Microsoft Launches Public Previews of Visual Studio Online and Power Virtual Agents

An anonymous reader writes: At Ignite 2019 today, Microsoft launched Visual Studio Online public preview. Visual Studio Online meshes Visual Studio, cloud-hosted developer environments, and a web-based editor. AI, big data, and cloud computing are shifting development beyond the "standard issue development laptop," and Visual Studio Online is clearly a reflection of this trend. "Visual Studio Online philosophically (and technically) extends Visual Studio Code Remote Development to provide managed development environments that can be created on-demand and accessed from anywhere," Microsoft explained today. "These environments can be used for long-term projects, to quickly prototype a new feature, or for short-term tasks, like reviewing pull requests." The company also announced the public preview of its Power Virtual Agents tool, a new no-code tool for building chatbots that's part of the company's Power Platform, which also includes Microsoft Flow automation tool, which is being renamed to Power Automate today, and Power BI. From a report: Built on top of Azure's existing AI smarts and tools for building bots, Power Virtual Agents promises to make building a chatbot almost as easy as writing a Word document. With this, anybody within an organization could build a bot that walks a new employee through the onboarding experience for example. "Power virtual agent is the newest addition to the Power Platform family," said Microsoft's Charles Lamanna. "Power Virtual Agent is very much focused on the same type of low code, accessible to anybody, no matter whether they're a business user or business analyst or professional developer, to go build a conversational agent that's AI-driven and can actually solve problems for your employees, for your customers, for your partners, in a very natural way." Further reading: Microsoft rebrands Flow as Power Automate, adds RPA features and virtual agents; and Visual Studio IntelliCode gets whole-line code completions, dynamic refactoring detection.

Almost perfect

[110010001000]

Soon you will only be able to run and develop software on the cloud. At that point we can disallow the use of "personal computers" since they can be used for unauthorized purposes. I give personal computers another five years before they will not be allowed to connect to the Internet.

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[YuyaCualhost]

Do this can be use for all purposes

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[110010001000]

Getter as in?

disallow the use of PC's = vendor lock in and all

[Joe_Dragon]

disallow the use of PC's = vendor lock in and all kinds of per usage fees

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[110010001000]

That is the plan and why the cloud was invented. I would imagine the majority of end user Internet traffic originates on locked platforms already (mobile phones). There doesn't really seem to be much interest left in personal computers. Certainly not unlocked personal computers.

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[Chromal]

Personal computer units sold in 2019 seem comparable to units sold in 2009. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/263393/global-pc-shipments-since-1st-quarter-2009-by-vendor/). It seems to me that the operators who are serious about microcomputing workloads, gaming, and The Internet employ the use of real computers (you know, with keyboards and pointing device), while casual users and consumers of fashionable disposable electronic devices and rent-seeking information services used touchscreen battery-operate

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[110010001000]

Yes, but the vast majority of those are running closed operating systems like Windows 10, MacOSX, etc already. It is only a matter of time before you can only obtain the software for those from "the cloud" or the various "app stores". I give it five years.

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[Chromal]

Allowing an general purpose microcomputer OS vendor to somehow not just control but actually own the software market ecosystem simply doesn't pass anti-competetive muster. It's illegal everywhere it occurs. I'm not saying you're wrong to speculate that it is thinkable, such outcomes no longer feel beyond the realm of the possible after twenty years of regulatory capture, failure, and corruption in these fallen United States.

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[Rockoon]

As a hobby programmer I have witnessed Visual Studio become more and more absurd over the years with layers of bullshit that shouldn't be, with bugs that apparently only effect the hobby programmer going on for years and years and years now.

One single example of that if you compile and run a very simple c# console program, make a simple (fast) change and try to recompile and run it... the compiler finds that the target executable and debug dictionaries are both locked.. and they will be locked for several

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[110010001000]

You can only imagine how hopeless the Visual Studio codebase must be.

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[PmanAce]

WHAT??? It has less bloat than 2017 (only one line of ribbon stuff even though I have over 100 extensions installed). Speed is not impacted and there are no bugs. Another case of "you are doing it wrong".

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[PmanAce]

Please enlighten us on what you disabled (from your checklist)...

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[PmanAce]

I don't know what you are talking about but I have worked in a top-5 world gaming company and top-5 world security company which all used Visual Studio (hundreds of devs in each) and it must be a case of "you doing it wrong". I have never heard of your locking problem and needing a prebuild script. This includes all versions of VS from 2012 till 2019...

Re:Almost perfect

[Rockoon]

Because you arent a hobby programmer, probably using source control and other things a hobby programmer wouldnt be using, etc.. Why did you ignore the central point, that it effects hobby programmers?

Been a problem since at least 2010 [stackoverflow.com]
Still a problem in 2011 [stackoverflow.com]
Still a problem in 2012 [stackoverflow.com]
here it is in 2013 [stackoverflow.com]

You will notice that even just those, which I hand selected out of the hundreds of threads, questions asked in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, for VS 2010, 2012, etc... the comments on them keep coming, 2017, 2018, 2019, for VS 2017, 2019 ....

The main solution is renaming the locked files until they can be deleted. Other solutions include enabling microsofts compatibility shims ("Windows Application Experience") and its not because Visual Studio isnt compatible with modern windows... its because they implemented the same renaming and later deleting scheme, but hidden it from view. Even more layers of abstraction to solve the problem of too many layers of abstraction.

Now, if you are a professional developer and have those compatibility shims enabled... you suck.

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[PmanAce]

You don't think I do "hobby" programming at home? I sure do with/without source control and never encountered this.

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[Tablizer]

Has anyone tried C# on Eclipse?

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[PmanAce]

Visual Studio Code is not a replacement/redesign of Visual Studio, where have you heard this?

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[Rockoon]

Not yet.

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[arglebargle_xiv]

No, they'll need to add at least 1.2GB of additional bloat and thousands upon thousands of bugs to it before it can even get into the same league as full VS.

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[LordWabbit2]

I've very occasionally had similar issues with the "Just my code" debugging option enabled. But never with console programs (large websites or windows forms projects) and always with heavy multi threading. Maybe your PC needs more coal? It doesn't seem to have the right amount of steam pressure to run Visual Studio. I would also like to point out that I have been using Visual Studio since the Beta came out and then from the first official 2002 release. I'm not saying you aren't having this problem, wha

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, sorry to burst your bubble but the reason Microsoft can't find the problem you describe is because it's almost certainly not their problem.

What you describe is almost certainly your anti-virus or similar checking out new executable code. It could be that you have issues with your storage system; dodgy drive, dodgy drivers as I've seen a dodgy RAID setup cause similar issues with other applications before where files haven't unlocked in time, but what you've described hasn't occured for any of the thousa

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[psavo]

I'm pretty sure that locking problem is from some older release of VS that you might still have installed. I certainly had it for a period of time (at least enough to warrant installing UnLocker), but it did go away. I do C# for a living so a lot of reruns etc.

I recommend you install UnLocker, take a note of which program is actually locking that file (if it gives the actual PID). Then in Task Manager -> Details select the "Image path name" column to be shown and seek if that's some older msbuild version

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[Micah NC]

I have 8 years of C# programming and have never heard of this.

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[twocows]

That's ridiculous and alarmist. Even if Microsoft wanted that, there are too many ridiculously easy ways to route around it. They'd have to turn Windows into a closed platform and disable access to older versions of VS and third party compilers like mingw and they'd also have to make alternatives like GNU/Linux disappear, since if they actually tried to make Windows a closed platform, anyone who cared would just switch over to that.

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[SirAstral]

Oh yea... its not like MS is actually trying to do just this exact thing or whatever huh?

There is nothing alarmist about this at all, it is a well known and understood natural monopolistic objective. As a business, the more your strategy revolves around a service that that you intentionally keep inside of a walled garden the more money you can collect.

MS is not an evil company for this... they are just after money, just like you and everyone else. The evil is the fact that people are not even going to try

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[twocows]

There's a difference between "trying" and "succeeding." Even if Microsoft's wet dream was to do exactly what you're suggesting, they're nowhere near that goal for the reasons I stated. The idea that "soon you'll only be able to run and develop software on the cloud" is asinine.

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[110010001000]

Errrr....Windows is a closed platform already, you just don't realize it. All you would have to do is have the major ISPs only allow "approved" devices to connect to the Internet. I mean after all, non-approved devices are only being used for piracy/terrorism/child exploitation. Are you a terrorist? You sure sound like one. And my point is that most people WOULDN'T care. Most end-user traffic comes locked down devices already. I give PCs another five years.

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[twocows]

Windows isn't a closed platform by the definition of "closed platform" commonly in use. Anyone can develop for it, anyone can run applications not approved by Microsoft on it. Microsoft is not tied into that process much at all unless you choose to use their tools, which you don't have to use, and even then you can still develop desktop applications in Visual Studio just fine (and hell, even if they change that, you can still run old versions of Visual Studio). This is, again, ignoring the existence of alte

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[jezwel]

I guess Valve will have to push out an update to all those Steam running PCs so that they no longer need to check in every 30 days to run software. Probably need to give some time to let people download all their game files too, or get the wallet out to issue some refunds...

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[trawg]

Soon you will only be able to run and develop software on the cloud. At that point we can disallow the use of "personal computers" since they can be used for unauthorized purposes. I give personal computers another five years before they will not be allowed to connect to the Internet.

If that happens, maybe that will be finally be the year of Linux on the Desktop?!

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[c_g_hills]

I fear you are correct, with a perfect storm of corporate and state interests. Anyone found with electronic devices without a sanctioned backdoor chip will be treated as a criminal.

Now your organization can implement its own Clippy

[Chromal]

With 'innovations' like this, who needs competition, amirite?

What happens when a chatbot talks to a chatbot?

[olsmeister]

It could end the universe in an infinite loop of stupid questions and useless answers.

Nice way to code...

[SirAstral]

Hey boss... I don't know how to begin coding that!

No worries, check out this recent persons code I just snooped on being worked on... it's what gave me the idea.

All that juicy code, ready for stealin!

Another MS hustle to grab your money?

[az-saguaro]

"... to provide managed development environments that can be created on-demand and accessed from anywhere"

That sounds fabulous in theory. But it sounds more like the modern MS trying to hustle you into a subscription service for all your vital tools. Why sell boxed software once when they can nickel an dime you into paying your tithe and tax every month? Like Office 365. That also means that you cannot do your business offline, like if your internet connection is down.

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[110010001000]

Why would you want to do something offline? Do you have something to hide?

21st Century Mainframe

[ErichTheRed]

Microsoft is reconfiguring its business model to basically be IBM. I understand why they want the subscription model and why they want people to run in Azure...that's a no-brainer. But, one thing I don't get is this...why force people to consume a service if they're willing to pay for a one-off product? Lately, actual releases are something Microsoft only grudgingly does for those "dinosaur" companies that haven't embraced the AI-powered, blockchain-enabled digitally transformed cloud way of working.

Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle aren't charities. They're pushing public cloud hard, even in situations where it might not make much sense, and giving away capacity and free help. They'll do anything to get a workload on Azure/AWS/GCP/Oracle Cloud for you...and in Oracle's case they're basically forcing customers there. Good luck getting it off if you use any of their proprietary services that the developers love, and Just Work(TM) -- unless you build yet another abstraction layer on top. I don't think they'll crank up the prices that much, but once they have your workloads, they have them for life, just like IBM has their mainframe customers locked in.

So now...

[LordHighExecutioner]

...all supersecret source codes that make up the business of many companies, are now by design floating freely in the cloud, and available to hackers and M$ employees ?!?

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[Rockoon]

and available to hackers and M$ employees ?!?

At the very least, scanned by Microsoft with automated tools, looking for who-knows-what. Who doesnt think that will happen?

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[Visarga]

It's already in their system because they own Github