In the February 2016 issue of MSDN Magazine, I showed how to create a custom scripting language based on the Split-And-Merge algorithm for parsing mathematical expressions in C# (msdn.com/magazine/mt632273). I called my language Customizable Scripting in C#, or CSCS. Recently, I published an E-book that provided more details about creating a custom language (bit.ly/2yijCod). Creating your own scripting language might not initially seem to be particularly useful, even though there are some interesting applications of it (for example, game cheating). I also found some applications in Unity programming.

This release contains the following improvements and enhancements:

• This release now installs Java™ Development Kit 8, Update 181 (JDK version 8u181). 

These are the customer-reported issues addressed in 15.7.6:

• Visual C++ Redistributable 2017 does not report the install state in a specific registry location.
• In 15.7 users may see extensions load without all of their assets and cause VS to crash. This has been addressed for 15.7.6.
• Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7.5 crashes when opening a solution. 

Angular 1.3 might be the best Angular yet, but there's still lots of high impact work to be done on the 1.x branch. We still have Material Design, our new router, and improved internationalization of Angular apps still to come ... 

The Angular 1.x project needs someone to be fully committed to keeping v1 moving forward, and supporting the Angular ecosystem that has grown around it.

That's why I'm delighted that Pete Bacon Darwin has agreed to take over the leadership role for Angular v1.  

But Pete can't do this alone. He needs Brian, Caitlin, and Chirayu to help make v1 even more awesome. Jeff will help out with google3 sync and releases, and familiar faces like Matias Niemela and Pawel Kozlowski (who co-wrote one of the first books on Angular with Pete) will be ongoing contributors. We're also looking forward to meeting new faces. Over time, some of these folks will shift their focus towards Angular 2, but for the immediate future, what's most important is that Angular 1.x is and continues to be well taken care of.  

Entity Framework Core (EF Core) is the latest version of Microsoft's recommended data access technology for applications based on the .NET Core framework. It has been designed to be lightweight, extensible and to support cross platform development. 

Some months ago a feature landed in Xamarin.Forms that seemed to truly polarize the Xamarin.Forms community: support for styling applications using CSS. Some argued that it was an unnecessary introduction to "Web" technology to the native development experience, and others that it simply isn't the right solution to the problem.  While I sympathize with the latter opinion and think there's plenty of room for some good debate on the right path forward, I count myself as part of a third camp: I think that CSS is a powerful (and frequently maligned) solution to the problem of styling native mobile applications.

We've got a few new goodies in this one, and I've made sure to put the most exciting ones at the top 🚀 

Microsoft has announced that the .NET Core 2.0 will be considered "end of life" and thus no longer supported as of October 1, 2018.  .NET Core 2.0 is considered a non-LTS release, and as such Microsoft only commits its support for three months after a successor has been released.  In this case, with .NET Core 2.1 having been released May 31, .NET Core 2.0’s end has come. 

TypeScript has a lot of value to offer making the switch highly attractive:

• More “future proof”
• Higher OSS adoption & better RN + library support
• Awesome developer experience (VSCode)
• Consistency with other department projects
• Easier to hire for 

jQuery has a new release! It’s been a while since our last release, but we expect this to be the last minor release in the 3.x branch, and then we will move on to the overhaul that will be jQuery 4.0. But before we get to 4.0, we’re excited to share the bug fixes and improvements included in jQuery 3.4.0 

From LGPL to Polyform Noncommercial

From version 5, we have changed the license from LGPL to Polyform Noncommercial 1.0.0 - a license that permits noncommercial use only. In combination with the Polyform Noncommercial license we sell licenses for customers who use EPPlus in a commercial business. Since EPPlus has been around for a while, you might wonder why we have decided to do this change.