One rule to rule them all, one rule to find them, one rule to bring them all, and in the darkness, name them. 

Work in progress to add support for covariant return types to the .NET runtime. Soon we'll be able to override a virtual method returning `object` with a method returning `string`. Because of how array variance works, weird things might be possible in IL. 

class Base
{
    public virtual IntPtr[] Fun() => null;
}

// This is obvious pseude-code because C# won't let us introduce methods differing
// in return type. C# also requires to be explicit about "virtual" and "override".
// But IL... not so much.
class Derived : Base
{
    // overrides Base.Fun on 32bit platforms.
    public override uint[] Fun() => null;

    // overrides Base.Fun on 64bit platforms.
    public override ulong[] Fun() => null;
}

In an attempt to correct many perceived deficiencies in Entity Framework Core, Microsoft is introducing 40 breaking changes to EF Core 3. You can see the entire breaking changes list on Microsoft Docs, but here are some of the highlights. 

----SQL SERVER 2005 Method
USE AdventureWorks;
GO
SELECT ProductID
FROM Production.Product
EXCEPT
SELECT ProductID
FROM Production.WorkOrder;
GO

----SQL SERVER 2000 Method which works&nbspIN SQL SERVER 2005
USE AdventureWorks;
GO
SELECT ProductID
FROM Production.Product
WHERE ProductID
NOT IN (
SELECT ProductID
FROM Production.WorkOrder);
GO

• Custom tasks with default contextType via tasks.vs.json are broken in Open Folder.
• No snapshot created for C++ native code in Memory Usage tool in the Diagnostic Tools window while debugging.
• Crash in VS 16.1.0 when pressing the link "search online".
• Fixed the issue where sometimes certain features (i.e. Find All References) in LiveShare guest session do not work.
• Fixed an issue where the devenv.exe process could hang around after shutdown of Visual Studio for up to 30 seconds. 

You want your local web development set up to reflect your production reality as much as possible. URL parsing, routing, redirects, avoiding mixed-content warnings, etc. It's very easy to accidentally find oneself on http:// when everything in 2018 should be under https://.

I'm using ASP.NET Core 2.1 which makes local SSL super easy. After installing from http://dot.net I'll "dotnet new razor" in an empty folder to make a quick web app. 

public class UserFactory
{
    public User CreateUser(string email) {
        return new User(email);
    }
}

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Linq.Expressions;
using System.Reflection;

namespace ValueOf
{
    public class ValueOf<TValue, TThis> where TThis : ValueOf<TValue, TThis>, new()
    {
        private static readonly Func<TThis> Factory;

        /// <summary>
        /// WARNING - THIS FEATURE IS EXPERIMENTAL. I may change it to do
        /// validation in a different way.
        /// Right now, override this method, and throw any exceptions you need to.
        /// Access this.Value to check the value
        /// </summary>
        protected virtual void Validate()
        {
        }

        static ValueOf()
        {
            ConstructorInfo ctor = typeof(TThis)
                .GetTypeInfo()
                .DeclaredConstructors
                .First();

            var argsExp = new Expression[0];
            NewExpression newExp = Expression.New(ctor, argsExp);
            LambdaExpression lambda = Expression.Lambda(typeof(Func<TThis>), newExp);

            Factory = (Func<TThis>)lambda.Compile();
        }

        public TValue Value { get; protected set; }

        public static TThis From(TValue item)
        {
            TThis x = Factory();
            x.Value = item;
            x.Validate();

            return x;
        }

        protected virtual bool Equals(ValueOf<TValue, TThis> other)
        {
            return EqualityComparer<TValue>.Default.Equals(Value, other.Value);
        }

        public override bool Equals(object obj)
        {
            if (obj is null)
                return false;

            if (ReferenceEquals(this, obj))
                return true;

            return obj.GetType() == GetType() && Equals((ValueOf<TValue, TThis>)obj);
        }

        public override int GetHashCode()
        {
            return EqualityComparer<TValue>.Default.GetHashCode(Value);
        }

        public static bool operator ==(ValueOf<TValue, TThis> a, ValueOf<TValue, TThis> b)
        {
            if (a is null && b is null)
                return true;

            if (a is null || b is null)
                return false;

            return a.Equals(b);
        }

        public static bool operator !=(ValueOf<TValue, TThis> a, ValueOf<TValue, TThis> b)
        {
            return !(a == b);
        }

        public override string ToString()
        {
            return Value.ToString();
        }
    }
}

public class EmailAddress : ValueOf<string, EmailAddress> { }

EmailAddress emailAddress = EmailAddress.From("foo@bar.com");

public class Address : ValueOf<(string firstLine, string secondLine, Postcode postcode), Address> { }

At the time of writing this post, default ASP.NET Core SPA templates allow you to create Angular 5 based app with Visual Studio without installing any third-party extensions or templates. Angular 6 is out now and you can also upgrade the Angular 5 app to Angular 6 . What if you want to create Angular 6 app with VS 2017? This post talks about how to create an Angular 6 App with Visual Studio 2017 and how to extend it with a simple example.