What Is Microsoft Visual Studio?

The question “what is Microsoft Visual Studio?” is answered succinctly on the product’s home page: “It’s how you make software.” Whether you want to build, code, deploy, debug, analyze, learn, or collaborate, Visual Studio is Microsoft’s integrated development environment (IDE) that can help. Developers use Visual Studio to create web applications, mobile apps, web services, websites, and computer programs. And with the help of Visual Studio plugins (aka extensions or add-ons), their jobs can become much easier.

The Best Visual Studio Plugins

Could many of your software development needs be fulfilled by Visual Studio’s out-of-the-box functionality and features? Sure, but with so many free and paid Visual Studio extensions available, why not use them to unlock your development potential? Here are some of the best Visual Studio extensions you can find in the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Visual Studio IntelliCode

You can increase your productivity and boost your workflow as a developer using Visual Studio Intellicode’s machine-learning skills that make it easier to understand code and its context. The plugin supports multiple languages, including XAML, C#, C++, and JavaScript, and it boasts such features as code formatting, argument completion, style rule inference, and contextual IntelliSense.

Magical C# Debugging – Ozcode

Install Ozcode, and its creator claims that you can transform debugging from a dull and daunting task into a fun and simple one. Ozcode is a Visual Studio plugin that dissects your code and detects and isolates bugs, making them easier to fix. Use it, and you can decrease your debugging time and increase your productivity and available time for more critical tasks.

While Visual Studio has its own debugger, programmers can integrate it with Ozcode for even more functionality since it can predict the future of a function code execution and offer valuable insights for faster problem-solving. Your debugging sessions can end quicker than ever with Ozcode’s features, which include evaluating expressions, comparing objects, creating tracepoints, and searching for properties. Since studies show that developers spend about half their time on debugging, it is no wonder why so many have downloaded Ozcode to save time on this essential task.

ReSharper

Nearly two million developers have installed ReSharper, one of Microsoft Visual Studio’s most popular productivity plugins. With it, you can spend less time on menial, repetitive tasks and concentrate on more important things. You can decrease your development time and increase your efficiency with ReSharper’s features, which include support for multiple programming languages (C#, XML, CSS, HTML, etc.), automatic error checking, code correction, and more. If you want to write better code faster, ReSharper is one of the top Visual Studio extensions for doing so.

Visual Studio Spell Checker

Long hours of coding can lead to exhaustion and eventual spelling errors. Visual Studio Spell Checker protects against this problem by checking spelling in plain text, strings, comments, projects, selected items, and entire solutions. The editor extension will check your spelling as you type so you can spot any errors immediately.

SlowCheetah

There are several reasons to download the SlowCheetah plugin or extension for Visual Studio. It can come in handy if you have ever wanted to do the following:

• Preview your XML transform without building or publishing your app
• Transform XML files via simple and clean syntax
• Use different appSettings, connection strings, and more for debug and release when building an app
• Adjust WCF service configuration with ease

Press F5 in Visual Studio and SlowCheetah will automatically transform your app.config or other files.

SonarLint

SonarLint is an open-source and free Visual Studio plugin that helps you pinpoint coding errors in terms of quality and security and fix them before they become problematic. The extension supports C#, JavaScript, C, C++, and other languages. Install it if you want to write clean code, as SonarLint works like a spell-checker by offering real-time feedback and highlighting errors like bugs, security vulnerabilities, and code smells so your code is as issue-free as possible. And, while spotting errors and telling programmers how to fix them is reason enough to install SonarLint, it also tells you why such issues are problematic, so you get a better understanding of the process. In doing so, you can start recognizing the issues on your own to prevent them in the future.

CodeMaid

CodeMaid is a Microsoft Visual Studio extension that promises to do a developer’s “dirty work.” It does this by cleaning up and simplifying coding for C3, C++, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, XML, PHP, etc. Over one million developers have installed CodeMaid for its wide variety of features, including code cleaning, code digging, code reorganizing, comment formatting, and more.

Image Optimizer

Programmers can achieve faster-loading applications with the Image Optimizer plugin for Visual Studio. Use it to optimize images in varying formats, such as PNG, JPEG, and GIFs (even animated ones). The extension offers both lossless and lossy optimization and works on entire folders or single images. All you have to do is right-click on the folder or file of interest, select the Image Optimizer option, and choose between Best Quality or Best Compression.

Trailing Whitespace Visualizer

Are you tired of annoying invisible characters in your code? Then you may want to do what nearly 250,000 developers have done and install the Trailing Whitespace Visualizer extension.

This Visual Studio plugin makes it easier to keep your code clean by highlighting and removing any trailing whitespace. Use its remove on save feature to eliminate all trailing whitespace every time you save a file, or use the ignore rules feature to specify file patterns you want to ignore.

Prettier

You can achieve consistent code formatting and style if you install Prettier for Microsoft Visual Studio. The opinionated code formatter is free and easy to use and gives you a simplified way to format code properly.

VSColorOutput

VSColorOutput uses specified rules consisting of regular expressions to tweak a line’s color emitted to the output window. The rules map to classifications, which convert the map into colors. By default, patterns mark build errors in red and warnings in yellow. Any successful build messages are colored green.

VSColorOutput’s creators claim that they created the Visual Studio plugin to highlight trace output during the debugging process, and it appears as if nearly 500,000 developers have downloaded it to do the same. Since the tool also highlights lines in the build window, it makes it a lot easier to visually parse output and quickly pinpoint specific items.

File Icons

When using Visual Studio, you may notice that the IDE does not offer icons for some files. File Icons is an extension that fixes this issue. Install it like over 450,000 other developers have, and it will add icons to files not recognized by Solution Explorer.

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In early version of Visual Studio, the Developer News feed was updated frequently as it was displayed on the Startup page of Visual Studio, assuming, of course, that the developer chose to start with the Startup page when they booted up VS.

Not only did this helpful feed provide the latest news in VS or other .NET developments, sometimes it directed the developer to some nice examples on new features . As stated, this was a feed that was updated regularly, so there was not any developer input to display it. On a personal level I found it irritating at first, then got used to it, then missed it when the feed disappeared.

When the Developer News feed disappeared, developers were not happy at all and expressed their opinions and concerns on the Developer Community feedback and feature request site. Many independent developers started to try and fill the gap by creating various “developer news” extensions for the Visual Studio marketplace, where other developers could download it.

Microsoft had to put some decent thought into bringing this feature back because of the following reasons:

• The news update and refresh cycles
• Customization and filtering of news items
• What if a developer does not make use of a start page but still wanted to get the news feed?
• How to make the feed more accessible when solutions are open in Visual Studio

With the above thoughts in mind, Microsoft updated the refresh cycles of the news feed and allowed for filtering of news items (such as news applicable to a different language). Developers also have the choice now of opening the news articles inside the default browser, or inside Visual Studio’s built-in browser.

More features, such as including news directly from Visual Studio Magazine, local event news, and developer community integration are also slated to be included.

The bottom two were tricky, as Microsoft developers had to come up with a solution that can cater for both conditions. Thus, they made a News window which is dock-able and gave it the ability to hide and show on demand – the same as all other windows inside Visual Studio. The news tool will be docked in the same location as the Solution Explorer window for ease of access.

Read: Visual Studio Code Extensions for Higher Productivity

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The GitHub Copilot further states that the developer tool is “is optimized to help you write Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, Go, C#, or C++. You can also use GitHub Copilot to generate suggestions in other languages and a wide variety of frameworks. GitHub Copilot is powered by OpenAI Codex, a new AI system created by OpenAI.”

To sum all of that up, with GitHub Copilot, developers and programmers can:

• Use the integrated development environment (IDE) platform that they are most comfortable with such as Neovim, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and JetBrains.
• Get code suggestions through AI. These suggestions can match a project’s context and style conventions.
• Code in unfamiliar languages.

Read: C# Tools for Code Quality

What are the Benefits of GitHub Copilot?

GitHub Copilot offers the following benefits to developers:

• Reduced distractions: Instead of searching for hours for a possible solution to a problem on the Internet, GitHub Copilot reduces the need for further research by using its AI to provide suggestions while you are coding.
• Handles repetitive tasks:: Sometimes a day in a developer’s life can be dull and mind-numbing. GitHub Copilot handles repetitive tasks beautifully by completing common tasks while you work.
• Helps developers document their code: The better code is documented, the better GitHub Copilot can help give suggestions and input. GitHub Copilot not only makes documenting code easier with a set of documentation tools, it also makes documenting more rewarding, as the more a coder documents, the better Copilot’s AI can understand what the code is meant to do.

Getting Started with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio

To start using GitHub Copilot with Visual Studio, simple follow these steps:

• Create a new project or open an existing project in Visual Studio.
• Click Extensions, the Manage Extensions.
• Select Visual Studio Marketplace.
• Search for Copilot.

Upon completing these steps, your screen will look like the image below:

Figure 1 – Copilot Extension

Next, continue following these steps:

• Click Download and close the Extensions window.
• Close Visual Studio.

The Installer screen will appear. Continue following the steps below after this screen appears:

Figure 2 – Install Copilot

• • Click Modify.
  • Once the installation has finished, launch Visual Studio again.
  • A popup window appears after you have opened Visual Studio again:

Figure 3 – Activation Code

• • • Click OK.
    • Your default web browser will open, asking for a code that was sent to you via email.
    • After entering the code, select Authorize GitHub Copilot Plugin to start using GitHub Copilot in your coding environment.

You should now be all set. To learn how to configure GitHub Copilot in your IDE, check out GitHub Copilot’s official documentation.

Read more developer tool reviews, guides, and how-to’s.

The post GitHub Copilot Overview appeared first on CodeGuru.

Visual Studio 2022 for Mac has become available as of May 23, 2022. It includes 6 highlights. They are:

• New native macOS User Interface
• Runs natively on M1/Apple Silicon (ARM64) and .NET 6
• Drag and Drop docking for Tool windows
• C# 10 support
• Editor enhancements

Let us take a closer look into each of these highlights.

Looking for more news and reviews for IDEs and Code Editors? Visit our Developer Tools section.

Features of Visual Studio for Mac

Below is a list of some of the features for the new version of Visual Studio for Mac and macOS.

New native macOS User Interface in Visual Studio

The new native macOS User Interface includes the following features:

• Tool windows, preferences, and document tabs received a complete UI makeover.
• Themes that synchronize with macOS theme4 settings
• Status bar to report the IDE status and the addition of highlighting for warnings and errors in the solution.

Runs Natively on M1/Apple Silicon (ARM64) Processors and .NET 6

The Visual Studio for Mac IDE can now run natively on Apple Silicon (ARM64) processors with large solutions running 50% faster than in Visual Studio 2019. The Visual Studio 2022 IDE also runs on the .NET 6 Framework, instead of Mono, as its predecessors did. This improves performance.

Developers can also now use .NET 6 to build applications for console apps, or ASP.NET Core solutions, for cloud and web. In addition to Visual Studio for Mac supporting .NET, it enables developers to do development with .NET Core 3.1 and .NET 5 as well.

Drag and Drop Docking for Tool Windows

As with Visual Studio on Windows platforms, tool windows inside the Visual Studio for Mac IDE can now also be docked to a side of the IDE. Simply drag the toolbox by dragging its title to the desired side with the aid of the drop-target icons.

C# 10 in Visual Studio for Mac

New additions or improvements for C# 10 on Visual Studio for Mac include the following:

• Lambda improvements
• Incremental source generators
• Record structs and with expressions on structs
• File-scoped namespaces
• CallerArgumentExpression
• Improved definite assignment
• Global using directives
• Parameter-less struct constructors
• Mixed deconstructions
• Extended property patterns
• Interpolated string handlers
• Constant interpolated strings
• Method-level AsyncMethodBuilder
• Sealed record ToString
• #line span directive

For more information on these C# feature changes in Visual Studio for Mac, have a look at the GitHub Visual Studio for Mac update page.

Visual Studio for Mac Editor Enhancements

Shared editor enhancements for Visual Studio for Mac include:

• Subword navigation: to navigate a subword such as MyAge, press either Ctrl+Alt+Left Arrow (navigate backward) or Ctrl+Alt+Right (navigate forward). In this case ‘My’ and ‘Age’ are both subwords.
• Multi-caret copy and paste: Improved multi-caret copy and paste experience. Pasting multiple lines into the same number of carets will now insert each line to a respective caret. Do this by pressing Control+Option+mouse-click and use the Option+Shift+arrow key to expand your selection. Then, press Cmd+C to copy the text and Control+Option+mouse-click to create multiple carets to paste into.

View a complete list of Visual Studio for Mac changes and a list of Visual Studio for macOS improvements.

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Read: C# Tools for Code Quality

As an example, let’s say you have created a .NET website project in C# and also want to include another source code file that is written in Visual Basic (VB) into the same project. In this scenario, adding the two distinct source code files into the App_Code folder would not work. In order to make your ASP.Net website work based off more than one language, one solution would be, if the source-code file is small, a developer could convert the VB code into C# code on their own, or use any automated code converter to perform the same action.

However, if that source-code file is larger, or you want to use multiple programming languages for some reason (for example, if one language had features another did not natively have), then converting code from one programming language to another would be very time-consuming and an ineffective task.

Fortunately, there are other methods programmers can use to achieve this goal. We will start by creating a website from scratch, then move on to creating language-specific classes, make some changes in the website configuration, and, finally, test the functionality of our website.

How to Create an ASP.NET Website

To begin, let’s create the framework for our website using the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). Follow the steps below:

• Launch the Visual Studio IDE and create a new project by clicking on Create a new project.
• Select ASP.NET Web Application (.NET Framework). Choose the programming language C# from the language dropdown option and click Next.

• On the next screen, configure your website project name and directory and then click Next.
• Now you should see your website project template has been created by Visual Studio.

Since you are working out of Visual Studio, you may want to check out the features of the new .NET Coding Pack, to add even more features to your code editor.

Creating language-specific Classes in .Net

In this part of the process, we will create two class files in two different languages: C# and Visual Basic. Following are the steps required to create two distinct classes in the App_Code folder:

• In the Solution Explorer, create two separate folders for each of the programming languages.
• In this tutorial, we are going to create two subfolders called CS and VB, and add two source code files named ClassCS.cs and ClassVB.vb into them.
• Add the following source code into the ClassCS.cs file by overwriting the existing source code:

public class ClassCS 
{ 
   public string Message; 
   public string GetMessage() 
   { 
      return this.Message; 
   } 
}

Next, add the following source-code into the ClassVB.vb file by overwriting the existing source-code:

Public Class ClassVB
 
    Public Message As String
 
    Public Function GetMessage() As String
        Return Me.Message
    End Function
 
End Class

Now you are ready to move onto the next step, which is modifying the configuration of our newly created ASP.Net website.

Modifying Website Configuration in ASP.Net

After creating the two separate files for two different programming languages in steps above, the next step is to change the website configuration so that ASP.NET can compile the two distinct folders separately. To change the configuration, follow the below steps:

• Open the web.config file and locate the section in the file.
• Add the section, as written below, inside the section.

Testing the Functionality of .NET Classes

After the website is configured successfully, let us now test if .NET can compile our two distinct source code files. To check if everything is working well, take the following steps:

• Create a Default.aspx page in your project folder.
• Create a label and two button controls on the Default.aspx page.
• On the click-event of the first button, we want to call the function written in ClassCS. Similarly, on the click-event of the second button, we want to call the function written in ClassVB. The code should look as follows:

protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs event)
{
   ClassCS obj = new ClassCS();
   obj.Message = "C# Function is called!";
   Label2.Text = obj.GetMessage();
}
 
protected void Button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs event)
{
   ClassVB obj = new ClassVB();
   obj.Message = "VB Function is called!";
   Label2.Text = obj.GetMessage();
}

• Next, in the Solution Explorer, right-click the Default.aspx page and select Set as Start Page and run the website project.
• In the last step, we want to test our classes. Call the function of a specific class on the click of the corresponding button. For instance, if you click on the second button, you should see the message: ‘VB Function is called!’

Final Thoughts on ASP.Net Muti-langage Web Pages

Using multiple programming languages in ASP.NET is useful in situations where developers and programmers are working independently and they may be using different languages, according to their preferences to support multiple development teams. We hope you have now learned how to support multiple programming languages while building ASP.NET web projects.

Read more ASP.NET software development and programming tutorials.

The post Using Multiple Programming Languages to Create an ASP.NET Website appeared first on CodeGuru.

Microsoft is planning to end support for various versions of Visual Studio including:

• Visual Studio 2012
• Visual Studio 2017
• Visual Studio 2019 version 16.7
• Visual Studio 2019 Preview Channel

Proposed dates for end of support (including Mainstream or all support) are as follows:

The dates highlighted in red indicate expired dates.

Read: Visual Studio Code Extensions for Higher Productivity

What is Mainstream Support for Visual Studio?

Mainstream Support is the first phase of the product life cycle. This includes support for products and services for:

• Incident support which includes the following:
• No-charge incident support
• paid incident support
• Support charged on an hourly basis
• Support for warranty claims
• Security update support
• The ability to request non-security updates

What is Extended Support for Visual Studio?

Extended Support follows the Mainstream Support phase. Extended Support includes:

• Paid support
• Free Security updates
• Ability to request non-security fixes for select products

These Visual Studio versions include the following editions, for which the support also ends:

These Visual Studio products follow the Fixed Lifecycle Policy. This policy applies to most commercial and some consumer products available through volume licensing or through retail purchase.

The Fixed Lifecycle Policy provides the following services:

• A clear outlined support and servicing life cycle timeline at the time of product launch.
• A minimum of five years Mainstream Support.
• An additional period of Extended Support for some products.

Read more developer tool reviews and tutorials.

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Visual Studio 2022 Previews Issue Updates

To date there have been six Previews for the Visual Studio 2022 release, where a number of issues have been addressed. Each Preview and its release date can be found below:

• Visual Studio 2022 Preview 1: Released November 08, 2021
• Visual Studio 2022 Preview 1.1: Released November 16, 2021
• Visual Studio 2022 Preview 2: Released January 5, 2022
• Visual Studio 2022 Preview 3: Released January 19, 2022
• Visual Studio 2022 Preview 4: Released January 25, 2022
• Visual Studio 2022 Preview 5: Released February 1, 2022
• Visual Studio 2022 Preview 6: Released February 9th, 2022

We will look at the issues address in each of these Previews, starting from the latest release and moving downwards.

Read: Working with Solution Filters in Visual Studio 2022

What Issues Were Addressed in Visual Studio 2022 Preview 6?

The following issues were addressed in Preview 6:

• Added support to cancel pending Hot Reload operations.
• Fixed incremental deployment issues with Xamarin Hot Restart.
• Fixed and enabled Code Lenses support for Team Foundation Server.
• Visual Studio 2022 Preview Release Dates.

What Issues Were Addressed in Visual Studio 2022 Preview 5?

The following issues were addressed in Preview 5:

• Fixed issues that arose on the debugging of Android applications when Fast Deployment is disabled.
• Fixed issues with Azure Container Apps workflow generation when Service principal generation fails when a Service principal already exists.
• Added <=> and == operators to ATL CString.
• Fixed issues pertaining to publishing ClickOnce projects containing x86 COM references.
• Fixed the VS crash bug when adding multiple launch profiles in the Manage Docker
• Compose Launch Settings dialog.
• Fixed the intermittent Visual Studio crash when WinForms .NET designer is open and some operations are performed on the project.

Read: Extension Changes in Visual Studio 2022

What Issues Were Addressed in Visual Studio 2022 Preview 4 and Preview 3?

The below issues were addressed in Preview versions 3 and 4:

• Fixed intermittent issues where changes to the CMake Workspace settings file do not take effect.
• Preview 3 of Visual Studio 2022 17.1 improved performance issues in which the “close” performance of a solution got optimized when a solution is closed. Visual Studio 2022 has also enabled indexing in your files to improve search performance.
• From preview 3 onwards, you have the option to load or reload the entire dependency tree for the projects in your Solution Filter, and Visual Studio 2022 generates GitHub
• Action workflows for Azure Container Apps.

What Issues Were Addressed in Visual Studio 2022 Preview 2?

Preview 2 had the most updates varying from C++ updates, Git tooling, and debugging. Here are just a few updates from Preview 2:

• Introduced a new feature called StickyDataTips with which DataTips can be expanded until you click away.
• The color of the tabs in your project can be toggled to color your tabs by File Extension or Project.
• The functionality of automatically saving code documents whenever Visual Studio loses focus.
• Line-staging support in GitHub to stage specific lines and/or chunks of code.
• The versions of Clang and LLVM shipped with Visual Studio have been upgraded to v13.

What Issues Were Addressed in Visual Studio 2022 in Preview 1 and Preview 1.1?

The following issues were resolved in Previews 1 and 1.1:

• Fixed issues where Visual Studio 2022 failed to start on Windows 7 machines.
• Included Preview 10 of .NET MAUI.
• Added capability to include README files upon new Git repositories creation in Visual Studio 2022.
• Added support for Microsoft Azure App Services to attach to a process.

Be sure to check this space often as we continue to provide updates on Visual Studio 2022 and its Previews, updates, and changes.

Read: Top Extensions and Add-ons for Visual Studio

The post Latest Visual Studio 2022 version 17.1 Preview Updates appeared first on CodeGuru.

As powerful as Visual Studio Code is, there are still some areas where it can improve. Fortunately for coders, Visual Studio Marketplace exists and offers extensions and third-party plugins that help extend the functionality of VS Code. Today, we will be looking at some of the best VS Code extensions for productivity in an effort to help programmers become more efficient and reduce mistakes in their code.

Visual Studio Code Extensions for Developer Productivity

There are some specific Visual Studio Code plugins and extensions that may have an important impact on your productivity as a developer. Below, we will be focusing on these. You are most likely not going to use all of them as your project may have a different workflow and tech stack, but you will find them productive and useful if you choose to do so.

Read: Visual Studio vs Visual Studio Code

GitLens for VS Code

The GitLens Visual Studio extension enhances the Git capabilities built into Visual Studio Code. It makes your life easier by allowing you to keep track of code changes. You can easily track when, why, and who changed a line of code. You can look back in history and see how the code has evolved. It boosts the productivity of code and lets developers be aware of the progress between commits.

Developer Productivity Features:

• Navigate through the history of the file
• Command-line interface for comparing revisions and revision history
• Current line blame that shows the last commit and author that modified the line
• Side bar views to help visualize and manage Git commits, Git repositories, file history,
• Git branches, Git remotes, Git stashes, Git tags, and more.
• Git command palette for guided Git commands
• Rebase editor and terminal links
• Integrates with GitLab, GitHub, Gitea, Azure Devops, and BitBucket

Git Graph

This tool represents your Git repository in a graph format. You can also perform Git actions from the graph. The actions you can perform using Git Graph include:

• Create, delete, merge, pull, pull, rebase, reset and rename branches
• Apply, drop, and pop stashes
• Checkout, cherry-pick, merge, drop and revert changes
• Clean, reset, and stash changes that are Uncommitted
• Copy commit hashes, alongside branch, stash, and tag names
• View Commit changes and details
• Compare commits with a click
• Track file and code reviews
• Convenient “Find Widget” allowing developers to search for commits by different criteria
• Repository settings widget for interacting with repository remotes, issue linking, and pull request creation
• Export Git graph configuration

Live Share Developer Tool

The LiveShare plugin lets you perform pair programming remotely and allows developers to share code with a wider audience. It is a feature packed tool that can support up to 30 people at a time. You can take advantage of this extension by sharing chats and audio with co-workers.

With Live Share, you do not need to explain to colleagues which file you are currently working on and what code changes need to be made during a pair-programming session, as Live Share lets you collaborate with other developers in real-time and view each other’s workspace without the need of cloning a repository.

It is super easy to start a session with Live Share, once the session is started, you will be given a URL that you can share with other teammates to begin the collaboration.

Read: Top Extensions and Add-ons for Visual Studio

Syncing Visual Studio Code Extension

Do you have multiple development machines? Perhaps you have a desktop computer at the office and a laptop at home for personal projects and you want to sync all the settings across all of your development machines. Syncing is a great tool for such a situation. It allows your to sync all of your VS Code settings from multiple computers and devices with your GitHub Gist. Some of the additional features in this VS Code extension include:

• Uploading user settings, code snippets, and extensions
• Key-bindings for macOS and non-macOS machines
• Exclude all those user settings which you do not want to upload

Bracket Pair Colorizer 2

Bracket Pair Colorizer is a simple to use and a very useful extension. With this Visual Studio Code extension for productivity, not only can you easily identify matching brackets with colors but you can also customize the characters and colors which you want to use in your coding environment. The default behavior of this extension does all the necessary things, though you can customize it according to your needs. You can custom configure each bracket types, including: ( ), [ ], and { } brackets. Another neat feature is that you can customize the color for orphaned or nested brackets as well.

Code Spell Checker for Visual Studio Code

The Code Spell Checker Visual Studio extension is designed to help developers avoid errors and typos in their code. Misspelled words – or words not found in the extensions dictionary – are highlighted with a squiggly line. Hovering over the highlighted word will give developers the option to view “suggestions” making it easy to fix spelling issues before they turn into hard-to-find code errors. This is a simple productivity extension for programmers, but one that can save you tons of headaches.

Better Comments for Visual Studio Code

The Better Comments extension allows you to specify human-friendly comments in your code. Many people work on the same codebase and many decisions are made. This extension helps you to document those decisions. You can categorize the comments into “To-Do” lists, queries, and alerts. You can even use a strikethrough style for the code that you want to comment out, making sure that other coders understand your intent. You can even use colors to make the context more understandable and identifiable.

Some of the programming languages supported by Better Comments include:

• C#
• C, C++, Java
• COBOL
• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript
• F#
• Python
• 70+ other programming languages

Peacock Productivity Extension for VS Code

It is common for web developers to open multiple VS Code windows as they work on different repos at the same time. For example, one window for the back-end repo and one for the front-end code. The Peacock extension for VS Code adds colors to different windows, which makes it easier for developers to easily identify which window they are currently working on and visually identify the purpose of other windows by color representation.

Peacock also makes it easier to collaborate with others when remote programming, especially if you use collaboration tools like VS Live Share or VS Code Remote.

Prettier

Prettier is a self-proclaimed “opinionated” code formatter tool used to implement a consistent style throughout the development process. Prettier is a must on huge projects where each dev has its preference on what format makes the code most readable. It is a highly configurable tool that can be used to format code with the minimum amount of configuration options.

Prettier is an awesome tool when installed in your project. Its configuration settings save you lots of development time if you take the time up-front to get everything to your liking. It can also be easily integrated with your ESLint rules, making it extremely useful.

Prettier is extremely popular with developers, enjoying over 16 million downloads. It supports languages including: JavaScript, TypeScript, Flow, JSX, JSON, CSS, HTML, Angular, and many more.

Final Thoughts on Visual Studio Code Productivity Extensions

Visual Studio Extensions are good companions in your daily work. These extensions are built to enhance your project efficiency and improve the productivity of your everyday work. Developers may find some extensions more productive than others depending on your technology stack.

That being said, keep in mind these plugins are just to help you out and make coding easier. Do not spend too much time finding the perfect plugin for your specific needs; at the end of the day they are not capable of doing the work, but, instead, can give you a little help to speed up the development process.

Read: Extension Changes in Visual Studio 2022

The post Visual Studio Code Extensions for Higher Productivity appeared first on CodeGuru.

By filtering solutions, you have the following benefits:

• Developers can get to the code faster by choosing the projects that need to be opened in a solution, thus saving time.
• Upon reopening of a filtered solution, Visual Studio 2022 remembers the projects that were loaded when the solution was last opened, and only opens those.
• When a new team member joins, you can set up only select projects for the member to get started and not be too overwhelmed and allow the member to gradually get up to speed with all the projects in the solution.
• If your solution contains huge dependencies or any other DLLs, it is beneficial to remove those that are not used regularly by the use of a solution filter.
• If a solution contains a lot of client-specific code which relies on shared code, you can create a Solution Filter for each client’s code.

How to Create a Solution Filter

To create a solution filter in Visual Studio 2022 follow these steps:

• Open a Solution either through the solution start page or using the File menu inside Visual Studio 2022.
• Browse (if necessary) to your desired Solution. 
• Select the ‘Do not load projects’ checkbox in the bottom of the Open Project dialog.

Figure 1 – Do not load projects

Click Open. Visual Studio will open but the projects will not be loaded. 

Figure 2 – Empty solution

• In the Solution Explorer, right-click the desired project that you would like to load.
• Select Reload Project to reload a project with all its dependencies; otherwise, select Reload project with dependencies.

Figure 3 – Reload project

Normally, the above steps would suffice, but we can take it a step further. On any of the loaded projects, you can right-click on it to load the direct dependencies of the project or the entire dependency tree.

Figure 4 – Reload Dependencies

• Right-click the Solution inside the Solution Explorer.
• Select Save As Solution Filter.

Figure 5 – Save as Solution Filter

• In the Save dialog enter a name and select Save.
• A Solution Filter file is saved with a .slnf extension and then added to the Recents menu of Visual Studio 2022.

Figure 6 – Recent Solutions and Projects

Read: Tops Extensions and Add-ons for Visual Studio.

The post Working with Solution Filters in Visual Studio 2022 appeared first on CodeGuru.

Since the August 2021 update of Visual Studio Code (version 1.6.0) , Visual Studio Code makes use of Machine Learning (ML) to detect the current programming language used while coding – this also includes code that is pasted into the editor.

Because of this, Visual Studio Code automatically (or rather, auto-magically) sets the language mode featuring the language’s specific language colorization and extension recommendations. All of this is made possible by – and powered by – TensorFlow.

In case you haven’t heard of Machine Learning (ML), let me quickly explain it so that you can understand the context here a bit better.

What is Machine Learning

According to Wikipedia: “Machine learning is the study of computer algorithms that can improve automatically through experience and using data. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine learning algorithms build a model based on sample data, known as “training data”, to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so. Machine learning algorithms are used in a wide variety of applications, such as in medicine, email filtering, speech recognition, and computer vision, where it is difficult or unfeasible to develop conventional algorithms to perform the needed tasks.”

Now the question is: how do you train data? One option is known as Deep learning.

What is Deep Learning

Deep Learning (or Hierarchical Learning or Deep Structured Learning) is a type of machine learning method that is based on learning data representations instead of task-specific algorithms. Deep Learning can be unsupervised, semi-supervised, or supervised.

Some Deep Learning architectures, such as deep neural networks, deep belief networks, and recurrent neural networks have been applied to the following fields:

• Computer Vision
• Speech Recognition
• Natural Language Processing
• Audio Recognition
• Social Network Filtering
• Machine Translation
• Bioinformatics
• Deep Neural Networks

Deep Neural Networks

Let’s see how Deep Neural Networks fit in with our human brains, so that you can have a better idea of what must be done to train machines with data.

A Deep Neural Network (DNN) is an artificial neural network that has multiple hidden layers between the input and output layers. Deep Neural Networks models are complex and seek to mimic human nervous systems, which consist of the following elements.

Neuron

A neuron, also called a nerve cell, is the basic unit of the nervous system. Neurons are the unit which the brain uses to process information. Each neuron is made of a soma (cell body), axon, and dendrites. Dendrites and axons are nerve fibers.

Synapses

Neurons do not touch; instead, they form tiny little gaps called synapses. These gaps can be electrical synapses or chemical synapses, but ultimately these gaps pass the signal from one neuron to the next. You get excitatory synapses and inhibitory synapses. Signals arriving at an excitatory synapse cause the receiving neuron to fire. Signals arriving at an inhibitory synapse inhibit the receiving neuron from firing.

Axon

An axon typically conducts electrical impulses away from the neuron’s cell body (soma). Axons, or nerve fibers, transmit information to different neurons, muscles, and glands. In pseudo unipolar neurons (sensory neurons), such as those for warmth and touch, the electrical impulse travels along an axon from the periphery to the cell body, and from the cell body to the spinal cord along another branch of the same axon. Nerve fibers are classified into three types: A delta fibers, B fibers, and C fibers.

Dendrites

Dendrites are the branched projections of a neuron that act to propagate the electrochemical stimulation received from other neural cells to the cell body, or soma, of the neuron from which the dendrites project. Electrical stimulation is transmitted onto dendrites by upstream neurons (usually their axons) via synapses which are located at various points throughout the dendritic tree.

Artificial Neural Network

An artificial neural network (ANN) is an interconnected group of nodes, like the vast network of neurons in a human brain. Neural networks consist of multiple layers and the signal path traverses from the first (input), to the last (output) layer of neural units.

The purpose of a neural network is to solve problems like the way a human brain would. Neural networks are based on real numbers, with the value of the core and of the axon typically being a representation between 0.0 and 1.

Perceptron

A Perceptron is an algorithm for supervised learning of binary classifiers which are functions that can decide whether input, represented by a vector of numbers, belongs to some specific class.

Layers

Layers are made up of several interconnected nodes which contain a sigmoid (activation function). Information is presented to the neural network via an input layer that communicates to one or more hidden layers. The actual processing in hidden layers is done with the use of weighted connections. The hidden layers then link to an output layer.

Single-layer Neural Networks

A Single-layer neural network is a network in which the output unit is independent of the other layers—each weight affects only one output.

Multi-layer Neural Networks

A multi-layer network is a feedforward artificial neural network model that maps sets of input data onto a set of appropriate outputs.

Forward Propagation

In a feedforward neural network, the information moves in only one direction, forward—obviously, from the input nodes, through the hidden nodes (if any), and to the output nodes.

Back Propagation

Back propagation is a training algorithm consisting of feeding forward values and calculating errors and propagating it back to the earlier layers.

Reinforcement Learning vs. Supervised Learning

Reinforcement learning differs from supervised learning in that correct input and output pairs are never presented, and sub-optimal actions are not explicitly corrected. There is a focus on on-line performance which involves finding a balance between exploration of uncharted territory and exploitation of current knowledge.

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