Microsoft Delivers First Visual Studio "14" CTP

Microsoft on Tuesday delivered the first Community Technical Preview (CTP) release of Visual Studio "14," a prerelease peek at its next developer environment. The final version will be renamed and is expected in early 2015.

"Over the last 3 months, we've announced many exciting technologies that will be important parts of Visual Studio '14'—including the 'Roslyn' .NET compiler platform, ASP.NET vNext and Apache Cordova tooling. The Visual Studio '14' CTP 1 includes these tools, as well as many additional improvements across Visual Studio, including an early look at some new C++ 11 support that will be part of Visual Studio '14'."

Here's what's new in Visual Studio "14" CTP:

"Roslyn" .NET compiler. In Visual Studio "14", the C# and VB compilers and IDE are built on the open source .NET Compiler Platform that was codenamed "Roslyn."

New C# features. The Visual Studio "14" CTP includes new and improved language and IDE features for C# such as a revamped refactoring experience (including new refactorings).

New Visual Basic features. The Visual Studio "14" CTP includes new and improved language and IDE features for Visual Basic such as multiline strings and a full-fledged refactoring experience.

ASP.NET vNext features. The Visual Studio "14" CTP offers an early look at the Visual Studio tooling experience for ASP.NET vNext, the ASP.NET 4.5 Web Application templates and new templates for targeting ASP.NET vNext, and support for .NET Native for Windows Store apps, the next generation JIT, and the Roslyn compilers.

C++ 11/14 features. The Visual Studio "14" CTP includes support for user-defined literals, noexcept, alignof and alignas, and inheriting constructors from C++11, generalized lambda capture, auto function return type deduction, and generic lambdas from C++14, as well as many more new C++ features, new features for debugging, libraries and IDE productivity, and performance improvements.

You can download the Visual Studio 14 CTP from the Microsoft web site. A few caveats: CTPs are provided for testing and feedback purposes only. CTPs are unsupported, English-only releases. They are not subject to final validation and are not intended for use on production computers, or to create production code. Buyer beware.