dotInsights | July 2026

Matt Ellis

Did you know? The using keyword has two completely different meanings. You can use it to import classes from different namespaces at the top of a file, or to ensure deterministic cleanup in a method body. It’s not the only keyword that has multiple meanings. See how many you can think of.

Welcome to dotInsights by JetBrains! This newsletter is the home for recent .NET and software development related information.

🔗 Links

Here’s the latest from the developer community.

1. The new Visual Studio Solution File Format: Goodbye .SLN, Welcome .SLNX! – Thomas Claudius Huber
2. Epic Games Announces Lore Open-Source Version Control System – Phoronix – Michael Larabel
3. New features and Roslyn analyzers for Meziantou.Framework.FullPath – Gérald Barré
4. Discriminated unions in C# and .NET 11 (for real this time) – Maarten Balliauw
5. C#10 The field keyword – DEV Community – Karen Payne
6. Introducing the Field Guide to Grid Lanes | WebKit – Jen Simmons
7. AI Agentic Harness Demystified – Sam Basu
8. Introducing the State of AI Coding 2026 – Jim Young
9. What If The Real Key To AI Coding Is Old-Fashioned & Boring? – Jason Gorman
10. Safely injecting a JSON configuration object into a Razor Page – Bart Wullems
11. Building Dapr Workflows in .NET With Aspire – Milan Jovanović
12. Your API is Already an MCP Server – ShiftMag – Marin Pavelić
13. Why Isn’t My 3D View Transition Working? | CSS-Tricks – Sunkanmi Fafowora
14. Your Diverse API Toolbox – Kin Lane
15. How can I schedule work on a thread pool with low latency? – Raymond Chen
16. A message queue bought us time – Daniel Marbach
17. .NET CLI tools in the AI fury or how to guide agents during production investigations – Christophe Nasarre
18. Implement the Device Authorization Flow in a C# Console App – Andrea Chiarelli
19. Simplifying file logging in ASP.NET Core with Serilog – Ali Hamza Ansari
20. How Duende IdentityServer Filters Claims (And Why It Matters) – Khalid Abuhakmeh and Maarten Balliauw
21. Ship your C# MCP Server as a one-click bundle with MCPB – Bart Wullems
22. Implementing a custom GitHub token broker – Martin Costello
23. Turn messy production code into a useful benchmark – Daniel Marbach
24. What are git worktrees, and why should I use them? – The GitHub Blog – Cassidy Williams
25. Compile-time feature flags in C# using IL weaving and a Roslyn analyzer – Scott
26. Improving C# Safety Without Turning It Into Rust – Mike James
27. BulkMerge (Upsert) in EF Core: How to Insert-or-Update Without the Headache – Chris Woodruff
28. .NET 11 Preview 5: Brings File-Based App Improvements, New C# Features, and a Blazor Validation Wave – InfoQ – Almir Vuk
29. EF Core vs Dapper in .NET: When to Use Each – Nick Cosentino
30. Announcing SkiaSharp 4.0 – Sam Basu
31. Microsoft denies WSL 3 exists, reveals Windows 11’s WSL Containers ship next week – Abhijith M B
32. .NET 5 to 10: Key Features Introduced in Every Release – Funky Si’s Blog – Simon Foster

☕ Coffee Break

Take a break with something a little more fun.

Strongly typed generic object in C# – Jiří Činčura

Parsing JSON at compile time with C++26 static reflection – Daniel Lemire. Yes, C++ can be fun. How dare you.

The History of Kodee, Kotlin’s Mascot – The JetBrains Blog – Olga Vorobeva, Nadia Lokot

🗞️ JetBrains News

What’s going on at JetBrains? Check it out here:

• Rider 2026.2 is getting very close to release, and there’s plenty to talk about in this release. EAP 6 brought cleaner async call stacks in the debugger, EAP 8 introduced a new AI agent skill for analysing your dotTrace snapshots, and Unreal Engine game developers get support for natvis in the Mac and Linux debugger, to mention just a couple.
• GitHub Copilot is now directly integrated with the AI Assistant chat experience. No JetBrains AI subscription is required – if you’ve already got a subscription, you can use it here!
• JetBrains’ own agent Junie has recently come out of beta and was ranked as the number one agent in the independent SWE-Rebench benchmark.
• The TeamCity team have shared a vision of what’s next for CI/CD with TeamCity.
• And finally, does speaking like a caveman really give you a 65% reduction in token usage? 🤔#QTWTAIN 

✉️ Comments? Questions? Send us an email.