>> Visual Studio at 25,
an exciting proposal for JavaScript
and a gaming chair for toddlers?
All that and more on this episode of The Download.
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>> Welcome back to another episode of The Download.
I'm your host, Christina Warren,
Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft,
and my shirt today is from Supreme.
I bought it during those heady pandemic days when,
they all blur together.
But anyway, this is the first time that
I think I've actually been able to wear it in person.
It's a capture which is funny both for
web devs and for streetwear nerds like
myself who know the capture game all too
well when we are trying to score from the latest drop.
Anyway, and what would you know it,
this is actually our 10th show.
I want to give a huge shout out to my colleagues,
Oreya and the Matts,
who have been instrumental in keeping
this thing going and looking so great.
Also a huge thanks to all the viewers for watching,
prattle on about Nutley every single week.
It has been so much fun. Thank you so much.
Let's get into the news.
The first thing that I want to mention is
that the Visual Studio is turning 25. That's right.
Back in 1997,
Microsoft first introduced a bundle of
various developer tools for various languages.
Back then it was Visual C++, Visual Basic,
VisualFox Pro, Visual InterDev and Visual J++,
and they called it Visual Studio.
Now 25 years later,
it's one of those original languages still exists RIP J++.
But a whole new host of languages have been added,
most notably C-sharp and the.Net ecosystem.
Then there have been new features,
and there's even been spinoffs like the Vs Code.
On March 17th at 09:00AM Pacific,
there will be an online event that looks
back on the past and into the future,
and you definitely want to check that out.
I've got a link in the show notes and the description to sign up.
Also, let me know your IDE memories in the comments down below.
Moving along the TypeScript team has made
a very interesting stage zero
proposal that would bring Type Syntax into ActionScript,
which is the official JavaScript standard.
Now I know what you're thinking.
Isn't that just TypeScript?
Well, not quite.
How this proposal works is that it's actually for
optional and erasable Type Syntax
that would essentially act as comments.
In fact, the proposal was actually called types ask comments.
In a blog post that I've got linked below,
as well as in the proposal itself,
Daniel Rosenwasser lays out the rationale behind
the proposal and why he
and others think that it would be a good idea.
I'm just going to quote directly from
the proposal right now, says,
"The aim of this proposal is to
enable developers to run programs written in
TypeScript flow and other static typing superset
of JavaScript without any need for transportation,
and if they stick with
a certain reasonably large subset of the language."
Obviously, all of this is in the early stages.
That's why it's still zero and the team is expecting
pushback and strong opinions from others in the community.
Still, I think that if this were to get adopted this could be
really big and I think welcome change to ActionScript.
Be sure to check out the links below for more details.
People are already chiming in with their feedback
on GitHub and in the comments and on Twitter.
I expect that we're going to continue
to hear more about this in the coming months.
Visual Studio is turning 25, happy birthday.
But it's also getting some fresh tools by
way of a brand new Edge Developer Tools extension,
which is now in preview.
This extension will bring the power of Edge's DevTools,
which is great for stuff like modifying CSS
or inspecting network traffic directly in the IDE,
which is great one less tool to have opened at one time.
You can actually download and install the preview extension
at aka.ms/edgetools for VS.
In the current preview a release,
the team has enabled both the elements and the network tools,
and you can actually just see
some previews on the screen right
now of what that looks like an action.
This is a really great collaboration between
the Edge Developer Tools team and the Visual Studio team,
and I think this will be really great
for.Net developers in particular.
In related news, the Edge Dev Tools team now has
a new Microsoft Edge Dev Tools feedback repository on GitHub,
and this repo is going to be the central place where users and
the community to send the team ideas and feedback,
suggestions, tips, all that stuff.
You can feel free to create a new issue
if you have anything that you'd like to share with the team,
and you can also view the list of
existing issues and then join in on any of those conversations.
Now, there are still other ways to get in touch with the team,
which are detailed down below in a blog post that I've got linked.
But I have a feeling that
this new repo is going to be a great way to
have better discussions around
the community and with the Dev Tools team,
so that's really exciting.
Moving along to some brief gaming news,
the Steam Deck now has preliminary Windows support. That's great.
The Steam Deck, if you're not familiar,
is Valve's new handheld gaming console that's basically like
a tiny PC in your hands and I've got one on pre-order,
it'll allegedly be shipping in quarter to 2022.
But some people are luckier than me and they already have theirs.
Now the Steam Deck actually runs on Steam OS,
which is a customized version of Arch Linux,
and the Valve is optimized for gaming,
and its proton compatibility engine.
But because it is a full on computer,
you can run other stuff on it too like Windows.
In Windows support is now limited,
audio support doesn't work all the way,
and there is not a way to do boot it yet.
With our graphics for the GPU,
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, so that's great.
It also only supports Windows 10 for
now until a BIOS update is released,
which will bring some support needed for Windows 11.
But considering that this thing only came out like two weeks ago,
I'm pretty impressed and I'm a pretty excited.
Valve, please send in my Steam Deck
soon so that I can be one step
closer to having a portable game pass machine. Very excited.
Actually, on that note,
if you are happy to rock a Steam OS,
the Xbox Game Studios team has provided
an update on what games across
the vast array of studios under
its umbrella now support the Steam Dock in varying capacities.
Now the good news Fallout 4 and Forza Horizon 4 are both playable.
The bad news is that because of some anti-cheat stuff,
Flight Simulator 10, Gears 5 and Halo Infinite are not.
Again, this is why we want to have dual booting,
so hopefully that'll come soon.
Anyway, I'm super excited.
Speaking of Windows,
Winget, which is the Windows package manager,
has just been updated to version 1.2 and it's been released in
the Microsoft Store as
an automatic update and to the app installer.
If you are running Windows 10, 8,
or 9 or Windows 11,
and the big thing that's happened here is
that there is now ARM 64 support.
Now not all software is available natively compiled for ARM 64,
but more and more of it is becoming that way.
Now the Windows Package Manager will choose
the best available package based on your hardware architecture.
If a native option is not available,
then the next best option will be automatically selected.
This is actually pretty similar to what
the Homebrew team does on Mac and Linux.
I really like this approach that Winget has taken with this,
because this can be a fairly difficult problem to solve for
because a lot of software is compiled on multiple architectures.
Error handling is also now less cryptic and easier to decipher,
and there are some new settings for local manifest.
If you want to learn more about Winget,
I recommend a recent episode of
Windows Wednesday that dive into it,
and I've got that links down below.
There's even Microsoft Learn module if you really want to go nuts.
I'm a huge fan of Winget and a package managers in general,
so I think this is really great stuff.
Now, it is time for my pick of the week.
This might be one of the more ridiculous things
that I've highlighted,
but I also think it's one of the coolest.
VTEC is a children's toy company that has been
making kid versions of adult electronics for decades.
They're the people who make those toy laptops.
They've decided to grace the world with, as I said,
it might be the most unnecessary accessory ever,
which is a gaming chair for toddlers. This thing has it all.
It has a keyboard that actually teaches rather than
focusing on lining up your shot in Fortnite,
and it has some tiny toy headphones
that are make-believe only, but they do look cool.
Now, on the one hand,
this thing is absolutely ridiculous,
and it is setting poor examples
for kids to grow up and be YouTubers,
which trust me, kids do not want to be like me.
But on the other hand, this is adorable,
and I'm absolutely buying this for
my nephew as soon as it's released,
no matter what my older sister, aka his mom, says.
Christian, your auntie Christina has got your back, so game on.
That does it for me. Let me know
your favorite tech toys from childhood in the comments down below.
I had a fake record player that was super dope.
Also, let me know your thoughts on
any of our stories from this week.
Thanks again for watching us.
Episode 10 leave a like on the video if you liked it and
subscribe to Microsoft Developer for all
of your nerd needs. See you next time.
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