Deeper Developer Experiences: Microsoft's Vision of the Developer Future

All of Microsoft’s Build 2024 announcements seemed to have the word Copilot in them. Copilot is a lot of different things depending on the context, what words are after it, maybe a few other conditions.

This isn't meant to be another Clippy; it’s Microsoft's play to dominate the future of AI development. Here's why.

Imagine This: You're building an app and need real-time transcription. Forget tedious API integrations; Copilot+ PC gives you access to over 40 pre-trained models, including powerful multimedia tools. Need video blur? Done. Sentiment analysis? Easy. It's like having a Swiss Army knife of AI capabilities built right into your Windows machine.

The Secret Sauce: Microsoft's leveraging the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to supercharge performance. Offloading tasks to the NPU means faster processing and smoother integration. This clearly gives Windows developers a significant edge.

Lock-in or Leg Up? The Developer Dilemma

With Copilot+ PC (is there any shorthand for this?) Microsoft is attempting to make Windows THE place to develop AI apps. It’ll allow you to have a RAG built into your app, just like you are using sqlite today! These are powerful but proprietary capabilities that the Microsoft vision holds.

Microsoft already owns VS Code and GitHub, cornerstones of the developer world. Copilot+ PC could be the third leg of the stool, creating an ecosystem so powerful that developers might choose Windows, not out of necessity, but for competitive advantage.

The promise of all this unification:

• Faster development cycles: Pre-trained models mean less time reinventing the wheel.
• Unique features: Proprietary access unlocks capabilities unavailable elsewhere.
• Seamless integration: Everything plays nicely within the Windows ecosystem

Will all these nudge you into developing more or exclusively on Windows? It bolsters so much of its existing developer ecosystem. With vscode and github - Microsoft already has so much developer mindshare. Microsoft would like Windows to be the 3rd leg that props up the default developer ecosystem.

So, that’s the vision - code in copilot with vscode, use Windows capabilities to enable integrated, unique, beautiful, proprietary features and upload them all to Github. Is it the future we want?

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