JetBrains's .NET plug-in will make quick work of code inspections and refactoring. Here are a few tips to work with it that will have you wondering what to do with all your newfound free time.
If you're creating an XML document and want to write code that you'll actually be able to maintain … well, it may be time to learn a little Visual Basic, just so you can use XML Literals. It's a good solution even for C# shops.
A December report on Windows Phone Store app downloads also offers some tips for developers looking to make it big with their mobile apps.
Microsoft's new build/test pricing and licensing reductions that were proposed last month are now in effect.
- By Michael Domingo
- 01/06/2015
Even Apple devices aren't immune to the dreaded OS fragmentation problem. Thankfully, Xamarin has a solution, and Wally looks into it this month.
- By Wallace McClure
- 01/06/2015
Peter looks at how to call a JavaScript function from your TypeScript code and do it in a type-safe way. Along the way, he dramatically simplifies a Backbone application by integrating Knockout.
Peter shows how a Visual Studio database project can make you more productive when making changes to your database. But a database project also gives you a variety of tools to let you keep track of what those changes are -- which will make moving those changes to your production environment considerably safer.
See how the .NET SDK uses consistent naming and patterns, making it easy to work with the myriad of Web services that AWS provides.
- By Ondrej Balas
- 12/30/2014
Bing Developer Assistant takes code searching to another level, searching well over 19M code samples, and adds contextual help and better error resolution from within Visual Studio.
- By Michael Domingo
- 12/18/2014
It's been a great year for new development tools and technologies. We look back at seven releases that didn't get all the attention they deserve.
- By Terrence Dorsey
- 12/17/2014
Microsoft skips to naming the next version of Visual Basic, and commits to new language developments that are planned for release at the same time as the release of Visual Studio 15.
- By Michael Domingo
- 12/16/2014
The developers building new applications are very nice people, of course. But the real heroes of the programming world are the developers maintaining and extending existing applications.
So far, so good on the work Microsoft has done, but it still has lots of work to do to get more of its proprietary offerings into the open source development pipeline. The other challenge is being able to monetize it where it makes sense.
- By Andrew J. Brust
- 12/15/2014
Recent acquisition to bolster performance and monitoring of applications through Application Insights service that will be included in forthcoming Visual Studio releases.
How can one class communicate with each another, yet know nothing about that other class? That's where the mediator pattern comes in, and Eric shows how to employ it in a .NET chat application.
Peter learns something by listening to readers: Visual Studio database projects provide a great environment for making changes to your databases. Here's a brief introduction about how they'll make life easier for you and all the steps for setting one up.
Nick looks at the preview release of Blend for Visual Studio 2015 and demonstrates some tips and tricks that will save you time and help you build better looking Windows Phone applications.
- By Nick Randolph
- 12/09/2014
To accommodate an influx of year-end work, Guillaume's employer does what many stores do -- hire on temporary help. However, when you're desperate, beggars can't always be choosers.
If wrangling queries is getting you down, these 11 data access extensions for Visual Studio can help.
- By Terrence Dorsey
- 12/04/2014
New identity controls are among the sprint 74 updates being made to the service. Plus, Brian Harry explains the outage from last week.
- By Michael Domingo
- 12/04/2014