Microsoft hosted the India chapter of its //build/ Tour for over 600 developers as a follow-up to Build 2016. //build/ is the company’s annual conference focused on software and web developers using Windows, Windows Phone, Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft technologies. At the event Microsoft experts showcased its technology platforms for Indian Developers. On his recent India visit, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella was in Delhi where he urged Indian developers to use Microsoft platforms to innovate. He had said, “I want us to be the platform creators that foster the ingenuity of what is happening in India.”
Jeffrey Burtoft – Senior Program Manager (Developer Experience, Microsoft, U.S.) keynote speaker at the conference underlined the company’s efforts across its three bold ambitions to make Windows the most productive platform for developers. He talked about the new era of conversational intelligence and about creating more customized and user-friendly personal computing for every customer, industry and business. He also focused on Microsoft cloud services, developer tools and productivity extensions that aimed to better empower Indian developers to create cutting-edge applications.
Microsoft showcased the Bot Framework for developers to create machine learning bots and how developers can build and connect intelligent bots to interact with the users naturally wherever they are, from text/sms to Skype, Slack, Office 365 mail and other popular services.
Demos showcased Unix/Liunx tools and languages support for Windows, Bash running on Windows, Project Centennial and more.
As part of the new tools, Microsoft demonstrated Cognitive Services – a collection of intelligence APIs that allows systems to see, hear, speak, understand and interpret users’ needs using natural methods of communication. With Cognitive Services, developers will be able to easily add intelligent features – such as emotion and sentiment detection, vision and speech recognition, knowledge, search and language understanding – into their applications.
Microsoft also showcased how developers can now have the power to transcend a single device with Universal Windows Platform and how Universal Windows Platform coupled with Continuum can help realize the full potential of a phone. The top highlight included the demos on how XBOX now is a UWP device. With Microsoft taking Xbox One to Windows 10, any retail unit of it can be converted into a development kit. This is aimed at making it easier for hobbyist game developers to create something, which they can experience. On installing the dev mode, users just have to register their Xbox One as a development kit to achieve the same.
Microsoft also demonstrated the pen & touch capabilities, how easy it is to do so and how developers can leverage ink as a platform for creativity. This keynote also covered demos around Augmented Reality Universal Windows Platform and Windows Holographic illustrator.The developers can use the Universal Windows Platform to create new mixed reality with holograms.
The demos covered how legacy apps can now be placed as Universal Platform apps on Windows Store with the introduction of desktop app converter and how App based on Win32 and .NET can be converted to AppX app format.
