I have attended live the sessions described below on day 2 at the Build conference and these are my notes from these sessions. Some parts might not be easily readable or understandable (even for me )  because the sessions were fast-paced and I tried to write down everything which seemed important to me. Nevertheless I hope that this brief summary is helpful to some of you.

The Present and Future of .NET in a World of Devices and Services

• Present
• 1.8 million .Net installations
• 6 million .Net developers
• Present and future goals
• .Net Innovation
• Flexibility and agility (Nuget)
• Openness (OSS)
• .Net Runtime
• New .Net JIT compiler
• “RyuJIT” preview
• SIMD
• New .Net compiler: “Roslyn” for C# and Visual Basic
• Public preview
• Open source
• Styling Code extension with code fix suggestion
• Reference Source: navigate in the .Net framework source code inside the browser
• .Net Foundation: OSS around .Net
• .Net in the cloud
• “Orleans” preview
• e.g. Halo
• Large scale services
• State management
• .Net in Windows Store devices
• Universal Windows apps shared across Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1
• .Net Native
• Native code compilation
• Running on C++ compiler
• C# => IL => C++
• Preview available as Visual Studio 2013 add-in
• Currently only for store apps, x64 and ARM
• Web API: Azure Mobile Service project template
• e.g. Twilio

DirectX Graphics Development with Visual Studio 2013

• Why DirectX?
• Gaming
• 3D rendering
• Built with DirectX: Halo: Spartan Assault, Bing Maps, Fresh Paint (XAML controls, DX rendering), Project Spark
• Tools in Visual Studio 2013
• Project template, Item template, 3D Starter Kit, DX Toolkit
• Visual Studio 2013 Update 2
• Graphics Assets Authoring: Image Editor, Model Editor, Shader Designer
• Graphics Diagnostics: Graphics Debugger, Graphics Profiler (Graphics Frame Analysis)
• How to build DirectX app for Windows and Windows Phone
• From scratch:
• C++ Store Apps
• DirectX
• DirectX and XAML
• Default solution contains Windows, Windows Phone and Shared projects
• Sample project Cube has 100% sharable code
• Existing app:
• Make it universal
• Universal project contains shared code
• Platform-specific code with conditional code:
• #if WINAPI_FAMILY != WINAPIFAMILY_PHONE_APP … #endif
• Graphics Diagnostics
• Visual Studio 2013 RTM
• Remote debugging
• Computer shader debugging (available in Visual Studio Express)
• Visual Studio 2013 Update 2
• Consecutive capture
• Programmatic
• Enhanced event list
• Debug Windows Phone
• Render issues
• Debug => Graphics => Start Diagnostics (Alt+F5)
• Starts app with Graphics Diagnostics attached
• Capture frame: Frame to capture dropdown for consecutive frame capture, up to 30 frames
• How to analyze frames
• Look at Graphic Event Call Stack List tree view
• Click on a pixel in Render Target window
• Check triangles, colors
• Graphics Pipeline Stages
• Debug Pixel Shader
• Debug in emulator and device
• Average frame rate
• Notebook: 60 FPS
• Surface: 30 FPS
• Windows Phone: 15 FPS
• Performance problem when targeting low-end devices
• Use Profiler
• Capture everything
• Use Frame Analysis
• Run it on the device, collect hardware performance counter
• Requires Windows Phone 8.1 for it to work (driver)
• Check most expensive events
• Visual Studio 3D Starter Kit
• DirectX Toolkit: utility library

Go Mobile with C# and Xamarin

• HTML for mobile apps is a terrible experience, constrained in features
• Go fully native to take advantage of the platform instead of only a subset of features
• Sensors, API
• Create great user experience without limitations
• C# runs on 2.6 millions of devices
• Use async/await for great user experience
• Reach every device that matters with C#
• Architecting mobile apps
• SILO approach
• Build apps multiple times, one each for iOS, Android, Windows
• Maintain 3 teams, 3 tools, several releases over multiple platforms
• Write once, run anywhere approach
• NO!
• Xamarin approach
• Native with code sharing across iOS, Android and Windows
• Learn the new APIs and start using it!
• Windows APIs
• iOS APIs => strongly typed
• Android APIs
• Cannot JIT compile
• How it works?
• C# + .Net RT
• Native UI
• Native Performance
• MonoTouch => iOS API
• .Twitter
• .CoreImage: image filter on GPU
• C# shines over Objective C
• Objective C => dictionary => maybe it won’t work
• C# strongly typed => compiler, Intellisense
• Xamarin project templates in Visual Studio
• Strategies to share code over multiple platforms
• BL
• Universal apps
• Shared
• MVVM
• Universal apps: reference in iOS and Android projects
• Portable class library
• Pure PCL
• Advanced PCL
• Reference assembly
• Specific implementation for all platforms
• Public contract
• Nuget
• New PCL project targets
• Profile 78 (Microsoft)
• No Silverlight 5
• MailKit/MimeKit: best on the market
• Run a C# app, get a C# shirt for free!
• Component Store for 3rd party
• e.g. Glass Development Kit for Google Glass
• Xamarin Studio for development
• Android form factor
• Disaster or opportunity?
• Xamarin test cloud
• Ruby test
• Runs on 750 devices, 250 coming

The Next Generation of .NET for Building Applications

• .Net 4.5.1 installed on 500+ millions of PCs
• .Net Native announced
• Offers performance of C++ with productivity of C#
• Huge gain in performance for app startup and memory usage
• Developer preview available today
• New runtime
• Lean and refactored
• Compiler powered by same optimizing compiler backend as VS C++
• V1 targeted at Store apps
• Available for x64, ARM (x86 coming)
• Examples: Wordament, Fresh Paint, Animal Planet, Discovery Channel
• Visual Studio experience
• Right click on the project => Enable for .Net Native
• Project Properties => Build => Select Compile with .Net Native tool chain
• At compile time: remove unused dependencies => IL => C++ => optimize => generate native machine code
• Debug just like the C# code
• Compiler in C++
• Using optimized C++ backend
• Vectorize and parallelize the app/code on one or more cores automatically
• .Net Native on MSDN with FAQ and forum
• Visual studio 2013 Update 2 RC required
• New JIT compiler announced “RyuJIT” written from scratch for WPF and web apps
• Dramatic performance improvements by just using RyuJIT, no code change needed
• Available for x64 (more coming)
• Innovation platform for optimizations
• SIMD: Single Instruction Multiple Data
• Enables data parallelization
• Great for calculations
• Same instruction works on multiple data
• Faster code execution
• Mandelbrot problem FlyThru sample
• SISD: Single Instruction Single Data
• Bad user experience for complex computations
• From 26 seconds down to 5 seconds
• Scalar => 4x scale SIMD (SSE2) => 8x scale SIMD (AVX)
• SIMD usage:
• From float[] to Vector<float>
• SIMD CTP available, part of RyuJIT CTP 3
• Current CTP includes support for SSE, support for AVS coming soon
• Nuget package: Microsoft.Bcl.Simd
• Includes vector APIs
• Leverage same skillset for all platforms
• Nuget packages cross-platform by default
• “One Class Library”
• Universal projects
• Select one or more targets in Properties => Library => Targets
• PCLs
• Now available in Visual Studio 2013 Express for free
• Cross-platform
• Partnership with Xamarin
• Microsoft on Nuget
• 926 packages
• 59 million downloads
• .Net Foundation
• Source Code as Documentation
• Different approach to documentation
• Openness
• Feedback-driven
• User Voice
• Bug reports

You can find also lots of pictures from the conference and also some of the most important slides here on OneDrive.

Session recap for day 3 coming soon…

Useful links

• Official Build website
• Session recordings on-demand