Build 2015
This has been a week full of events, from Kentucky Derby, to Mayweather versus Pacquiao and Chelsea becoming the Premier League Champion, just to name a few. In the Technology world, Microsoft held their biggest developers conference called "Build", in San Francisco. Everybody was anxious to see what Microsoft had to offer, since the company was determined to prove that they don't want to keep trailing behind Apple and Google. That message was clearly stated when, recently, they announced cross-platform support for .Net framework (or a subset of .Net), a new unified truly universal experience for Windows and the ground-breaking holographic device called Hololens.
Obviously I couldn't go by without talking about this event. However it would require an entire book to talk about everything that was presented at Build, so I will focus on some of the things that really caught my attention. Or the be fair, the things that I'm most interested.
With Windows 10, Microsoft's plan is very ambitious! Create one the truly universal Operating System, with the capability of running on the most powerful Desktop machine, to a tiny portable device like Raspberry Pi, from a device with touch-screen to a device with no screen at all. For developers this means we can create one application that can be used (in his own way) on every possible device that runs Windows 10. This is phenomenal since developers can relay on a common set of API's and a common design language to code against, instead of having a different project targeting each particular device. The idea is to develop an adaptive application where the same code runs against any device type.
Hololens, this was everybody was waiting to see and try out. Microsoft holographic device shows great potential a can be the stepping stone for merged-reality experiences. For anyway curious about Hololens development, simply start learning more about developing apps for Windows 10 and 3D development (learning Unity can be a great starting point). For details, please check out the official website HoloLens
Regarding Visual Studio, some of the features presented for version 2015 were quite impressive, including an extensible toolset for code analysis, a completely revamped XAML development experience and some great debugging improvements, just to name a few. However, what really surprised us all was the announcement of new a cross-platform code editor called Visual Studio Code. Built with TypeScript and Electron and IntelliSense provided by Rosyln and OmmniSharp, Visual Studio Code is the best editor to work on your .Net projects outside of the Windows environment. Just don't expect the same type of experience as the full blown Visual Studio, this is lightweight editor with support for git, debugging and IntelliSense.
Another interesting announcement was Windows 10 compilation support for Android and iOS code. In a way to fight the "App Gap" between Windows and the competition (Android and iOS), Microsoft announced two new projects (one for each platform) where you can simply grab your existing Java or Object-C projects, open them in Visual Studio and compile them for Windows 10 with a few changes. There aren't details for general availability and how this new kind of application will perform, but at least it's a good step to close the "App gap" so many complain about, let's just see if it works.
