The Microsoft .NET Compiler Platform, better known as Roslyn, consists of two compilers (one for C# and one for Visual Basic) with rich code analysis APIs.
Roslyn provides compilers as services which can be used to create code focused tools and applications. This creates opportunities for innovation in areas such as meta-programming, code generation and transformation, scripting, interactive use of the C# and VB languages, and embedding of C# and VB in domain specific languages.
Roslyn exposes the C# and Visual Basic compiler’s code analysis to you as a consumer by providing an API layer that mirrors a traditional compiler pipeline.
Each phase of this pipeline is now a separate component. First the parse phase, where source is tokenized and parsed into syntax that follows the language grammar. Second the declaration phase, where declarations from source and imported metadata are analyzed to form named symbols. Next the bind phase, where identifiers in the code are matched to symbols. Finally, the emit phase, where all the information built up by the compiler is emitted as an assembly.
In April 2014 Roslyn went open source.
Get started with Roslyn
Windows Store apps that start up to 60% faster and have a smaller memory footprint – that’s what .NET Native is a about.
.NET Native compiles C# to native machine code that performs like C++. You will continue to benefit from the productivity and familiarity of the .NET Framework with the great performance of native code.
Released in April 2014, you can download the Microsoft.Net Native Developer Preview to get started today.
The developer preview enables building apps for Windows Store on ARM and x64 architectures (stay tuned for x86.) .NET Native will soon enable a consistent and converged experience across devices.
.NET Native continues to provide a first-class .NET developer experience in Visual Studio. You still get a great edit/compile/debug environment with productivity enhancers like Edit and Continue and code refactoring. You continue to upload MSIL app packages to the Windows Store.
Some of the most popular Windows Store apps on Surface devices are already running on .NET Native. This includes applications such as Wordament and Fresh Paint, which are seeing multi-second startup wins.
Way back in 2000 Microsoft announced C#, and the rest is history.
Excerpt:
REDMOND, Wash., June 26, 2000 — Microsoft Corp. today announced Microsoft® ( "C sharp" ), a modern, object-oriented programming language built from the ground up to exploit the power of XML-based Web services on the .NET platform, which was announced last week at Forum 2000. With its Visual C++® development system heritage, C # will enable millions of C and C++ developers to use existing skills to rapidly build sophisticated XML-based .NET applications. To simplify integration and interoperability, Microsoft is working with ECMA, an international standards body, to create a standard for C # , enabling multiple vendors to deliver the language and supporting tools.
Read the entire announcement
Until now the VB and C# compilers have been black boxes, un accessible to Microsoft.Net developers.
Enter Microsoft Roslyn, “a set of APIs for exposing the Microsoft C# and Visual Basic .NET compilers as services available at runtime.”
This software is currently available as a community technology preview (CTP).
Roslyn can be imagined as a “compiler as a Windows service” which VB and C# developers can access through the new Roslyn APIs.
It allows the entire compile-execute process to be invoked from within .Net applications to, for example, give VB and C# a dynamic languages ability to generate and invoke code at runtime.
Or, how about incorporating Roslyn into a .NET application that accepts user input then uses Roslyn APIs to process the input (remember how good old class VB could evaluate a string?)
Roslyn is powerful but you won’t know how powerful it is until you try it out yourself.
Download it today!
The ASP.NET Identity system, new in Visual Studio 2013, is designed to replace the previous ASP.NET Membership and Simple Membership systems. It includes profile support, OAuth integration, works with OWIN, and is included with the ASP.NET templates shipped with Visual Studio 2013.
My experience with it is that it is simpler to use yet provides more options and easier extensibility.
ASP.NET Identity can be used with all of the ASP.NET frameworks, such as ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, Web Pages, Web API, and SignalR.
Check out it’s claims based authentication. It gives you the ability to use more than just roles to grant access/permission to a user.
More….
One ASP.NET - Unifies the experience of using ASP.NET technologies, so that you can easily mix and match the ones you want. Introduced in Visual Studio 2013. Introducing One ASP.NET // Hands On Lab: One ASP.NET More...