iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by David Kean

Aaron Powell (@slace) @aaron-powell.com · 03/09/2026

Are you a @visualstudio.com user? Did you know you can review PRs from within VS, no need to context switch between the codebase and the browser. Check out how - devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio...

devblogs.microsoft.com

Today I will... review GitHub PRs - Visual Studio Blog

Discover tips for managing GitHub PRs efficiently. Streamline your development process using Visual Studio's tools.

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Reposted by David Kean

Visual Studio @visualstudio.com · 22/12/2025

On today's #VSToolbox replay episode, we get a behind the scenes look at how performance is measured and what improvements were made in #VisualStudio 2026. Drop in, msft.it/63329tmThT

spot art.
Photo of presenter(s).
text reads: Performance Improvements in Visual Studio 2026

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Reposted by David Kean

Gus Perez @gusperez.com · 10/12/2025

Great behind the scenes walkthrough by @keansbox.com on how the VS team keeps grinding on improving performance in Visual Studio. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNT-...

youtube.com

Performance Improvements in Visual Studio 2026

YouTube video by Microsoft Visual Studio

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Reposted by David Kean

Jon Sagara @jonsagara.com · 01/10/2025

Been using it since it was released. Rock solid and performance is great. It’s my new daily driver.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 01/10/2025

Visual Studio 2026 represents about a year's worth of work across the Visual Studio team. If you haven't tried it, head over to visualstudio.microsoft.com/insiders/ to download it - it will install alongside Visual Studio 2022 so you can continue to use both if you like.

visualstudio.microsoft.com

Visual Studio 2026 Insiders - Faster, smarter IDE

Try Visual Studio 2026 Insiders with Copilot AI deeply integrated, faster performance across C# and C++, and a refreshed, modern UI.

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Reposted by David Kean

ardalis (Steve Smith) @ardalis.com · 11/09/2025

The startup time on the new Visual Studio 2026 preview is really impressive. Even for a very large 100+ project solution, it opens in just a few seconds.

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Reposted by David Kean

DJ @djisfurious.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

Gotta say that in other news - I’m really enjoying the new #vs2026 insiders version. Not one crash and now it’s my primary IDE . Seems snappier and cleaner. Great job #VisualStudio team. And shout out to #SSMS team! V21 is breath of fresh air.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 09/09/2025

Welcome to Visual Studio 2026 Insiders: devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio... I haven't posted much for a while as I've been heads down working with the Visual Studio team to deliver all the performance and other goodness in this one.

devblogs.microsoft.com

Visual Studio 2026 Insiders is here! - Visual Studio Blog

Visual Studio 2026 Insiders is here – and it marks one of the most ambitious steps forward we’ve taken with the IDE. This release brings AI woven directly into the developer workflow, performance impr...

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 03/08/2025

. @vscode.dev What happened here, I find it super hard to find the commands I actually want to click on this. 5 ways to split, probably unneeded?

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 19/04/2025

One time during .NET Core early days, we were having a remote meeting with Fowler and another colleague of his. This was in the days when video meetings were a bit unusual. His colleague completely forgot he was on video and had a reaction like this to something I said.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 28/03/2025

@ticketmaster.com Your forced password reset as I logged in tonight blocked me from buying tickets on my android as i couldn't come up with a 12 digit password on the fly and put this in the "too hard basket"

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 11/03/2025

Did a thing over the weekend, surrounded by friends and family.

Just married couple, with husband's back facing the camera, looking sideways towards his bride. The bride facing sideways, looking over her shoulder towards the camera.

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Reposted by David Kean

Kirill Osenkov @kirillosenkov.com · 29/12/2024

Finally had time over the holidays to realize a long-standing dream of mine: a hex editor that knows about the PE file and .NET metadata format. You can click any byte and it will show you which data structure it is in the tree. Every byte is covered. The parser is at github.com/KirillOsenko...

Screenshot of a hex editor with a PE file open, on the left there's a tree with the headers, sections and other parts of the file format. On the right there's a typical table of bytes in hex.

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Reposted by David Kean

David Wengier @david.wengier.com · 29/12/2024

In case you didn't know Visual Studio could do this: #dotnet #csharp

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Reposted by David Kean

Tom Warren @tomwarren.co.uk · 27/12/2024

Microsoft is actually going ahead with its Microsoft 365 app logo change 🥲

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 23/12/2024

If you ever hit this sort of thing, just throw in a en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-wi... and no one will ever know.

A text box with the error next to it saying "Parameter display name already exists"

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 20/12/2024

Spent an hour arguing with chatty about aligning some plotly graphs, and I'm no closer to aligning them. AMA.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 15/12/2024

On the hottest day of the year and power's gone off. Not a great start!

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 13/12/2024

Is it me or has Google stopped handling stock quotes?

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 12/12/2024

I'm throwing a party and trying to figure out cocktails. Let's say I can only make 4. What should i be making to cover all bases?

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Reposted by David Kean

Kirill Osenkov @kirillosenkov.com · 11/12/2024

Did you know that you can define a DebuggerDisplayAttribute for a type from another assembly? Just add an assembly-level attribute to your code and specify the Target type: [assembly: DebuggerDisplay(@"\{Color = {Color}}", Target = typeof(Pen))]

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 10/12/2024

We added a feature to Visual Studio to automatically detect when it uses an unusual amount of CPU. After 20 mins of continuous CPU across all threads combined (and the machine has been sampled), we capture a short trace.

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Reposted by David Kean

Kirill Osenkov @kirillosenkov.com · 04/12/2024

When @nickcraver.com joined Microsoft I was curious what he will naturally gravitate towards after he looks around. Nick looked around and decided to fix builds! When @nguerrera.dev joined Microsoft, I already knew what he will deem to be most impactful task for starters: fixing builds!

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 04/12/2024

I spend my day breaking builds, so thankful that these folks are there to pick up the pieces, including @kirillosenkov.com himself who has written the best tool to diagnose them msbuildlog.com!

msbuildlog.com

MSBuild Log Viewer

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 03/12/2024

If there just one one skill or attribute that I think early in career folks should focus on, it would be, "be curious". This isn't "questioning every decision"-curious, but the "I wonder why it works this way, let me figure that out"-curious.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 02/12/2024

Sick burn @blueskyroast.bsky.social, I think I'm going to put this on my profile page.

Screenshot from blue sky roast "David's posts are like the Visual Studio startup: you love the journey but sometimes wish it would just open already!"

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 02/12/2024

As part of planning what to work on next in the performance space for Visual Studio, we've been thinking a lot about "perceived" performance. Perceived performance is the time users "think" an operation takes, rather than the actual time it takes. 🧵

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 29/11/2024

Sorry folks if you followed me in that other place and this a repeat but I can't bear to link to that place, and need a new version of this rant so that I can point to it. Asynchronous/Overlapped I/O will never be faster than synchronous reads. learn.microsoft.com/en-us/window... 🧵

learn.microsoft.com

Synchronous and Asynchronous I/O - Win32 apps

There are two types of input/output (I/O) synchronization: synchronous I/O and asynchronous I/O. Asynchronous I/O is also referred to as overlapped I/O.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 28/11/2024

Scaling is definitely going to be based on the workload you have, but it helps when the framework you build on top of gets out of the way of that.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 28/11/2024

Ima going to take a wild guess that folks that work on Google Wallet have not lived in Australia. It is faster and easier for me to swipe a physical credit card to buy a coffee in Oz than it is to use my $2000 phone due to the forced biometric. How did we end up here?

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Reposted by David Kean

Mark Downie @poppastring.com · 27/11/2024

A post from the archive 📫: Find the address of an object in Visual Studio www.poppastring.com/blog/find-the-a… #debugging #visualstudio #diagnostics

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 27/11/2024

My HP printer has been "running out of ink" for the past three years, AMA.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 27/11/2024

So weird, that same sentiment is also being thrown around by our Aussie contingent in Australia, and we don't celebrate it.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 27/11/2024

But you can take credit for those awesome .NET posters, right?

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 27/11/2024

I'm assuming its machine-wide resource that's being blocked. 1) Use PerfView to collect, but check Thread Time (uncheck zip/merge). Leave everything else to default. 2) Record freeze, as short as possible will be easier.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 26/11/2024

Heard a version of this in a meeting once from a CLR director; "this is a solution in search of a problem."

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 26/11/2024

Lists for blocking/muting are interesting, but I do wonder if they are ripe for exploitation? Provide a pretty useful list, wait for good penetration across Bluesky and then ask content providers to pony up money to avoid being added to list?

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 26/11/2024

This is interesting and can't believe I missed this. A project by @xoofx.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy. Super interested in the CPU usage visualization, and the automatic JIT, GC, kernel buckets, something I manually calculate today. Looks like a great companion next to PerfView.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 26/11/2024

That Gen2 callback is super clever and I haven't seen it before. Basically, when low on physical memory (< 10% free) during or around about the same time as that induced low memory Gen2 (github.com/Maoni0/mem-d...), ArrayPool makes its pooled arrays eligible for collection. 🧵

github.com

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 26/11/2024

I've seen AI summary useful in few things: 1) Forum-like experiences where there's lots of comments from folks, and you just want to get to the bottom of the "real" issue(s) and conclusion 2) Chats (think Slack) where you want to catch up on what is being discussed. 3) Meetings

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 26/11/2024

Them: Use memory-safe languages, you'll be free from a certain class of bugs. My JavaScript website running in Chrome:

Chrome showing a HRESULT about an access violation, something typically only seen in native languages.

This is very likely caused by Chrome itself (or something native its talking in the OS), and not the web site, but was an amusing enounter.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 25/11/2024

Good read of @ericlaw.bsky.social's mistakes building Fiddler as a side-project while working at Microsoft. Super tempted to deep dive into that Thread Pool problem he hints at towards the start, something Visual Studio itself thinks about a lot! textslashplain.com/2024/11/24/f...

textslashplain.com

Fiddler – My Mistakes

On a flight back from Redmond last week, I finally read Linus Torvalds’ 2002 memoir “Just For Fun.” I really enjoyed its picture of Linux (and Torvalds) early in its success, with…

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 25/11/2024

Extensions inherit the "targeting complexity" of their host. This is super difficult to talk about these things from a Microsoft perspective because most users/customers don't need to deal with this, and the ramifications of what happens when we try to change this.

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Reposted by David Kean

Jimmy Engström @engstromjimmy.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

I just found a cool feature in Visual Studio. I can grab a project and drag it to the other project to add a reference to that project. I had no idea. I thought it would be a nice experience if this worked... and it was 😍

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 24/11/2024

These black Friday deals are amazing, anyone want me to them up a bottle (or two) at LAX duty-free?

$65,500 bottle of whiskey reduced to $52,000.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 23/11/2024

On my last night in here, I got to hang out with some good friends, including my old work wife @terrajobst.net. Adiós Seattle, it was fun.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 23/11/2024

Woke up to a scurry of emails telling me my flight was cancelled and, then, a scurry of emails that it was rebooked for a later time. I'm super glad that was sorted while I was asleep.

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David Kean @keansbox.com · 23/11/2024

I miss good coffee, but I completely forgot the US sells alcohol in a pharmacy, and I'm here for it!

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