It appears that Microsoft is releasing the only existent developer tools for their new (Vista-implemented) Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and accordingly the programming tools such as Visual C++ in their updated version - 2008 - in roughly 6 months.

From a news website (click), I picked up that this piece of software is launching on Feb. 27, 2008. However, the actual software will be available to purchase a few weeks (leaving out "months" because it doesn't seem likely) earlier, as clarified by Scott.
To think about it, Vista is in stores since November 2006, and you are not yet able to develop applications using the new power of Microsoft's .NET Framework 3.0.

I myself, being a C++ programmer, am not too fond on using that Framework. In the past, it's been a prime example of slow and uncoordinated programming that acts more like a parasite. Microsoft said all this would change, especially the execution speed, with version 3 of that Framework. They grounded that on the fact that it's directly implemented in Vista, instead of being an additional software package. While this does make sense, I cannot imagine many programmers wanting to use this little helper when developing.

Below is a screenshot from a beta of the mentioned software, Visual Studio 2008.


[bigger view]