For Build 2022, Microsoft continues its march towards being more inclusive of developers of any platform and language. Whether you are building mobile apps for Android or Cloud connected apps for IOT on Linux; Microsoft has the tools to allow you to get things done quicker and more efficiently than ever. Developers are being treated to many improvements across a variety of products this year at Build. Let’s go over some of the most exciting ones together.
ARM-native tools
As an early adopter of Microsoft’s Surface Pro X, this is music to my ears. A arm-native version of Visual Studio 2022 is headed our with support for the workloads we know and love like VC++, .NET and .NET Framework. Support for Open JDK, Python and others is also on the way.
Project Volterra
Another amazing development is the introduction of support for local AI-assisted accelerated workloads. This will enable Windows developers to build, test and debug with ease on their ARM-powered devices with ease leveraging tools they know and love like Visual Studio, Windows Terminal, WSL, WSA and others. This is huge news and still very much in flux, none the less, very promising and exciting.
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
WSL is now easier to get up and running. Where before you had to jump through a few hoops to get there. Microsoft has now made it easier than ever by simply allowing developers to download the feature through the Microsoft Store. WSL brings support for Linux CLI and GUI apps as well as Machine Learning (ML) workloads through NVIDIA CUDA, TensorFlow and PyTorch.
Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA)
WSA is also getting some love. It has now been updated to run on Android Open Source Project (AOSP) 12.1. It includes improvements to features like window management, networking, developer tool integration, a larger app catalog and more. This still remains in preview and as you already know available for download through the Microsoft Store.
Widgets and more
As Windows moved away from Live Tiles there was a need to give users a quick glanceable view into quick information like the weather, calendar events and news. Starting soon, developers will be able to build more widgets on the great foundation already laid out by Microsoft using the Adaptive Cards platform. It will interesting to see what developers dream up and how users will react to it.
For more news and coverage of the announcements check back with us throughout the day. You can also watch the event and sessions live by heading over to the official Microsoft Build 2022 Event page.
