I blogged about the "My" classes here, and also video interviewed Joe Binder about the "My" classes here, but now I want to make an open request to Microsoft to see the "My" classes sooner than later.
As I understand it the "My" classes include a set of VB 2005 IDE features but are otherwise simply a standard .NET library. If I am correct the "My" classes that don’t depend on IDE features could easily be implemented for use in VS.NET 2003 now. As in, today!
I’d like to make an open request that Microsoft branch the current "My" classes code and provide on MSDN as an unsupported download the subset of the "My" classes that don’t depend on the VB 2005 IDE. That would allow us VS.NET 2003 developers the benefit of at least a portion of the "My" classes today, and it might even let Microsoft get real-world feedback on the "My" classes in time to iron out any potential issues before they ship supported in VB 2005.
Failing that, maybe Microsoft would be so kind as to document which components in "My" are feature and interface frozen so a group of the best .NET developers out there could band together to create an open source version of the "My" classes for use in VS.NET 2003.
So Whaddaya think?
Mike,
While the My classes do wrap and expose things in the .NET framework, they are wrapping things in the 2005 framework. Naturally .NET 2.0 has a slew of new features, some of which were inspired by, or are important to, the My features. Thus, they really couldn’t build My into 2003. They could expose some of the features that way, but it would be a scattered approach based on the technicalaties, rather than on what was useful.
You or I could rewrite parts of My. For example, the strongly typed resources is a discovery and code gen exercise. If you get to it before I do, be sure to write an article on it.
I agree. Waiting sucks, but on this, I think anything that’s interim will be an add-on that’s not quite right.
Kathleen
1.) Some of the "My" classes wrap functionality in "My", but not *all*. So wouldn’t it be good to have access to My.Computer.FileIO today instead of waiting. Just because I can’t do some of the things in My.Computer.Network doesn’t mean we should wait for everything in My.Computer.Network.
Also, there are other posts I want to make about "My", such as "How can, and should, Microsoft make "My" extensible?" and this post logically needed to come first.