Among the usual bevy of new features introduced on a monthly basis by the Visual Studio Code team is a new take on debugging breakpoints, called Logpoints. It comes in the March release, v1.22.
Visual Studio and .NET component specialist GrapeCity's latest update features better data visualization, new project templates -- including a new .NET Standard project for Xamarin mobile development -- and more.
Proving that Visual Studio tools can come from all manner of sources, a small dev firm in the Canary Islands is offering up its own homegrown toolset -- developed during the creation of an accounting program -- as a commercial product to let C# and VB.NET coders create Web apps without all that JavaScript and CSS stuff.
The latest updates to the Visual Studio App Center -- described as a "mission control" service for iOS and Android mobile apps -- includes error reporting for Xamarin-based apps, device-based management and more.
The Visual Studio Code team improved its C/C++ extension, still in preview, with a March update that focuses on improved IntelliSense for better auto-complete, easier configuration and more.
Wally builds an app prototype and in response to user feedback investigates how to play audio sound effects in response to events such as a button press.
- By Wallace McClure
- 03/29/2018
The Python extension for the open source Visual Studio Code editor -- the most popular offering available in the marketplace -- has been updated with improved debugging functionality.
'I think ASP.NET Core is the biggest game changer in the history of Web development using the Microsoft stack.'
Microsoft's flagship Visual Studio IDE is continuing to track the extension model introduced with the company's open source Visual Studio Code editor, most recently adding support for debug adapters.
Multi-machine deployment with Visual Studio Team Services via deployment groups is now out of preview and generally available.
Blazor, an experimental technology that some believe will save .NET Web coders from "the insanity of JavaScript," has been released by Microsoft in its first public preview.
Entity Framework is fabulous ... but it does impose some overhead. If you like working with data in an O-O kind of way but feel the "need for speed," then you should be looking at Dapper.
It's goodbye to Portable Class Library projects and hello to .NET Standard Library projects for Xamarin.Forms development in the new Visual Studio for Mac version 7.5 Preview 1.
Announced barely a week after the official release of v15.6, the first preview of v15.7 includes productivity enhancements, better diagnostics, more C++ development improvements, better management of Android and iOS environments and more.
Visual Studio Code developers have asked for support for more test frameworks and Microsoft said it has responded in kind, announcing initial support for JUnit 5 this week, along with other Java-related features.
Right now is best time to be a .NET developer, said Microsoft's James Montemagno in a Visual Studio Live! keynote address. "It enables us to develop code on any OS we want, it has great tools for Visual Studio, it works with amazing languages, and there's a beautiful community of developers creating awesome libraries."
"In this ever changing and evolving world of technology, we have to be innovating to stay ahead," said Microsoft's Kasey Uhlenhuth in her keynote address at Visual Studio Live! in Las Vegas.
Although Microsoft programming languages fared quite well in Stack Overflow's huge new developer survey, Visual Basic 6 was again named the "most dreaded" language -- just like last year, and the year before -- with VB.NET and VBA not far behind.
RedMonk's latest programming language popularity report says Microsoft's multi-language approach is paying off, giving the company the "most to crow about" among all vendors.
If you're coding Azure Functions in Visual Studio 2017 to work with Azure Storage, one tool that can assist when running functions locally is the Microsoft Azure Storage Emulator, as shown in this hands-on tutorial.
- By Jason Roberts
- 03/08/2018