News


Santa Hat Icon in VS Code Creates 'SantaGate,' Locks Down Repository

The Visual Studio Code development team placed a Santa hat on the settings gear icon in the IDE as has been done in the past for the holiday season, but this year someone objected.

.NET Core 2.2 End of Life Is Dec. 23

Microsoft has advised developers that .NET Core 2.2's support life will end next Monday, Dec. 23, so they should upgrade.

C# Passes Visual Basic .NET in Programming Language Popularity Index

Microsoft's C# programming language has passed Visual Basic .NET on the TIOBE Index -- which measures language popularity -- and is even in the running for being named "Programming Language of the Year" for 2019.

Up Next: .NET 5

Now that Microsoft has shipped .NET Core 3.1, the next stop on the .NET Core roadmap is just plain old .NET 5 with no "Core" and no "Framework" -- it's all just .NET from here on.

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Visual Studio Code v1.41 Continues Remote Development Push

The November 2019 release of Visual Studio Code, version 1.41, is out with a number of improvements including more work to improve remote development functionality.

Xamarin.Forms 4.4 Adds CarouselView

Microsoft announced Xamarin.Forms 4.4, with a new CarouselView heading a list of new features and functionality for the open-source, cross-platform mobile UI library and development framework.

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Microsoft Data Analysis: .NET for Jupyter Notebooks, DataFrame for .NET

With the maturation of the open-source, cross-platform .NET Core initiative, Microsoft has been upping its data science analysis tooling lately, previewing .NET Core with Jupyter Notebooks functionality and a DataFrame type for .NET for easier data exploration.

Visual Studio's 'Find in Files' Gets Modernization Revamp

Now that Visual Studio 2019 v16.4 has shipped, the dev team is turning to new priorities in the v16.5 preview round, including the IDE's "Find in Files" feature, which is getting a modernization revamp.

Xamarin Mobile Developers Get XAML Hot Reload in Visual Studio 2019 v16.4

Xamarin mobile developers using Visual Studio gained some functionality common to other IDEs as XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms was introduced with the new Visual Studio 2019 v16.4 release.

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Visual Studio 2019 for Mac v8.4 Preview Adds ASP.NET Core Scaffolding

Scaffolding support for ASP.NET Core projects heads the list of new features added to Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.4 Preview 4, helping developers get head starts on projects with automatically generated boilerplate code.

HockeyApp Scores Its Last Goal

Microsoft's HockeyApp -- the strange-sounding tool for continuously building, testing, releasing and monitoring apps -- has scored its last goal, being retired and sent to the permanent bench in favor of Visual Studio App Center.

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Azure Functions 3.0, for Serverless Cloud Computing, Goes Live

Microsoft announced Azure Functions 3.0, its event-driven, serverless cloud computing platform, has reached version 3.0, ready for production -- with a catch.

Microsoft Plugs Away at 'Huge Technical Challenge' of Creating WinForms Designer on .NET Core

"It is a huge technical challenge to bring the designer to .NET Core because it requires the design surface that hosts the live .NET Core form to run outside the Visual Studio process. That means we need to re-architect the way the designer surface 'communicates' with Visual Studio."

.NET Core, TypeScript Head List of In-Demand Freelancer Skills

Microsoft developer technologies fared well in Upwork's list of the top 100 in-demand skills as compiled by the freelancer-focused careers company.

Research Says SQL Server Faster on Azure than on AWS

Research firm GigaOm compared throughput performance between SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines and SQL Server on AWS EC2, finding the former enjoyed a definite speed edge.

Microsoft Ships Entity Framework Core 3.1 and Entity Framework 6.4

As with .NET Core 3.1, these are relatively uneventful shipments -- most notable for long term support (LTS) licensing -- without a bunch of fancy new features or functionality included, as the dev teams focused on firming up existing code.

Xamarin Developer Summit Videos Available On Demand

Developers can revisit last summer's Xamarin Developer Summit with a series of instructional videos for the mobile development framework.

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Microsoft Dropping Support for Alternate Credentials in Azure DevOps Services

Microsoft last week announced that it's going to drop Alternate Credentials support for authenticating users of its Azure DevOps Services.

Microsoft Releases 'Small and Short' .NET Core 3.1

Microsoft shipped .NET Core 3.1, described as a "small and short release" that focuses on two of the big features highlighting the Sept. 23 release of .NET Core 3.0: Blazor (for C# Web development instead of JavaScript) and desktop development (Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation).

Microsoft Ships Visual Studio 2019 16.4

Microsoft has shipped Visual Studio 2019 16.4, adding new functionality and features dealing with, containers. XAML Xamarin.Forms mobile development, C++ development and much more.

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