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Silverlight Just Won't Die: 'XAML for Blazor' Arrives

Userware is using vestiges of the long-gone and sorely missed Microsoft Silverlight web-dev platform to power its new "XAML for Blazor" offering, which lets .NET developers use markup language within client-side Blazor applications.

Native AOT Advances in .NET 8 Preview 6

.NET 8, now four months away from GA, continues to advance native ahead-of-time compilation (native AOT) functionality in the new Preview 6.

.NET 8 Preview 6 Bolsters New Blazor Rendering Schemes

Microsoft shipped .NET 8 Preview 6, bolstering the new rendering schemes for Blazor, the ASP.NET Core web-dev component that allows for primarily using C# instead of JavaScript.

Microsoft Previews .NET MAUI Extension for VS Code

Brand new in the Visual Studio Code Marketplace is a .NET MAUI tool that provides cross-platform developers with easy access to the evolution of Xamarin.Forms that adds the ability to create desktop apps.

VS Code June Update: Copilot AI Chat Creates Workspaces, Notebooks

Generative AI again takes center stage in the latest edition of Microsoft's open source-based Visual Studio Code editor, which advanced to version 1.8.0 in the June 2023 update. A highlight of the release is the ability to use the AI-powered GitHub Copilot coding assistant to quickly scaffold projects and notebooks.

Microsoft Dev Box Cloud Workstation Service Now GA

As promised at Build 2023 in May, Microsoft Dev Box is now generally available, providing an Azure-based service that delivers virtual workstations specially configured for software development.

Open Source Avalonia .NET UI Framework Finally Hits Milestone v11 GA Release

After a nearly one-year preview and "countless thousands of hours of dedication" driving a years-long development effort, Avalonia v11 has shipped.

After Slowness Complaints, Microsoft Boosts Code Completion in VS Code Java Tooling

Microsoft's June update to its Java tooling in Visual Studio Code focuses on enhancing code completion performance, improving user experience in unit testing and project creation, and introducing new project types.

Stack Overflow Dev Survey: VS Code, Visual Studio Still Top IDEs 5 Years Running

Some things never seem to change in the annual SO surveys, like JavaScript being named the top programming language while Microsoft rules in IDEs.

Complex AI Prompting: 'Putting the Prompt Last Helps the LLM to Stay on Task'

As AI takes hold in the enterprise, Microsoft is educating developers with guidance for more complex use cases in order to get the best out of advanced, generative machine learning models like those that power ChatGPT and the company's Copilot assistants that are popping up all over.

Open Source Alternative to Visual Studio Marketplace Avoids Decommission

Open source champion Eclipse Foundation is advancing the Open VSX Registry, a vendor-neutral, community-supported alternative to the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace.

Semantic Kernel: Microsoft Answers Your Questions, Updates Docs for AI Integration SDK

Semantic Kernel acts as an AI orchestration layer in Microsoft's stack of AI models and "copilot" assistants, providing interaction services for those constructs to work with underlying foundation models and AI infrastructure.

What's in Microsoft's New C# Dev Kit for Visual Studio Code

Microsoft announced the preview release of C# Dev Kit, a new extension for Visual Studio Code intended to improve the C# development experience on Linux, macOS, Windows and more.

GitHub Copilot Makes Nice with Visual Studio IntelliSense

After a years-long problematic relationship, AI-powered coding assistant tools from Microsoft and GitHub are working together better.

Visual Studio 2022 Previews Instant Pull Requests, Better File Comparisons

Visual Studio 2022 17.7 Preview 2 has shipped with a raft of improvements that include community-driven features such as improved file comparisons and instant pull requests from within the IDE.

AI Already Saturates Software Development to 'Staggering' Degree, GitHub Survey Shows

Until any potential job-replacement, existential-threat scenario is realized, AI tools are rather becoming a dev's best friend, indicates GitHub report.

5 Blazor Improvements in New .NET 8 Preview 5

While .NET 8 Preview 5 includes the usual raft of new features and functionality around installers, binaries, container images an so on, much of the action in this cycle concerned ASP.NET Core and its Blazor tooling, which allows for coding web projects in C# instead of JavaScript while taking advantages of new component rendering advancements.

Even SQL Server Developer Tools Gets an AI Copilot

Microsoft, apparently trying to enhance every product it has with an AI-powered Copilot, announced a new one for the latest release of SQL Server Developer Tools (SSDT) in Visual Studio.

Uno Platform 4.9 Highlights Cross-Platform Media Player, WebView2

A cross-platform media player highlights the new Uno Platform 4.9, the latest edition of the application framework that lets developers write an application once in XAML and C# and deploy it to any target platform.

Microsoft Deep Learning Alternative: On-Device Training for ONNX Runtime

"As opposed to traditional deep learning (DL) model training, On-Device Training requires efficient use of compute and memory resources."

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