Windows 10 Anniversary Bash!

Microsoft realized a bit late that they are losing developers to Mac OS X and Linux systems. Almost all the recent technologies are well supported on these platforms than Windows. For the first anniversary (July 29, 2016) of the Windows 10 release, Microsoft is packing in new features to the Windows 10 operating system. One of the important new feature is an Ubuntu sub-system for the Windows kernel, that would run bash without changes as it would on a Ubuntu system.

This sub-system release is considered a beta and they are still working to fix a number of issues for compatibility and acceptance.

Deep Learning of a DeepMind

Remember the Chess-Playing computer that IBM built a few years ago that defeated grandmaster Garry Kasparov? Well, it was called Deep Blue and used predefined actions picked up from a collection for every stage of chessboard  without depending on artificial intelligence (AI).

Fast-forward to 2016, we now see a Google company - DeepMind - that extensively applies AI learning algorithms for what they say on their website

"The algorithms we build are capable of learning for themselves directly from raw experience or data, and are general in that they can perform well across a wide variety of tasks straight out of the box...".

Games are just one of the fields they are applying it. This year, they have started a program AlphaGo that aims to put it against a human competitor and find out how good the implementation is. AlphaGo took on Lee Sedol, the world's top Go player in Google's DeepMind Challenge and won 3 matches, losing only once. More such success is expected in their way, as they go deep into its mind.

Microsoft SQL server for Linux

Yes, you are reading the title right. Remember, Microsoft is no more the Steve Ballmer's Microsoft; It is now Satya Nadela that gives the direction for the company. They are probably doing this to compete with Oracle, IBM, SAP and increase its share on the database software market.

It's no surprise to get an early look at MS SQL Server on Linux but it does excite Linux software distributors like Ubuntu, Red Hat:

“We are delighted to be working with Microsoft as it brings SQL Server to Linux. Customers are already taking advantage of Azure Data Lake services on Ubuntu, and now developers will be able to build modern applications that utilize SQL Server's enterprise capabilities.”
- Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical.

“SQL Server's proven enterprise experience and capabilities offer a valuable asset to enterprise Linux customers around the world. We believe our customers will welcome this news and are happy to see Microsoft further increasing its investment in Linux. As we build upon our deep hybrid cloud partnership, spanning not only Linux, but also middleware, and PaaS, we're excited to now extend that collaboration to SQL Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, bringing enterprise customers increased database choice”
- Paul Cormier, Red Hat

C# for Native apps of iOS, Android, Mac and Windows

Last month, it was announced that Microsoft is acquiring Xamarin, making  development of multi-platform apps easier and affordable. The advantage of Xamarin is it allows the use one programming language - C# - for the entire code base to build native apps for iOS, Android, Mac and Windows platforms.

So far, Xamarin's pricing was an impediment to the growth of its user base. Post-acquisition, it is widely expected Microsoft will bring down the prices of Xamarin or even make it free and open source in an effort to popularize C# for mobile app development. This would be greatly appreciated by a huge number of app developers who are now maintaining separate code bases, one for each platform.