example, the XML embedding features in VB9 (Orcas) include runtime insertion of the evaluated result of vars or expressions into the XML structure being defined in code -- think TEXTMERGE. The C# folks don't like to add that kind of pollution to the language (I heard some of the C# PM and devs say so in one of the meetings when someone brought up the VB XML integration).

Calvin's contributions to VB9's Intellisense and Aleksey's contributions to the translation of embedded LINQ syntax into the underlying LINQ framework were very evident, and VB Product Manager Amanda Silver gave them credit for helping them in very strategic ways -- naming Calvin publicly when showing the Intellisense and bragging on Aleksey to me in a private conversation.

I'm very eager to see what else develops for VB 10, based on what I've seen so far.