Visual Studio 2010 RC and .NET Framework 4.0 RC released publicly

On Tuesday Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010 RC and .NET Framework 4.0 RC to MSDN subscribers. Today, the company has made these releases available to the public.

Visual Studio is a development environment that allows developers to create GUI applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE, .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework and Microsoft Silverlight.

There are no new features in the RC release from beta 2 and Microsoft has focussed on speed improvements. A Microsoft spokesperson stated: "We heard from customers that performance in Beta 2 wasn’t everything they had hoped it would be. The RC released today delivers enhanced performance and is an added milestone to garner even more customer feedback before the final build is released. Specifically, customers will see performance improvements in loading solutions, typing, building and debugging."

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 will launch in cities all over the world on April 12. Major events will be taking place in the UK, China, Malaysia, India, and in the US.