Microsoft is currently hard at work building the next generation of its development platform and tools. In fact, the Redmond company has recently made available for public download the first Beta development milestones of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0. Now the software giant is giving testers of the .NET 4.0 Beta 1 the chance to help it boost the framework's performance. Contributions Microsoft is looking for are under the form of feedback. In this sense, a survey is already out, focused on getting developers to share their two cents when it comes down to the performance of .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1.

“Want us to fix a particularly nagging perf problem? Dying to tell us your awesome idea about an optimization? Here is an opportunity for you to provide us feedback on your level of satisfaction with .NET Framework performance and voice your opinions and thoughts on what we should be focusing on in the future. This single page survey will take about 10-15 minutes to complete the questionnaire,” revealed a member of the CLR and Framework Perf team.

The survey is by no means focused on the latest iteration of the next generation of .NET. The Redmond company is willing to hear what developers have to say for the precursor of .NET Framework 4.0, namely .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, but also for the plain vanilla .NET Framework 3.5, as well as versions 2.0 and 3. Questions in the survey cover a variety of topics, and range from “Are you satisfied with the performance of the .NET Framework?” to “Are there .NET performance issues that you find hard or tedious to diagnose with existing tools?”

Microsoft is even willing to contact developers and discuss specific performance issues associated with .NET in order to provide a fix. “Your response to the survey will be anonymous unless you would like us to get in touch with you regarding your .NET Framework performance issues by filling in your contact information,” reads the introductory text to the survey.

.NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1 is available for download here.
Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 is available for download here.