Open Source, Free Tools, and Cross‑Platform Development: Insights from the 2015 MVP ComCamp Keynote

Today, Erich Gamma's visit gave Chinese developers another celebration opportunity; I dug out an old article from last year, and its Visual Studio Online “Monaco” demo commemorates this important day.

On January 31, 2015, as a keynote speaker, I shared some MVP experiences with developers from across the country.

This year marks my eighth year in the Microsoft MVP program. I recall my first TechEd in 2007 as a rookie, and now I can stand on a keynote stage to boast about my journey. Over eight years I have made many good friends, learned a lot of new things, and feel a growing desire to try even more.

At the conference I shared three topics: open source, free software, and cross‑platform development. After many years with Windows, I switched to a MacBook Pro, forcing myself to adapt to a completely different workflow; the first week was painful, but I gradually grew to like Finder, Sublime, and even run virtual machines via VMware for legacy banking software. Change is necessary, and the biggest obstacle is often ourselves.

Open Source

“Opening the source code enabled a self‑enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.” – Wikipedia

Open source creates the product models, communication methods, and interactive communities that the software industry truly needs. Software is not a solo effort; it is a collective creation that benefits from diverse contributions, and code itself becomes the best medium for programmer communication, thriving in platforms like GitHub where clone/pull/push/branch/merge embody the collaborative spirit.

2014 was a pivotal year for Microsoft and open source. Although Microsoft had begun open‑source initiatives earlier, it only started using GitHub as its primary code‑sharing platform in 2014, abandoning its own CodePlex service. This shift demonstrated Microsoft’s recognition of open source’s importance and its willingness to collaborate globally. In 2014 several major projects were open‑sourced:

.NET Home – https://github.com/Microsoft/dotnet

.NET Core CLR – https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr

.NETFX – https://github.com/dotnet/corefx

Roslyn – https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn

Visual Studio F# – https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp

WinJS – https://github.com/winjs/winjs

Through Microsoft on GitHub ( http://microsoft.github.io/ ) you can explore many more open‑source projects.

Another important channel is MS OpenTech ( https://msopentech.com/ ), which hosts interesting projects such as VM Depot – a library of virtual‑machine templates for Azure, offering ready‑made Ubuntu, CentOS, MySQL, GitLab, Jenkins, and other configurations.

In 2014 Microsoft significantly expanded its engineering team in Shanghai for MS OpenTech, promising even deeper collaboration with China’s open‑source community.

Update: While writing this blog, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 will be offered for free on Raspberry Pi 2 for makers, prompting me to want to buy a Pi 2 immediately—unfortunately it sold out.

Free

Another major 2014 milestone was the release of Visual Studio Community, a free edition that provides the same features as the Professional version. Previously Microsoft offered Express editions, but they suffered two fatal drawbacks: they were limited to specific application types (e.g., Windows Phone Express could not develop web apps) and they did not support extensions, making them unattractive for serious development.

Only targeted specific application types, preventing cross‑type development.

No support for plugins such as ReSharper or Web Essentials, limiting productivity.

The Community edition removes these restrictions, allowing development of front‑end, back‑end, database, reporting, and app projects, and fully supports extensions. This makes it a compelling alternative to tools like Eclipse or IBM’s offerings.

Link: Visual Studio 2013 Community download (no registration required)

During the MVP ComCamp 2015 keynote I demonstrated Apache Cordova support using the free tools and a set of HTML/JavaScript code to build Windows Phone, Android, and iOS apps, debug them, and package them. The demo video is linked below.

About Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova enables mobile app development using HTML/JavaScript, allowing developers to leverage existing web skills and frameworks. Through plugins, Cordova provides JavaScript APIs for accessing device features such as camera and geolocation, and supplies a toolchain for compiling, debugging, and packaging apps.

Visual Studio Apache Cordova tools – http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/explore/cordova-vs.aspx

Apache Cordova project homepage – http://cordova.apache.org/

Comparison of Cordova and PhoneGap – http://www.makehybridapps.com/2014/06/09/cordova-vs-phonegap-the-differences-and-which-one-to-use/

Cross‑Platform

The Visual Studio Community and Apache Cordova demo represents only a part of cross‑platform development. Modern software development involves many stages beyond coding, such as source control, task management, automated builds, testing, packaging, and deployment. Setting up development environments is often a painful process for developers.

If you could accomplish all of this by simply opening a browser, the world would be a much better place. Cloud computing can place the entire development environment in the cloud, requiring only a browser to access it.

In the MVP ComCamp 2015 keynote I showed how to use Visual Studio Online together with Microsoft Azure to build a fully cloud‑hosted development environment; see the video for details.

About Visual Studio Online Development Platform

Visual Studio Online – http://www.visualstudio.com/

Microsoft Azure – http://www.windowsazure.cn/

Visual Studio “Monaco” – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/monaco/

Download the Node Standup App demo from https://github.com/ups216/NodeStandupApp .

Thanks to all community friends, the Microsoft MVP team, and especially my former colleague Zhou Wenyang for helping deliver the keynote demo.

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