It’s the time of year when every pundit, analysis and researcher puts on his “Carnac the Magnificent” hat and tries to peer into the future to determine which trends will bubble to the top. We’re no different, except for one thing: Top 10 lists are SO Letterman! So cliché! So, in the spirit of differentiation, … continue reading
Rumors have floated around for months that Microsoft was finally thinking of dropping the Internet Explorer name. The latest rumors, sources reportedly told ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, go a step further. When Windows 10 ships in 2015, sources say, in addition to IE the OS will sport an entirely new browser, codenamed Spartan. Rather than … continue reading
Normally an article about a programming language and framework that both have been with us for more than a decade would be anything but a page-turner. When it comes to C# and .NET, it turns out there’s a big story to tell, including things that could spell another decade of that language (and maybe even … continue reading
For all its surface frenzy, 2014 was a year in which the biggest news stories in the programming language community were about acknowledging reality and bowing to the inevitable. First, there was Java 8. For Java developers, this release is the most important since before the turn of the century—probably the most important release since … continue reading
In 2014, “mobile” evolved into a more widely unified and interconnected concept. The last several years have seen smartphones, tablets and mobile apps take control of how we consume and compute information, redefining how we communicate with each other. A train with that much momentum doesn’t stop when the market reaches its peak; it barrels … continue reading
A change at the top, followed by a clearly defined focus, with an all-out embrace of open technologies and an increased update release cycle. Throw in a further commitment to consumer devices for good measure. One could argue that 2014 was the year of Microsoft. Or, at least, the year it remade itself. But it … continue reading
Google has unveiled the first prototype of its self-driving vehicle. The vehicle was first revealed in May, but the car Google presented was just a mockup without headlights. “Since then, we’ve been working on different prototypes-of-prototypes, each designed to test different systems of a self-driving car—for example, the typical ‘car’ parts like steering and braking, … continue reading
Microsoft has announced a major update to the beta release of Windows App Studio, its Web-based developer tool for creating mobile apps. The most significant changes and additions to Windows App Studio, detailed in a blog post by Emilio Salvador Prieto of the Windows Phone Developer Experience team, are integration with Microsoft’s TouchDevelop programming language, … continue reading
Microsoft’s developer and open-source arms are busy this holiday season, with the company releasing Bing Developer Assistant for Visual Studio and open-sourcing Project Orleans, the cloud-computing framework behind much of Azure as well as the popular first-person shooter game Halo 4. The release-to-manufacturing version of Bing Developer Assistant, available as an extension for both Visual … continue reading
Microsoft is now accepting Bitcoin as a payment method for buying apps and games for Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox. Starting today, customers can use the BitPay payment processor to trade in the digital currency at current market value for funds in their Microsoft account. More information is available a in a blog post from … continue reading
Microsoft has announced plans to tweak the pricing and licensing of its ALM offerings to improve enterprise development teams’ bottom lines. Brian Harry, Microsoft corporate vice president of the Developer Division, revealed that Microsoft will roll out pricing changes for VS Online in the next month or so, and in the next on-prem release of … continue reading
Microsoft has released details about Visual Basic 14, the new version of Visual Basic set to ship with Visual Studio 2015. According to a blog post from Visual Basic program manager Lucian Wischik, Visual Basic is skipping from 12 to 14 to keep in line with Visual Studio’s numbering. The new VB language features are … continue reading
