Microsoft is Bringing Visual Studio To the Browser, Unveils .NET 5

Krystalo writes: At its developer conference Build today, Microsoft previewed new Visual Studio features for remote work, the .NET roadmap, and launched ML.NET 1.0. In April, Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2019 for Windows and Mac. Two notable features were Visual Studio Live Share, a real-time collaboration tool included with Visual Studio 2019, and Visual Studio IntelliCode, an extension offering AI-assisted code completion. At Build 2019, Microsoft shared that IntelliCode's capabilities are now generally available for C# and XAML in Visual Studio 2019 and for Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Python in Visual Studio Code. And IntelliCode is now included by default in Visual Studio 2019, starting in version 16.1 Preview 2. The company also previewed an algorithm that can locally track your edits -- repeated edit detection -- and suggest other places where you need that same change. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft is experimenting with features that let developers work from anywhere, on any device. The company today announced a private preview for three such new capabilities: Remote-powered developer tools, cloud-hosted developer environments, and a browser-based web companion tool. If the future of work is remote, Microsoft wants to be ready.

[...] Microsoft also announced that it is skipping .NET 4 to avoid confusion with the .NET Framework, which has been on version 4 for years. Going forward, developers will be able to use .NET to target Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, tvOS, watchOS, WebAssembly, and more. .NET Core 3 will be succeeded by .NET 5, featuring new .NET APIs, runtime capabilities, and language features. Calling it .NET 5 makes it the highest version Microsoft has ever shipped and indicates that the company hopes it is the future for the .NET platform. .NET Core 3 closes much of the remaining capability gap with .NET Framework 4.8, enabling Windows Forms, WPF, and Entity Framework 6. .NET 5 will build on this work, Microsoft says, combining .NET Core, .NET Framework, Xamarin, and Mono (the original cross-platform implementation of .NET) into a single platform. .NET 5 will provide both Just-in-Time (JIT) and Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation models. JIT has better performance for desktop/server workloads and development environments. AOT has a faster startup and a small footprint, which is required for mobile and IoT devices. .NET 5 will offer one unified toolchain supported by new SDK project types and a flexible deployment model (side-by-side and self-contained EXEs).

Code theft

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Great, this way they can steal your code more seamlessly.

Amazon roots through your private uploaded code, Microsoft is just keeping pace with them. Carry on.

Re:

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

No you won't, you fuckin' pussy. Mom won't give you $1000 no matter how hard you cry.

Also, you believe in money? Define that in a way, that still has any meaning, while being compatible with the real physical world.

Re:

[phantomfive]

""it's not in the box, it's in the band"

Doing stuff that Microsoft doesn't want you to do.

[jellomizer]

Having been told to study for MS certification and the like, using Visual Studio... Microsoft seems to think we are always writing the same old application over and over again. While the problem is when I am hired to write a program, it is often because there is a need for a new program, not just an other form added to some CRUD application. To accomplish my job, after checking to make sure there isn't already a standard implementation available, I have to make my own custom program to do the job. This o

Re:

[jellomizer]

Actually I will normally trash my code for the standard controls once/if they become an acceptable replacement. I also don't go off standard for the reason to go off standard, but because there is a need that the standard cannot work correctly for the need.

The thing with my job, is they don't call me for the simple programs, the call me when others say it just cannot be done, as does a lot of Sr. level developers do.

However if the alternative is to not accomplish the limited one time goal, just because it

Re:

[mrbester]

Back when I got a certification for Visual Interdev I likened it to driving: you learn how to pass the driving test, same as you learn the "Microsoft way" how to get certification. It's only afterwards that you really learn to drive / develop. There are aspects of what you learned in order to pass that you use going forward.

"A brand-new ecosystem of exploit potential"

[Anonymous Coward]

"If the future of work is remote, Microsoft wants to be ready to fuck that shit right up."

Does it still need admin rights?

[schklerg]

AFAIK, there's still no easy way to do development and debugging without administrative rights on the machine you are developing on. Have they finally fixed this or do I need to run my browser as an admin now?

Re:

[Actually, I do RTFA]

By debugging you mean have one process able to peer into another and control/step through it? Or running many times with logging? Because the former should require advanced privileges.

Comment

[WallyL]

Just tell me when I can install Active Directory on GNU/Linux, or at least run the activedirectory PowerShell modules on the same.

Wait.. WHAT?!

[the_skywise]

Calling it .NET 5 makes it the highest version Microsoft has ever shipped and indicates that the company hopes it is the future for the .NET platform.

1. That's demonstrably wrong (IE 6? Windows 10? VB6?)
2. That's a marketing point?! (This is our highest version number ever shipped!)

Re:Wait.. WHAT?!

[Kjella]

Obviously the highest version of the .NET framework. The point is they went from .NET 4 to .NET Core 1.0 which is a clear indication it's not an upgrade but more a do-over/side-grade/mini-version of the "full" framework. Now they're marketing .NET 5 as the successor/upgrade path both for .NET 4 projects and .NET Core projects, unifying the two branches again. It's a pretty basic fork/merge if you know what they're talking about...

Re:

[Shark]

Aren't they still all essentially incompatible where if an app was written for .NET framework X, you can't run it using .NET framework X+1 ?

Re: Wait.. WHAT?!

[garlicbread2]

.net is backwards compatible between different versions. For example a .net 2.0 app will happily build under .net 4

The only exception to that might have been .net 1.1 maybe but that was decades ago.

When they brought out .net core 1 it was a complete open source re-write which ran in parallel with the traditional windows .net such as 4.6
It lacked a lot of apis to start with but over time they kept merging more and more apis into .net core until the finally wrote a layer that could access libs from traditional .net making it more cross compatible .net 5 represents a merging of the two forks into one so that its all open source / much better and less confusing

Re:Wait.. WHAT?!

[Richard_at_work]

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking - the other post by garlicbread2 goes some way to answering one possible question, but there is more to it than that. .Net Core and .Net Framework are 'binary' incompatible. Code built on one will not run on the other. So Microsoft introduced the .Net Standard, which is a different set of targets which allows code written on .Net Core or .Net Framework to run on either if the code was written and built for the .Net Standard version which worked across both platforms.

Pushing both sides of .Net to version 5 is ideal now, in that Microsoft has already stated several times that .Net Framework is "done" and the future is .Net Core - the way forward now is to port your code to .Net Core or .Net Standard and move on.

Of course, some people are still resisting this - in the majority of cases, its simply because they don't understand the differences between .Net Core and .Net Framework, and in some cases its because of incompatibility that .Net Core cant solve.

By moving .Net Core to version 5, in step with .Net Framework, Microsoft is looking to address the issue of those that simply don't understand the difference - to upgrade to .Net 5, its now simply a runtime incompatibility, which Microsoft have done before a few times without problems. .Net 3.5 to .Net 4 was broadly a similar case - .Net 3.5 code compiled for anything other than .Net 4 would not run on a system that only had .Net 4 installed, you either needed to install .Net 3.5 or you needed to port your code to .Net 4. And here we are, .Net is still pretty popular, still used and still in a growth phase.

So the migration to .Net 5 from .Net 4 will broadly be the same deal - you either target .Net Standard or you target .Net 5. No more scary .Net Core to worry about, you are simply moving up to the new version of .Net.

Re:

[Micah NC]

When you say "remote" they hear "over 35".