How To Harness AI from the Command Line

Back in January, I predicted this would be the year of AI. In February I gave you an introduction to GitHub Copilot. Now, with the general availability release of GitHub Copilot in the CLI, you can have all the power of AI and GitHub Copilot while never having to leave the safety of your command line.

Posted by Mickey Gousset on 04/25/20240 comments

Upgrade Your Git Game in Visual Studio 2022

It only takes 20 minutes to upgrade your Git game in Visual Studio 2022, and Jessie Houghton, Visual Studio Program Manager at Microsoft, will show you how at the August 5-9 Visual Studio Live! developer conference being held at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash.

Posted by David Ramel on 04/18/20240 comments

Managing Dependencies in Your Codebase: Top Tools and Best Practices

As software projects get more complex, managing dependencies becomes an increasingly critical task for developers. Dependencies, the external packages or libraries that your project relies on, can significantly impact your application's security, maintainability and compatibility. This is particularly true in the .NET ecosystem, where projects often rely on a vast array of NuGet packages.

Posted by Mickey Gousset on 03/26/20240 comments

Busy Developer's Guide to Next-Generation Languages

Remember when TypeScript, or C#, or even C++ was new, and you wished you'd known they were going to "be big" so you could be the person ahead of the curve instead of struggling to catch up to where everybody else seemed to be already?

To help stay ahead of that curve, longtime software development expert Ted Neward takes the time to continually scour the coding landscape -- he actually pores through GitHub repos, for example -- to look for new languages that might not be what you end up using in your day job in 2025, but which could expose and refine the concepts that define the language that will.

Posted by David Ramel on 02/27/20240 comments

Code Faster: 15 Essential Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts

This quick reference guide shares 15 must-know shortcuts for improving efficiency and productivity in Visual Studio. Master shortcuts for debugging, refactoring, formatting, searching, and more!

Posted on 02/26/20240 comments

Getting Started with GitHub Copilot

As a small teaser for my upcoming Copilot Engineering Everywhere workshop at VSLive! Las Vegas, I thought I'd give you an introduction to GitHub Copilot.

Posted by Mickey Gousset on 02/23/20240 comments

Variables of the Veracious Variety: How to Better Name your Variables

You wouldn't really name a variable "x," would you?

But it happens.

And it's not just "x." It's "usrdb," "item," "foo," "test," "blah" and more. These are real variable names that have been encountered in production-grade codebases.

"And that's just scary!" says Adrienne Braganza-Tacke.

Posted by David Ramel on 02/20/20240 comments

Developing Modern Data Applications Using the Power of AI with Azure Databases

Creating AI-powered applications is a natural fit for the Microsoft Azure cloud, but sorting out all the different options for the backing data stores can seem daunting.

All developers are looking for an edge to build applications that are data-driven and harness the power AI, and Azure Databases provide a range of options for secure, scalable and highly available data applications using all the latest languages.

Posted by David Ramel on 02/05/20240 comments

The Year of AI, and Other Developer Predictions for 2024

Hey, everyone! I'm Mickey Gousset, a staff DevOps architect at GitHub, and I am thrilled to be contributing to the VSLive! blog as a monthly how-to columnist. While every month you can expect tips, tricks and best-practices advice from the development world, for this installment, I thought I'd share some of my predictions for 2024 in the field of software development. 

Posted by Mickey Gousset on 01/17/20240 comments

Building ETL Workflows in Microsoft Fabric, Step-by-Step

Microsoft Fabric was described as "the AI-fication of Microsoft's data business" by RedmondMag writer Joey D'Antoni when it was unveiled at the company's Build 2023 developer conference.

He listed these highlights of the new offering:

Posted by David Ramel on 01/15/20240 comments