Will VS 2010 allow me to use the new async and await keywords in C#?

Question

When the new async and await features go live, will I be able to use them in Visual Studio 2010, or will I need to have Visual Studio?

What I'm asking is this: will Microsoft maintain language feature parity between VS 2010 and VS 11? The CTP is a preview, solid or not, and our customers don't want us using technology that is perceived to be incomplete or untested - so despite the licensing I can't use it.

My employer is not purchasing VS 11, so I need to know whether or not I'm wasting my time writing code with async and await.

Answer 1

Right now the Async CTP allows for you to use the new awaits and async syntax in Visual Studio 2010. It's common for the language teams to provide CTPs for the current version of Visual Studio when demonstrating new features. It's a great way to let developers experiment and give feedback to the language team.

However for the final release the new language features are typically only made available for the next version of Visual Studio (Dev11 in this case). They aren't back ported to the previous version of Visual Studio.

This pattern of CTP in current release and final in next has happened before with LINQ. It's almost certain to repeat with awaits