ActiveState joins Microsoft's Visual Studio Integration Program
Visual Perl and Visual Python will leverage Visual Studio 7.0
Vancouver, BC and Redmond, WA, 2000/05/24

ActiveState, a leading supplier of products and services supporting open source software, announced today that the company will develop Visual Perl and Visual Python to work with Microsoft's upcoming Visual Studio 7.0. This will provide a full-featured development environment for Perl and Python users similar to that of Visual Basic and Visual C++. A key advantage will be a short learning curve for programmers already familiar with Visual Studio and quicker application development.

Visual Studio is the most popular development environment for Windows. Visual Studio 7.0, will be a Web-friendly development environment that enables developers to create enterprise-level Web applications.

"The integrated development environments of Visual Perl and Visual Python will allow for editing, compiling and testing from a familiar graphical interface. This will make building and deploying enterprise applications less complex while offering more functionality," stated Dick Hardt, ActiveState, CEO. "With the ability to drop Visual Perl and Visual Python into Visual Studio, developers have greater choice in choosing the language that maps best to a task at hand."

Visual Perl and Visual Python Benefits:
-   Increased productivity.
-   Improved code quality.
-   Option of using Perl and Python with Web Forms

"ActiveState's tools will be a valuable compliment to the suite of programming languages currently available in Visual Studio," stated Greg Leake, Microsoft Visual Studio Group Project Manager. "Perl's popularity and Python's ease of use for programming gives our end users, Web developers, more flexibility, which in combination with Visual Studio's other languages provides a richer and more productive environment."

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software - any time, any place and on any device. For more information on Microsoft visit http://www.microsoft.com/ and for more information on the Visual Studio Integration program visit www.msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio.

The information contained in this document relates to prerelease software product that may be substantially modified before its first commercial release. Accordingly, the information may not accurately describe or reflect the software product when first commercially released. This document is provided for informational purposes only, and Microsoft and ActiveState make no warranties, express or implied, with respect to this document or the information contained in it.