Fluent interfaces are software API's designed to be readable and to flow. They are like a miniature domain-specific language, code structured for one specific purpose. 

The Problem

What they neglect to say is all that testability and persistence ignorance flies right out the window when you create a new ASP.NET Web Application using the MVC template and "Individual User Accounts" authentication. What you get is a single-layered application, tightly coupled to Entity Framework, that:

• Ignores the patterns that facilitate testing, including: the repository pattern, unit of work pattern, and dependency injection;

• Forces you to implement their IUser interface in your application’s User entity, thereby coupling it to ASP.NET Identity;

• Eliminates any clear separation between your entities, persistence concerns, and business logic. Persistence ignorance? Forget about it.

Thankfully, due to the extensibility designed into ASP.NET Identity, it is possible to ditch the reference to the Microsoft.AspNet.Identity.EntityFramework assembly and write a custom implementation that can address these and other architectural issues. Just be forewarned: it is not a trivial undertaking, and you’ll have to put up with some code smell that is baked into the Microsoft.AspNet.Identity.Core assembly. 

Data binding is a powerful technique for developing UIs: It makes it easier to separate view logic from business logic, and easier to test the resulting code. 

The Star Rating Plugin is a plugin for the jQuery JavaScript library that creates a non-obstrusive star rating control based on a set of radio input boxes.

One of the more awesome things I like about being a .NET developer is LINQ. LINQ (Language Integrated Query) is a fluent query interface implemented in the .NET framework. It helps you query, sort and order any type of collection. This is a very neat way of querying arrays, lists, dictionaries, objects, etc. I’ve made 5 examples which run out of the box with Node.js (or io.js). You can also use the library for browser based JavaScript projects.

ServiceStack is an open source framework designed to be an alternative to the WCF, ASP.NET MVC, and ASP.NET Web API frameworks. 

These are the customer-reported issues addressed in 15.8.5:

• Debugger tooltip does not expand in Xamarin.iOS debugging session.
• Debugger won't let me leave execution point (Android).
• After updating to 15.8.1, data tip does not show when debugging.
• Debugger data tip does not expand [Editor].
• Exception:MSB0001: Internal MSBuild Error: Already registered for build-time.
• Wrong path to resource in manifest for ClickOnce after upgrading to VS 15.8.1.
• ClickOnce Manifest error in 15.8.
• ClickOnce Publish is missing certain references.
• ClickOnce: Language file copied to wrong location.
• Reference missing in the ClickOnce publish folder.
• Compiling non-.NET SDK style F# projects results in an internal MSBuild error unless MSBuild parallelism is set to 1.
• F# is not NGEN'd in Visual Studio.
• F# deploys the FSharp.Core 4.5.0.0 binary in the 4.4.3.0 location.

Details of What's New in 15.8.5

Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin

Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin now supports Xcode 10, which allows you to build and debug apps for iOS 12, tvOS 12, and watchOS 5. See how to get ready for iOS 12 and our introduction to iOS 12 for more details on the new features available. 

The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a chip that is either integrated into your PC’s motherboard or added separately into the CPU. Its purpose is to help protect encryption keys, user credentials, and other sensitive data behind a hardware barrier so that malware and attackers can’t access or tamper with that data. 

A powerful API to store and sync data in realtime.