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Death of the Dev Machine?

Here's a takeaway from this week's Ignite 2020 event: An advanced Azure cloud portends the death of the traditional, high-powered dev machine packed with computing, memory and storage components.

COVID-19 Is Ignite 2020's Elephant in the Room: 'Frankly, It Sucks'

As in all things of our new reality, there was no escaping the drastic changes in routine caused by the COVID-19 pandemic during Microsoft's big Ignite 2020 developer/IT pro conference, this week shifted to an online-only event after drawing tens of thousands of in-person attendees in years past.

Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 Preview Update Adds Codespaces

To coincide with the Microsoft Ignite 2020 IT pro/developer event, the Visual Studio dev team shipped a new update, Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 Preview 3.1, with the main attraction being support for cloud-hosted Codespaces, now in a limited beta.

Speed Lines Graphic

New for Blazor: Azure Static Web Apps Support

With Blazor taking the .NET web development world by storm, one of the first announcements during Microsoft's Ignite 2020 developer/IT event was its new support in Azure Static Web Apps.

Entity Framework Core 5 RC1 Is Feature Complete, Ready for Production

The first release candidate for Entity Framework 5 -- Microsoft's object-database mapper for .NET -- has shipped with a go live license, ready for production.

VS Code 1.49 (August 2020 Update) Continues Remote Development Improvements

In the work-at-home age of COVID-19, Microsoft's open source, cross-platform Visual Studio Code editor continues to see remote development improvements.

Visual Studio Code's C++ Extension Hits v1.0 General Availability

Microsoft announced the first generally available release of the C++ extension for Visual Studio Code, graduating to version 1.0 after debuting way back in April 2016,

C++ Leads Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 Preview 3 Improvements

The third preview of Visual Studio 2019 v16.8 shows the usual assortment of improvements touching upon productivity for Git, the Roslyn .NET compiler platform, and especially C++.

Microsoft Says .NET 5 Replaces .NET Standard (Except for ...)

.NET 5 improves code sharing and replaces .NET Standard except for cases where developers need to extend the reach of their code sharing to support older frameworks such as .NET Framework or share code between specific existing frameworks.

.NET 5 Hits 'Go Live' Status in RC1, Ready for Production

Developers can now feel free to use .NET 5 code in production, as Microsoft has deemed the new Release Candidate 1 a "go live" release ahead of the official debut on Nov. 10 -- after one more release candidate.

Blazor Gets Faster (Even Without AOT)

The C#-based Blazor web development framework received a performance boost with the new Release Candidate (RC) of the unifying .NET 5, scheduled for one more RC before go-live general availability in November

VS Code Java Team Boosts IntelliSense Performance

Microsoft's dev team for Java on Visual Studio Code is working to improve IntelliSense performance in the popular open source code editor that acts like an IDE via its vast library of extensions.

Amid COVID-19 Remote-Learning Surge, Microsoft Touts Azure Cognitive Services

With the U.S. already adjusting to the new remote-work reality caused by COVID-19, remote learning is taking center stage as the school season starts, and Microsoft is touting its Azure Cognitive Services to help.

Visual Studio Codespaces Consolidates to GitHub Codespaces

Microsoft caused Codespaces confusion after it renamed its Visual Studio Online offering "Visual Studio Codespaces" and subsequently GitHub, owned by the company, introduced its own Codespaces.

VB Variants Rank High in Top-Paying Freelancer Skills, Popularity

Visual Basic continues to rank highly in various popularity and salary indices despite being deprecated by Microsoft, with the most recent examples coming from freelance development platform Upwork and popularity index TIOBE.

Microsoft Offers New Documentation for Blazor and gRPC in ASP.NET Core

With .NET 5 release candidates on tap ahead of an official November GA debut, Microsoft has published new documentation for some of the hottest ASP.NET Core components, including Blazor and gRPC.

Microsoft: 'We Are Finished with F# 5'

While highlighting new development work on Microsoft's F# programming language alongside the latest .NET 5 preview, the company announced that, except for one minor enhancement, "we are finished with F# 5!"

Microsoft Survey: Developers Held Back by Lack of 'Native AOT' in .NET Core

Lack of native ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation in .NET Core is a sore spot for Microsoft, which just published results of a survey indicating that this missing option is holding developers back from using the framework more.

Firm Automates Converting Visual Basic Apps to .NET Core

Mobilize.Net, an "automated modernization" specialist headed by a former Microsoft corporate VP, has upgraded its Visual Basic upgrade tool to target .NET Core, the open source, cross-platform successor of the Windows-only .NET Framework.

Blazor WebAssembly Gets Lazy Loading

Blazor enhancements show strongly in the list of ASP.NET Core updates included in this week's release of .NET 5 Preview 8, with lazy loading of assemblies for the client-side component heading the list of improvements to the open source framework that allows for web development in C# instead of JavaScript.

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