Microsoft's move from the ageing Windows-only .NET Framework to the open source, cross-platform .NET Core framework may come with ancillary consequences, such as a boost in the popularity of its PowerShell scripting language.
Microsoft has beefed up several data analytics offerings in its Azure cloud platform, including the general availability of Azure Data Explorer and Azure Data Lake Storage.
With cross-platform .NET Core 3.0 poised to support desktop applications -- the next step in totally subsuming the Windows-only .NET Framework -- Microsoft has published guidance on how to port existing WinForms and WPF projects to the new platform.
The Release Candidate for Visual Studio 2019 has been made available in anticipation of the official launch coming April 2, after which the RC can be upgraded to the final, official general availability release.
A new Test Explorer highlights the February release of the Python extension for Visual Studio Code, by far the most popular tool in the marketplace, installed more than 6.5 million times.
Microsoft provided an update on Java tooling for its open source, cross-platform Visual Studio Code editor, detailing better performance and several tweaks and enhancements, along with the introduction of IntelliCode to a popular extension package.
Azure Functions, Microsoft's serverless computing experience in the cloud, now officially supports the Java programming language and has also made it easier to work with TypeScript.
Visual Studio developers -- notoriously finicky about their IDE's UI and quick to let their feelings be known -- have been provided a glimpse into how their feedback helps shape the Visual Studio 2019 experience.
Developers working with .NET Core are advised to upgrade their 1.x versions by June 27, after which official support will be available only for 2.x editions.
Mobile developers using Visual Studio have a lot of new features, tweaks and improvements to work with, including functionality for faster deployments, improved XAML editing, AI-assisted IntelliCode and much more.
The new Windows Community Toolkit 5.1 update builds on functionality previously introduced for using Universal Windows Platform controls in Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation desktop applications on .NET Core 3.
Amazon Web Services has updated its serverless functionality for ASP.NET Core projects, the popular new direction for Microsoft Web programming.
A Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 Launch Event site indicates the company's flagship IDE will lift off in 53 days, 16 hours and 28 minutes (at the time of this writing) -- in other words, at 9 a.m. PT on Tuesday, April 2.
Microsoft shipped Blazor 0.8.0, the latest update to its experimental .NET Web framework that lets programmers use C# and HTML for browser-based apps, a province traditionally dominated by JavaScript.
Visual Basic.NET is getting comfortable in its new position as a top five programming language in the TIOBE index, which measures popularity based on search engine data.
Much has been written here about how Microsoft's Visual Studio Code dev team has gone "all in on Python," and the effort seems to have paid off according to a new developer survey specifically devoted to the popular programming language.
The latest monthly release (January 2019, version 1.31) of the cross-platform Visual Studio Code editor comes with the usual plethora of bug fixes, tweaks and new features, with many focused on the extension mechanism that powers the open source project.
Microsoft updated its Python Extension for Visual Studio Code, building out new data science functionality that was introduced in a previous release.
The answer to the headline above is basically "not much," as Microsoft describes the new v3.3 update as "a smaller release than usual." But don't worry: TypeScript error messages may be displayed in haiku form in later releases, per one proposal on the roadmap.
Microsoft shipped Windows Template Studio 3.0, a milestone update of the open source, wizard-driven Visual Studio 2017 extension for coding Universal Windows Platform (UWP) applications.