This year’s Microsoft Build conference was entirely online, which changed the format of the keynote presentations. In the second keynote, Scott Hanselman sat at his home computer and connected with others at Microsoft via Teams. They showed off some of the projects they were working on, including a Xamarin application and a dog-tracking application; but, these apps were just an excuse to talk about some of the newer technologies from Microsoft. Technologies covered included Codespace, Guthub mobile, Wingget, WSL2, and Windows Terminal.

The conversations were enhanced by Hanselman’s wit.

Here are my notes:

WinGet

Package manager for Windows

e.g.,

winget install terminal

aka.ms/winget

 

Coding in Teams

@codeconversations

Allows you to write code

Start with ``` to go into executable  code in the cloud

aka.ms/codeconversations

 

WSL2

Real Linux kernel

Docker desktop works

GIMP running in WSL2

GUI in Linux

currently in preview; Available later this year

aka.ms/wsl

 

Windows Terminal is now version 1.0 (finally)

Unicode characters

Background images

 

 

GitHub

Just acquired npm

99% of npm packages hosted on github

Github is now free - even for private repos with unlimited people

Enterprise features available for a fee

Github mobile app for iOS and Android

 

GitHub Mobile

Check on pull requests and issues

Comment on Pull Requests

 

Codespace

Development environment in the cloud

From github repository, click green [Code] button

From dropdown: Open in Codespace

Opens dev environment in browser

Similar to VS Code

Settings | Preferences Sync

Select settings

[Turn on]

Same theme and extensions on-premise as in the cloud

LiveShare

Connect and collaborate with others using Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code

aka.ms/codepaces

 

Visual Studio Code

21,000+ extensions

 

Xamarin

Hot reload: Changes reflected immediately in running app (no recompile / redeploy required)