We are pleased to announce that the October 2019 release of the Python Extension for Visual Studio Code is now available. You can download the Python extension from the Marketplace, or install it directly from the extension gallery in Visual Studio Code. If you already have the Python extension installed, you can also get the latest update by restarting Visual Studio Code. You can learn more about  Python support in Visual Studio Code in the documentation.  

In this release we addressed 97 issues, including native editing of Jupyter Notebooks, a button to run a Python file in the terminal, and linting and import improvements with the Python Language Server. The full list of enhancements is listed in our changelog. 

Anyone who uses Git knows that it has a steep learning curve. We’ve learned from developers that most people tend to learn from a buddy, whether that’s a coworker, a professor, a friend, or even a YouTube video. In GitHub Desktop 2.2, we’re releasing the first version of an interactive Git and GitHub tutorial that can be your buddy and help you get started. If you’re new to Desktop, you can download and try out the tutorial at desktop.github.com.

The Windows Terminal can now connect you to the Azure Cloud Shell!



We have a new default profile – the Azure Cloud Shell, which will allow you to access your Azure directories/tenants through the Windows Terminal app itself.

Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.3 comes with many new features as summarized in this blog post. While the entirety of this release was greatly influenced by your feedback, having the ability to manage packages at the solution level was one of the capabilities that most of you expressed as lacking in Visual Studio for Mac. A new solution-level NuGet Package Manager is one of the exciting new features of Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.3.

We’ve made improvements to help you discover packages more easily. This includes an improved experience while searching for new packages, gaining an understanding of what packages are already installed in your project, and finding packages that have updates available. In this blog post, we will focus on the package management experience for a Solution. However, most of the experiences including installing, updating, and viewing installed packages have a similar new experience at the project-level, too.

To launch the NuGet Package Manager for a Solution, you can go to the context menu for the Solution and select «Manage NuGet Package…»:

Over the past year, the Visual Studio for Mac team updated the editors within the IDE to be faster, more fluent and more productive. We did this by building a macOS-native editor interface on top of the same editor backend as Visual Studio on Windows. In version 8.1 we introduced the new C# editor. This was followed by the new XAML editor in 8.2. And most recently, we updated our web languages to utilize the new editors in version 8.3, completing the process we set out to do a year ago. To celebrate this accomplishment, I wanted to share a bit of detail regarding the design and implementation of the new editors along with my five favorite new features in the Visual Studio for Mac code editors.

At the core of the updated editors within Visual Studio for Mac is the shared language service with Visual Studio on Windows. What this means is that the same backend that powers the Windows version of Visual Studio now powers the macOS version as well. This includes IntelliSense, Roslyn, text logic, and all the language services behind the scenes. The only portion not shared between Windows and macOS is the UI layer, which stays native for each platform. In the case of macOS, that means using macOS frameworks like Cocoa and CoreText to power the UI experience. By using a native UI, while also being able to utilize support for native input methods as well as support for right-to-left languages, font ligatures and other advanced graphical features.

You’re utterly focused. You’ve lost track of time. Nothing else in the world exists. You’re living in the moment.

While this might sound like meditation, it’s a description that can also be applied to the state of flow – the feeling of being so engaged by your work, that you lose yourself to it completely, while massively increasing your productivity in the process.

It’s the holy grail that we all strive for, whether it’s a hobby we’re passionate about, or a project at work. Achieving our best and utilising our maximum potential at all times, can however, be a struggle.
We had the pleasure of talking with Dr. Jack Lewis, a neuroscientist with a passion for exploring how our minds work, to see what motivates us to do our best work, and the important roles that workplace environments, culture, and technology can play.

At Microsoft, our mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. The media industry exemplifies this mission. We live in an age where more content is being created and consumed in more ways and on more devices than ever. At IBC 2019, we were delighted to share the latest innovations we’ve been working on and how they can help transform your media workflows. Read on to learn more.

Probably the largest hurdle when learning any new programming language is simply knowing where to get started. What’s important? What do I need to know to be proficient? It’s hard to follow docs when you’re not even sure what you’re reading.

You might be taking a look at Python. Maybe you’re drawn because of its popularity. Maybe you’re drawn to its flexibility. With Python you can create solutions of all shapes and sizes. You can dig into web development. Simplify your life through automation. Or maybe begin building the future with machine learning.

Picking up a new language is a common situation for modern-day developers. The days of going your entire career focused on one language are long since gone.

Fortunately, concepts typically don’t change as you move from one programming language to the next. Sure, the syntax might be different, but an if statement is still an if statement even when it’s written using { } or End If. So, we don’t need to learn how to program, but rather how to program in a new language.

This is why Susan and I created this series of videos! You might know how to write code, for example in JavaScript, Java or C# (or COBOL, or Bash, or… it doesn’t matter, really). Maybe you learned in a college course, online, or reading a book. So, you don’t need to be taught what an if statement is, but rather what an if statement looks like in Python.

Microsoft researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that has taught itself the intricacies of Mahjong and can now match the skills of some of the world’s top players.

The complex board game of chance, bluff, and strategy was invented in China thousands of years ago and remains a passionate pastime for millions of Asians today, with many dedicated competitors playing online.

Computers have learned to play Chess and another ancient Chinese game, Go, amid much fanfare in the past. But scientists at Microsoft Research (MSR) Asia see their achievement as far more than just a case of technology mastering yet another game.

The researchers – who named their system Super Phoenix, or Suphx for short – developed a series of AI algorithmic breakthroughs to navigate the uncertain nature of Mahjong. With more work, these could potentially be applied in real situations to solve problems thrown up by unknown factors and random events.

We are excited to announce updates to Model Builder and improvements in ML.NET. You can learn more in the «What’s new in ML.NET?.» session at .NET Conf.

ML.NET is an open-source and cross-platform machine learning framework (Windows, Linux, macOS) for .NET developers.

ML.NET offers Model Builder (a simple UI tool) and CLI to make it super easy to build custom ML Models using AutoML.

Using ML.NET, developers can leverage their existing tools and skillsets to develop and infuse custom AI into their applications by creating custom machine learning models for common scenarios like Sentiment Analysis, Recommendation, Image Classification and more!..

We are pleased to announce that the September 2019 release of the Python Extension for Visual Studio Code is now available. You can download the Python extension from the Marketplace, or install it directly from the extension gallery in Visual Studio Code. If you already have the Python extension installed, you can also get the latest update by restarting Visual Studio Code. You can learn more about  Python support in Visual Studio Code in the documentation.

This was a short release where we closed 35 issues, including improvements to the Python Language Server and to Jupyter Notebook cell debugging, as well as detection of virtual environment creation. The full list of enhancements is listed in our changelog. 

We are committed to building Visual Studio App Center for you. Thanks to you taking the time to request features via our Github repo, we are excited to announce that dark theme is available in App Center.

In the next few screens, you can get an idea of how App Center’s dark theme looks:


App Center Distribute in Dark theme


App Center Test in Dark theme

Have you ever needed to debug or profile an executable (.exe file) that you don’t have source for or can’t build? Then the least known Visual Studio project type, the EXE project, is for you!

In Visual Studio you can open any EXE as a ‘project’. Just go to File->Open->Project/Solution and browse to the .exe file. Like you would if it was a .sln file. Visual Studio will then open that EXE as a project. This feature has been around for a long time. It works on all currently supported Visual Studio versions and the docs for it are at  ‘Debug an app that isn’t part of a Visual Studio solution‘.

 

Cascadia Code is finally here! You can install it directly from the GitHub repository’s releases page or automatically receive it in the next update of Windows Terminal.

Wait, what’s Cascadia Code?

Cascadia Code was announced this past May at Microsoft’s Build event. It is the latest monospaced font shipped from Microsoft and provides a fresh experience for command line experiences and code editors. Cascadia Code was developed hand-in-hand with the new Windows Terminal application. This font is most recommended to be used with terminal applications and text editors such as Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code.

Building on the momentum from the recently announced Developer PowerShell, we are excited to share the first preview of the new Visual Studio terminal. This new preview experience is part of Visual Studio version 16.3 Preview 3.


 
Rather than build everything from scratch, the Visual Studio terminal shares most of its core with the Windows Terminal. For you, that translates into a more robust terminal experience, and faster adoption of new functionality.

Today at Xamarin Developer Summit, we announced XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms, which enables you to make changes to your XAML UI and see them reflected live, without requiring another build and deploy.

XAML Hot Reload for Xamarin.Forms speeds up your development and makes it easier to build, experiment, and iterate on your user interface. And this means that you no longer have to rebuild your app each time you tweak your UI – it instantly shows you your changes in your running app!

When your application is compiled using XAML Hot Reload, it works with all libraries and third-party controls. It will be available for iOS and Android in Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio 2019 for Mac. This works on all valid deployment targets, including simulators, emulators, and physical devices.

XAML Hot Reload will be available later in 2019, but you can sign up to to participate in the preview phase:

Sign Up for the Preview Now

Last time, we used SFINAE to detect whether a type had a definition, and we used that in combination with if constexpr and generic lambdas so that code could use the type if it is defined, while still being accepted by the compiler (and being discarded) if the type is not defined.

However, our usage had a few issues, some minor annoyance, some more frustrating.

• You had to say struct all the time.
• If the type didn’t exist, the act of naming it caused the type to be injected into the current namespace, not the namespace you expected the type to be in.
• You must use the struct technique with an unqualified name. You can’t use it to probe a type that you didn’t import into the current namespace.

We can fix all three of the problems with a single solution: Predeclare the type in the desired namespace.

Great Visual Studio extensions share a few key features that sets them apart from the rest. They look and feel well crafted, are performant and reliable, do what they advertise to perfection, and blend in naturally among Visual Studio’s own features.

To make it easier to write great extensions, we’ve worked with the extensibility community to come up with a simple checklist to follow. There’s even a GitHub issue template you can use so you remember to go through the checklist.

Roslyn, the .NET compiler platform, helps you catch bugs even before you run your code. One example is Roslyn’s spellcheck analyzer that is built into Visual Studio. Let’s say you are creating a static method and misspelled the word static as statc. You will be able to see this spelling error before you run your code because Roslyn can produce warnings in your code as you type even before you’ve finished the line. In other words, you don’t have to build your code to find out that you made a mistake.



Roslyn analyzers can also surface an automatic code fix through the Visual Studio light bulb icon that allows you to fix your code immediately.

On May 10, we announced the limited beta of GitHub Package Registry, a package management service that makes it easy to publish public or private packages next to your source code. It currently supports familiar package management tools: JavaScript (npm), Java (Maven), Ruby (RubyGems), .NET (NuGet), and Docker images, with more to come.

Today we’re excited to announce that we’ll be adding support for Swift packages to GitHub Package Registry. Swift packages make it easy to share your libraries and source code across your projects and with the Swift community.