Why Oh Why Microsoft Why Why Why

OK, this is ridiculous! Why wasn’t this information funneled out to the VB MVP’s (and other VB’ites like myself)? How is it that the first word of this is stated in public by none other than Miguel de Icaza (yes, the mono project guy)?

What am I talking about here? Well according to Miguel, he discovered that the Javascript compiler that is used by the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) that will be utilized initially in Silverlight 1.1 is written in VB. Yes, I said VB!

What better way to ensure that VB is “supported” in Silverlight than write a compiler that is included in Silverlight in VB. ;-)

In all fairness, I did find this out first from someone at Microsoft, but not until after Miguel posted it and then Paul (from Microsoft) pointed out Miguel’s discovery. Again, this is something that should have been, at the very least, made public among VB Insiders. Sheesh.

Paul also points out that VBx (aka VB 10, the next version of VB to support dynamic language features) compiler is also written in VB. And yes, it will be included as part of Silverlight 1.1 as well.