Articles about Visual Studio

First detailed last year, Microsoft Dev Box is now finally generally available. This is Microsoft's "ready-to-code, cloud-based workstation optimized for developer use cases and productivity" and it comes from years of development building on Visual Studio Codespaces.

These preconfigured, container- and Linux-based dev environments served their purposes in 2019, but the demands of developers forced Microsoft to push things further. The result is Microsoft Dev Box, combining developer-optimized capabilities with the enterprise-ready management of Windows 365 and Microsoft Intune.

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Microsoft has acknowledged that two recent updates for Windows 10 are causing problems for users. People who have installed KB4598299 and KB4598301 are reporting BSoDs as well as app crashes.

The two updates (released Windows 10 versions 1909, 2004 and 20H2) were supposed to address issues in .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8, but they have -- as is increasingly common with Windows updates -- introduced new problems of their own.

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As software developers, we tend to get pretty attached to the IDE we use. And it's not hard to see why -- it's the tool we rely on the most, which enables us to create fantastic products and be productive while doing so.

And this can create a problem when we're faced with a change in our flow. We do not like change. Don't get me wrong. Change is great -- as long as it's not happening on our machines. Microsoft, however, doesn't mind a challenge, as it just unveiled Visual Studio Online. Like its name suggests, it's an IDE in the browser. Unlike its name suggests, that's only a small part of it.

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Microsoft has made lots of changes to .NET Core over the years, bringing tons of features over from its more mature and feature-rich sibling, .NET Framework. Still, the feature gap remained quite large for certain scenarios, leaving many developers waiting and wanting for more to be swayed away.

With .NET Core 3.0, which officially arrived this week, Microsoft may just win their hearts and minds once and for all.

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One of the most frustrating things for Windows users that switch to Linux is learning to install software. With Microsoft's operating system, you search the web for the software you want, download it, and install it. With Linux-based operating systems, however, programs are typically installed through a centralized app center or through the terminal. The Linux approach is arguably safer, as Windows users can easily be tricked into downloading malware. Windows 10 tries to emulate the centralized software center with the Microsoft Store, but users have largely rejected it.

Thanks to Canonical's wildly popular snaps (and other containerized packages, such as Flatpak), Linux users can more easily install software -- it should be more familiar to former Windows users. Snaps will work on most distributions too, meaning there is less work involved for software developers -- there is no need to create distro-dependent versions. Today, Microsoft furthers its commitment to Linux by releasing a snap version of  Visual Studio Code. No, the source-code editor is not the Windows-maker's first snap -- it also released one for Skype, for instance.

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Visual Studio is not only one of the oldest IDEs around, having launched in the late-1990s, but it is also one of the most popular. Chances are, if you ask developers what they use, Visual Studio will be among the top answers. And, for good reasons: it is a mature, powerful and versatile IDE that is used across the globe to create websites, desktop software, mobile apps and games in a number of popular programming languages, like C# and C++.

And, every couple of years, Microsoft gives it a major update to add new features, refine existing ones and make it look more modern. This year is no different, as it introduces Visual Studio 2019 -- and, for the first time, a Mac version is ready to go from the start as well. Here are the biggest changes that are coming with it.

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Visual Studio Code is an amazing cross-platform code editor which has managed to attract a significant following in recent years, not least because of its support for extensions. In just a couple of clicks, users can add various languages, like Python, Ruby and Java, and create new software.

For example, if you want to write Java code, there is a pretty nifty extension made by Red Hat, called Language Support for Java(TM) by Red Hat, that features things such as IntelliSense and basic Eclipse and Grade project support. And, now, Microsoft is building upon it by adding a debugger to the mix.

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The .NET Framework transformed with the release of .NET Core last year. From a Windows-only affair, the framework has gone cross-platform. What's more, Microsoft also made it open-source, adding support for macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.

And now it's taking things a step further by rolling out .NET Core 2.0, which comes with some major improvements to make it "easier to use and much more capable as a platform." Let's take a look at what is new.

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We first learned of Microsoft's plans to bring Visual Studio to the Mac last year in November, but it is not until Build 2017 that the software giant announced the general availability of the much-awaited version of its IDE. That's right macOS users, Visual Studio 2017 for Mac is finally here.

Visual Studio 2017 for Mac arrives two months after Microsoft released the Windows version and the fourth beta of the macOS IDE, and brings with it a number of new features related to things like .NET Core, web tooling and Xamarin.

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Microsoft today releases Visual Studio 2017 and the fourth preview of Visual Studio for Mac. The latest official version of its longstanding IDE for Windows adds improvements related to productivity, performance, mobile apps, cloud development, DevOps and the ecosystem surrounding Visual Studio.

Visual Studio 2017, according to Microsoft's blog post announcing the release, features an improved startup and project load times, better navigation, the ability to edit files without having to open a project or solution, CMake support and Linux support for C++, Xamarin Forms Previewer, a new Connected Services experience, the ability to build .NET Core 1.0 and .NET Core 1.1 apps, support for Azure App Service and more.

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Microsoft accidentally revealed that Visual Studio is making its way to the Mac. A blog post published in error on MSDN shows that the company plans to bring its coding tool to the Apple platform.

Transforming Visual Studio into a cross-platform development tool is an interesting move for Microsoft, and something it has resisted for quite some time. The official announcement is due at Connect later this week, but the leak means that we already have all the details we need.

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An eagle-eyed Reddit user has noticed that code run through Visual Studio 2015 C++ compiler make calls to Microsoft's telemetry services. Microsoft has already upset a large number of people with the privacy and telemetry issues in Windows 10, and there is now a busy thread on Reddit discussing the company's thinking behind including this 'feature'.

Coders have expressed concerns that Microsoft appears to be inserting calls to its telemetry service into binaries as they are compiled. Calls to telemetry_main_invoke_trigger and telemetry_main_return_trigger raised a few eyebrows having been found in both debug and release versions of the software. The good news -- maybe -- is that telemetry can be disabled.

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Satya Nadella’s Microsoft is a lot different from the Microsoft he took charge of from Steve Ballmer last year. It’s open, it’s bold, and it’s kicking. At the ongoing Build 2015 developer conference, the Redmond-based software mammoth announces the launch of Visual Studio Code, a cross-platform code editor for writing modern web and cloud apps. The interesting bit? In addition to Windows, the Visual Studio Code runs on Linux as well as Apple’s Mac OS X desktop platform. Also, it’s free and you can download a technical preview of it right here.

The full-fledged Visual Studio is still Windows-only, but with the new Code the company is opening up to other platforms. The idea is simple. A lot of people use Linux and Mac, so let’s make a development environment that could support their preferred platform.

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Microsoft has released Visual Studio Community 2013, a revamped edition of Visual Studio Professional 2013 which is free for individual and small business use (teams of up to five people).

It’s a versatile product. You can code apps and applications in C++, C#, VB, F#, HTML5, Python, JavaScript and more. Designers, editors, debuggers and profilers help to polish your work. There’s web tooling for ASP.NET, Node.js, and JavaScript, and Apache Cordova and Unity tools mean you can target iOS and Android, as well as Windows.

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Windows 8.1 may be the big news of the day, but that does not mean Microsoft is sitting pat or off celebrating. The perceived vaccination for the Windows 8 illness is not the only product issuing forth from Redmond, Wash. today -- Visual Studio 2013, along with Team Foundation Server 2013 and .NET 4.51 are also now loose in the wild.

"You can download the trials and related products and MSDN subscribers can download the licensed product from the subscriber portal", announces Microsoft's Brian Harry.

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