Best of Microsoft — January 2026

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    Article
    Avatar of infoworldInfoWorld·19w

    Why ‘boring’ VS Code keeps winning

    VS Code maintains 76% market share among professional developers in 2025, even as AI-first editors like Cursor and Google's Antigravity emerge. Microsoft's dominance stems from ecosystem lock-in, with many new tools forking VS Code's codebase rather than replacing it. GitHub Copilot reached 20 million users, benefiting from distribution through existing workflows. However, trust issues emerged in 2025 around forced AI adoption, API deprecations, and security vulnerabilities. Google's Antigravity shows promise but faces skepticism due to Google's history of discontinuing products. The competitive advantage lies not in features but in providing stable, integrated developer experiences that enterprises can rely on long-term.

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    Article
    Avatar of wincmdWindows Command Line·18w

    PowerToys 0.97 is here: a big Command Palette update and a new mouse utility

    PowerToys 0.97 introduces major Command Palette improvements including UI customization with background images and color tinting, fallback ranking for search results, and a built-in extension to control PowerToys features directly. A new CursorWrap utility enables cursor wrapping across monitor edges for multi-monitor setups. CLI support expands to FancyZones, Image Resizer, and File Locksmith. Additional updates include faster Quick Access flyout, Light Switch integration with Night Light, and Advanced Paste enhancements with HEX color preview and image input support.

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    Article
    Avatar of sdtimesSD Times·20w

    XAML Studio is now open source

    Microsoft has open sourced XAML Studio, a developer tool for rapidly prototyping UWP XAML interfaces. The tool offers live editing, binding debugger, IntelliSense, and other development features. Originally created in 2017 as XamlPad+ during a hackathon, it last had a public release in 2019. The project now exists under the .NET Foundation as a seed project, with version 2 in development focusing on back-end improvements and WinUI 3 support rather than major new tooling features.

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    Video
    Avatar of primeagenThePrimeTime·19w

    "please stop calling us slop" - Microslop

    AI tools are being oversold with unrealistic expectations that don't match reality. Microsoft's CEO asked people to stop calling AI output "slop," but the term exists because many AI experiences are half-working and frustrating. A viral tweet claiming Claude recreated a year's work in an hour was later revealed to be misleading—it only produced a toy version using pre-researched ideas. The gap between AI hype and actual developer experience creates disappointment, with real usage often involving bugs, high costs, and mixed results rather than the revolutionary productivity gains being marketed.

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    Article
    Avatar of 80lv80 LEVEL·18w

    Call of Duty Sales Down 60%, Former Activision CEO Says

    Former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick claims Call of Duty sales have dropped over 60% year-over-year, citing intense competition from titles like Battlefield. He defends the $69 billion Microsoft acquisition, arguing that investors should be grateful given the franchise's declining performance and all-time low console sales. While Kotick's claims lack official confirmation from Activision, they align with previous reports of $300 million in lost potential sales due to Xbox Game Pass availability and Black Ops 7's poor Steam performance.

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    Article
    Avatar of newstackThe New Stack·20w

    Linus Torvalds Gets Candid About Windows, Workflows, and AI

    Linus Torvalds discusses his low-stress workflow managing Linux development, crediting a predictable 20-year-evolved process built around Git and consistent release schedules. He shares his friendly view of Microsoft's shift to cloud services running Linux, expresses confidence in Linux's thousand-person development community, and addresses AI's role in programming. While acknowledging AI as both a bubble and transformative tool, he believes it will enhance productivity rather than replace programmers, with AI-assisted code reviews expected to integrate into Linux kernel development soon. He maintains compilers remain the biggest historical productivity gain in programming.

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    Article
    Avatar of windowsWindows Blogs·18w

    Notepad and Paint updates begin rolling out to Windows Insiders

    Windows Insiders in Canary and Dev Channels can now access updated versions of Notepad and Paint. Notepad adds expanded Markdown support (strikethrough, nested lists), a welcome dialog for feature discovery, and streaming AI text generation for Write, Rewrite, and Summarize features. Paint introduces an AI-powered Coloring book feature (Copilot+ PCs only) that generates coloring pages from text prompts, plus a fill tolerance slider for more precise color application control.

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    Article
    Avatar of infoqInfoQ·19w

    Microsoft Share Update on TypeScript 7

    TypeScript 7 (Project Corsa) features a complete compiler rewrite in Go, delivering up to 10x faster build times and reduced memory usage. The new native compiler, tsgo, leverages Go's performance for efficient parallel processing. Strict mode is now enabled by default, representing a breaking change that enhances type safety. The preview is available via npm. While developers celebrate the performance gains, some express concerns about migration paths for tools depending on the TypeScript compiler API. This move aligns TypeScript with other high-performance native tooling like esbuild and SWC.

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    Article
    Avatar of dotnet.NET Blog·19w

    .NET and .NET Framework January 2026 servicing releases updates

    .NET 10.0.2, 9.0.12, and 8.0.23 servicing releases are now available as of January 9, 2026, containing non-security fixes across Runtime, ASP.NET Core, SDK, WinForms, WPF, and Entity Framework Core. No new updates are available for .NET Framework this month. Detailed changelogs are available on GitHub for each component and version.

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    Video
    Avatar of primeagenThePrimeTime·20w

    Eliminate them all

    A Microsoft distinguished engineer posted on LinkedIn about eliminating all C/C++ code from Microsoft by 2030, claiming one engineer could rewrite 1 million lines per month using AI and algorithms. The post sparked controversy when he later clarified Windows wasn't included in this plan, despite the original statement saying 'every line.' The commentary criticizes the feasibility of such rapid rewrites, noting C++ and Rust solve problems differently, and questions Microsoft's ability to maintain Windows stability given recent update issues.

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