Chapter 8. Open Source Programming

In this chapter, we're going to review the current state of open source programming with Microsoft technologies and tools. This is something that has been referred to by many technology evangelists as the open source ecosystem.

In this chapter we will cover the following topics:

• We'll start with the initial movements in this area and explore how they have evolved over time, summarizing the most important initiatives that any developer can access at this moment.

• Later, we'll revise some of the most popular implementations, either on the side of tools (IDEs) or APIs and languages.

• We'll look at programming with open source solutions, such as Node.js, how it's is supported within Visual Studio and how easy it is to create a project that uses Node with this environment, as well as how other IDE choices are available, such as Visual Studio Code.

• Later, we'll go through perhaps the two most important and adopted open source initiatives in Microsoft: the Roslyn project...