Visual Studio 2015 is Here!

This past Monday, Microsoft released the production version of Visual Studio 2015. Let’s get right to the lead: Visual Studio Community edition is free (for independent and Open Source developers). You have no excuse not to get this.

I’m not going to repeat all the information about the release and the total set of new features. Soma did that on his blog quite well. Instead, I’m going to focus on my areas of interest, and some of the resources I’ve written that can help you learn about these new features.

New Language Features

There are a number of new features in C# 6. Members of the team have been updating this page on Github with information about the new features.

I’ve written a number of articles about C# 6 for InformIT. The first four are live:

• A brief tour of C# 6
• Expression Bodied Members
• Auto Property Enhancements
• Null Conditional Operator

I recorded a Microsoft Virtual Academy Jump Start on C# 6 with Anthony D. Green, one of the program managers on the Managed Languages team.

And finally, I’ve written quite a few blog entries on the new language features. You can see a list here.

Language Service APIs

This version is particularly exciting because of the new compiler services that are part of Roslyn. These are a rich set of APIs that enable you (yes, you!) to write code that analyzes C# code, up to and including providing fixes for mistakes or other poor practices.

I’ve written an article for InformIT about the analyzers. You can read it here. I also did a Jump Start for Microsoft Virtual Academy with Jennifer Marsman.  If you missed the live event, watch the Microsoft Virtual Academy home page for updates. The recording should go live soon.

You can also learn more by exploring some of the open source projects that contain analyzers and code fixes:

• Code Cracker. This project contains a number of different analyzers for common coding mistakes in C#.
• DotNetAnalyzers. This contains a set of projects for different analyzers. Some manage particular practices. Others enforce rules, similar to the Style Cop effort.
• CSharp Essentials. This project is a collection of analyzers that make it easier to adopt C# 6. If you don’t want to build it yourself, you can install it as an extension in VS 2015.

Humanitarian Toolbox and the All Ready App

Finally, I was thrilled at the contribution from members of the Visual Studio team to Humanitarian Toolbox. Several members from different parts of the Visual Studio team worked for three days to build the initial release of the allReady application. The application source is on Github, under the HTBox organization.

This application was requested by the Red Cross. It provides features to lessen the impact of disasters on familes and communities. You can learn more about the project here on the Humanitarian Toolbox website.

The Visual Studio 2015 launch event included a profile of the developers and the process for building the initial code for allReady. You can watch the entire event on Channel 9. If you are interested in just the allReady app, and how it was built with Visual Studio 2015, look for the “In the Code” segments. There may be more 'In the Code' episodes coming as the application grows.

All of us at Humanitarian Toolbox are grateful for the contribution from the Visual Studio team.

As a developer, I’m also grateful for the great new tools.