The Microsoft company has temporarily suspended it’s blog on Habr
A few days ago, we announced the general availability of Visual Studio 2019. But I’ve been using Visual Studio 2019 exclusively since the first internal build – long before the release of Preview 1 in December of 2018. During this time, there has been a lot of little features that have put a smile on my face and made me more productive.
I want to share a few of them with you since they are not all obvious and some require you to change some settings. Let’s dive in.
In the era of ubiquitous AI applications there is an emerging demand of the compiler accelerating computation-intensive machine-learning code for existing hardware. Such code usually does mathematical computation like matrix transformation and manipulation and it is usually in the form of loops. The SIMD extension of OpenMP provides users an effortless way to speed up loops by explicitly leveraging the vector unit of modern processors. We are proud to start offering C/C++ OpenMP SIMD vectorization in Visual Studio 2019.
The OpenMP C/C++ application program interface was originally designed to improve application performance by enabling code to be effectively executed in parallel on multiple processors in the 1990s. Over the years the OpenMP standard has been expanded to support additional concepts such as task-based parallelization, SIMD vectorization, and processor offloading. Since 2005, Visual Studio has supported the OpenMP 2.0 standard which focuses on multithreaded parallelization. As the world is moving into an AI era, we see a growing opportunity to improve code quality by expanding support of the OpenMP standard in Visual Studio. We continue our journey in Visual Studio 2019 by adding support for OpenMP SIMD.
At Microsoft, we’re investing in helping our customers as they move to the cloud. We see an opportunity to help support companies in this changing environment by bringing our security, privacy, compliance and intellectual property assets and expertise to bear in order to help them be more successful. We’re excited to now take an additional step that expands innovation protections.
Today, we are pleased to announce the expansion of the Microsoft Azure IP Advantage program to include new benefits for Azure IoT innovators and startups. We first announced Azure IP Advantage in February 2017, to provide comprehensive protection against intellectual property (IP) risks for our cloud customers. A trend we saw at the time – and one that continues today – is a growing risk to cloud innovation from patent lawsuits. Last year, we joined the Open Invention Network (OIN) and the License on Transfer (LOT) Network to help address patent assertion risk for our customers and partners.
We recently shared the public preview of the Windows Virtual Desktop service on Azure. Now customers can access the only service that delivers simplified management, multi-session Windows 10, optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus, and support for Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktops and apps. With Windows Virtual Desktop, you can deploy and scale your Windows desktops and apps on Azure in minutes, while enjoying built-in security and compliance.
The Imagine Cup 2019 competition is well underway with our second Regional Final wrapping up in Amsterdam, the Netherlands this week. Team Finderr from the United Kingdom took home the first-place title and a spot in the World Championship for their app solution to find lost objects with a smartphone. Congratulations!
We are now publishing .NET Core container images to Microsoft Container Registry (MCR). We have also made other changes to the images we publish, described in this post.
Important: You will need to change FROM statements in Dockerfile files and docker pull commands as a result of these changes. 3.0 references need to be changed now. Most 1.x and 2.x usages can be changed over time. The new tag scheme is decribed in this post and are provided at the microsoft-dotnet-core repo, our new home on Docker Hub.
Summary of changes:
Microsoft is built on the belief of empowering people and organizations to achieve more – it is the DNA of our company. We are announcing a new initiative, Microsoft Game Stack, in which we commit to bringing together Microsoft tools and services that will empower game developers like yourself, whether you’re an indie developer just starting out or a AAA studio, to achieve more.
This is the start of a new journey, and today we are only taking the first steps. We believe Microsoft is uniquely suited to deliver on that commitment. Our company has a long legacy in games – and in building developer-focused platforms.
There are 2 billion gamers in the world today, playing a broad range of games, on a broad range of devices. There is as much focus on video streaming, watching, and sharing within a community as there is on playing or competing. As game creators, you strive every day to continuously engage your players, to spark their imaginations, and inspire them, regardless of where they are, or what device they’re using. We’re introducing Microsoft Game Stack, to help you do exactly that.
Some days ago we announced the availability of our release candidate (RC) of TypeScript 3.4. Our hope is to collect feedback and early issues to ensure our final release is simple to pick up and use right away.
To get started using the RC, you can get it through NuGet, or use npm with the following command:
npm install -g typescript@rcYou can also get editor support by
Let’s explore what’s new in 3.4!
Starting with Visual Studio 2019 Preview 4 and RC, we’ll be adjusting how C# versions are treated in .NET tooling. Read more below <cut>.
Firstly, we’re adding two new Language Version (LangVersion) values: LatestMajor and Preview. Here’s how they stack up with the currently supported list of values:
Visual Studio 2019 Preview 3 introduces a new feature to reduce the binary size of C++ exception handling (try/catch and automatic destructors) on x64. Dubbed FH4 (for __CxxFrameHandler4, see below), I developed new formatting and processing for data used for C++ exception handling that is ~60% smaller than the existing implementation resulting in overall binary reduction of up to 20% for programs with heavy usage of C++ exception handling.
Today, we’re excited to announce that we are open sourcing Windows Calculator on GitHub under the MIT License. This includes the source code, build system, unit tests, and product roadmap. Our goal is to build an even better user experience in partnership with the community. We are encouraging your fresh perspectives and increased participation to help define the future of Calculator.
Blazor 0.9.0 is now available! This release updates Blazor with the Razor Components improvements in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 3.
New Razor Component improvements now available to Blazor apps:
Create your first intelligent bot with Microsoft AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating the digital transformation for every industry, with examples spanning manufacturing, retail, finance, healthcare, and many others. At this rate, every industry will be able to use AI to amplify human ingenuity. In this e-book, Anand Raman and Wee Hyong Tok from Microsoft provide a comprehensive roadmap for developers to build their first AI-infused application.
Using a Conference Buddy as an example, you’ll learn the key ingredients needed to develop an intelligent chatbot that helps conference participants interact with speakers. This e-book provides a gentle introduction to the tools, infrastructure, and services on the Microsoft AI Platform, and teaches you how to create powerful, intelligent applications.
A few months ago I worked with a customer on how a team should evaluate the security of their Azure implementation. I had never done a pentest(extensive security testing)on an Azure application before, so these ideas were just the thoughts off of the top of my head at that time based on my experience in security.Matt Burrough’s book, Pentesting Azure Applications, goes even deeper and it is a must-read for security experts focused in Cloud Computing, I’m reading it right now.
Below I share with you these pre-book thoughts, and will compare them in a future article with the ones I will learn — or confirm — after reading Matt's book.
Most people assume that I studied computer science in university and that I’ve been coding since I was young. They’re usually surprised when I tell them that in fact I studied Marketing and Spanish and that although my brother taught me how to build a very basic web page in the early 2000s, I didn’t really start to learn to program until I was an adult with a job.
The truth of the matter is that my story isn’t unique. It’s simply not true that you have to be a whiz kid who’s been coding since they were 6 years old in order if you want to be able to program as an adult. There are tons of examples of people who also don’t have a technical background who either became full time programmers or just learned a new skill they enjoy using.
In this post, I’ll give you some advice that has served me well on my journey. My path is by no means the only path and depending on the situation you’re in might not be practical or right for you, but it is certainly a path, and I hope it helps you on your path to learning to computer.
Blazor 0.8.0 is now available! This release updates Blazor to use Razor Components in .NET Core 3.0 and adds some critical bug fixes.
To get started with Blazor 0.8.0 install the following:
The Blazor templates on the command-line:
dotnet new -i Microsoft.AspNetCore.Blazor.Templates::0.8.0-preview-19104-04You can find getting started instructions, docs, and tutorials for Blazor at https://blazor.net.
