A session at the Sela Developer Practice covering the latest news on the Microsoft platform: Windows 8, Windows Azure, managed languages, the CLR, and more.

1. SELA DEVELOPER PRACTICE
December 15-19, 2013
Sasha Goldshtein
CTO, SELA Group
@goldshtn
blog.sashag.net
State Of The Platforms
© Copyright SELA software & Education Labs Ltd. | 14-18 Baruch Hirsch St Bnei Brak, 51202 Israel | www.selagroup.com

2. Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2
• RTM August 2013, GA October 2013
Windows Azure
• Continuous delivery, new features/updates every 2-4 weeks
Visual Studio 2013 and .NET 4.5.1
• RTM October 2013
Going Native (C++)
• Big updates in VS2013 and subsequent CTPs
.NET Languages and CLR vNext
• In Visual Studio vNext

3. What’s New in Windows 8.1?
Concessions from Windows 8
• Pseudo Start button
• Desktop background as Start screen background
• Boot to desktop
• Slightly modified default search experience
• Arbitrary proportions in snapped view

4. What’s New in Windows 8.1?
Development Platform Improvements
• Some more WinRT APIs available to desktop apps
(SMS, sensors, geolocation, scanning, capture, …)
• USB, Bluetooth, HID devices (point of sale)
• Scanning
• 3D printing
• Speech synthesis
• Contacts and appointments
• And miscellanea: HTTP client, PDF export, PlayTo
extensions, …

5. What’s New in Windows 8.1?
XAML Improvements
• New and updated controls: date and time pickers,
flyouts, better AppBar buttons, search box, …
• True WebView control in the visual tree
• Loading WebView resources from dynamic storage
(eBooks, …)
• Multi-monitor DPI awareness
• Enhanced data binding
• Custom navigation stack support
• Performance improvements in startup and XAML

6. What’s New in Windows Azure?
Dev/Test Offering
• MSDN use rights allowed
in Windows Azure
• Per-minute billing for
VMs
• No charge for stopped
VMs
• Super-discounted
dev/test rates for
Windows Server, SQL
Server, BizTalk Server
MSDN Credits Model
• Professional = $50/mo
• Premium = $100/mo
• Ultimate = $150/mo
• Example: $100 = spin up
80 VMs for 20 hour load
test

7. What’s New in Windows Azure?
Mobile Services
Mobile Notification Hubs
• Custom API support
• Source control support
(Git at this time)
• Integration with
Notification Hubs
• Optimistic concurrency
• Integration with Windows
Azure Active Directory
• Blast out push
notifications to millions
of users
• Unlimited tags associated
with each subscriber
• Support for all four major
platforms
• Templates so you can
push with a single call

8. What’s New in Windows Azure?
Auto-Scale Preview
Alert Rules Preview
• Set up scale rules for your
Web Sites, Mobile
Services, Cloud
Services, and Virtual
Machines
• Based on CPU %, storage
queue depth, blob
requests
• Can set up different rules
for
day/night, weekday/week
end
• Monitor metrics and send
alerts when they are
exceeded
• E.g., when CPU % for
MyVM goes above 95 for
five minutes, send an
email to all
administrators

9. What’s New in Windows Azure?
Cool New Features
• Import/export hard
drives
• Automatic SQL database
exports
• WebSockets support
• Read-access georedundant storage
• New scheduler service
• Remote debugging from
Visual Studio 2013
Mature Features
• Virtual Networks –
P2P/S2P/S2S VPN
• BizTalk Services GA
• Traffic Manager GA
• Multi-factor
authentication GA
• Import Virtual Machines
from Open Depot

10. What’s New in Visual Studio 2013?
The Connected IDE
• Haven’t you always
wanted to sign in to your
Visual Studio? 
• Synchronized settings
between machines
• Easier to get started with
Visual Studio
• Automatic TFS Online
integration
• Notification center
Productivity
• Better auto-completion
• IntelliSense and Go To
Definition for XAML
• More refactorings
• Code Lens
• Code Maps

11. What’s New in Visual Studio 2013?
New Performance Tools
• Memory and
performance profiling for
JavaScript apps
• Power (energy) profiling
for Windows Store and
Windows Phone apps
• Memory leak analysis for
all .NET apps
• Graphics Diagnostics for
Windows Store apps
Miscellaneous
• Performance
improvements
• Coded UI Tests for XAML
Windows Store apps
• More themes

12. Visual Studio Online
First-class hosted TFS and Git source
control, free for teams up to 5 developers
TFS build service
Cloud load testing service
“Monaco”: Cloud IDE for Azure Web Sites

13. What’s New in .NET 4.5.1?
In-place Upgrade
• Just like .NET 4.5 and supposed to be fully
backwards compatible
New Features
• EventSource support (for ETW)
• Explicit LOH compaction during GC
• Edit-and-continue for 64-bit code
• Better async-aware debugging

14. Going Native?
In Visual Studio 2013
• Variadic templates, initializer lists, delegating ctors
• Generalized capture semantics
• Full C++11 conformance probably in 2-3 updates
In Visual C++ November CTP
• Resumable functions (__await for task<T>)
• Generic lambdas
• Function return type deduction
• Other small C99, C++11, and C++14 features

15. Going Native?
C++ REST SDK
(Casablanca)
Better auto-vectorizer
and __vectorcall
PGO wizard for Desktop
and Store apps
Much better IntelliSense
and code completion

16. .NET Languages And The CLR
C# and VB vNext
• Roslyn is very likely in Visual Studio vNext
• New C# and VB language features being discussed
CLR vNext
• “RyuJIT”
• “Triton”
• “Project N”

17. Considered C# Language
Features imports
// Static method
using System.Math;
// Primary constructor for immutable types
public class Point(int x, int y) {
// Read-only automatic properties based on fields
public int X { get; } = x;
public int Y { get; } = y;
// Property expressions
public double Magnitude => Sqrt(X*X + Y*Y);
}

18. Summary
Fast and accelerating release cadence from
most Microsoft groups, including Windows
Some areas seem frozen but there is work
under-the-covers
The new Microsoft: more open to feedback and
integration with other technologies

19. Questions
Sasha Goldshtein
CTO, SELA Group
@goldshtn
blog.sashag.net