Microsoft will publicly debut Visual Studio 6.0 this week (though certain MSDN subscribers have had it for almost a month already) when the suite of software and Web development tools takes the forefront at the Developer Days '98 (Dev Days) event. Dev Days, which will be held in 120 different cities in over 50 countries worldwide, is a day-long exposition featuring a satellite broadcast keynote address by Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. Gates will try to explain how the expensive ($1000-1700, depending on the Edition) suite of tools ties in with his vision of a "digital nervous system). He will also introduce a new version of Office 2000, called Office Developer Edition (ODE) that will debut next Spring after the rollout of Office 2K. ODE will be closely integrated with Visual Studio 6.0 and the VBA editor in the ODE will closely resemble Visual Basic 6.0.
Visual Studio 6.0 consists of several programming tools that will also be available separately, including Visual Basic 6.0, Visual C++ 6.0, Visual FoxPro 6.0, Visual InterDev 6.0, and Visual SourceSafe 6.0. Visual J++ 6.0 will appear about a month later, as it is lagging behind the other Visual Studio 6.0 tools
