Steve Dower

Software Engineer, Python

Steve is an engineer who tells people about Python and then gives them excuses to use it and great tools to use it with. He is a core contributor and Windows expert for CPython, and works at Microsoft making sure Python developers are well supported across Windows, Azure, and other Microsoft platforms.

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Python tools in your language

This week we've released a preview of the next update to Visual Studio. It has all of the improvements that were released recently in VS 2017 Update 1, and also the earliest previews of VS 2017 Update 2. For Python support, probably our most significant update is that we are now available in all fourteen languages that Visual Studio ships ...

Interactive Windows in VS 2017

Last week we announced that the Python development workload is available now in Visual Studio Preview, and briefly covered some of the new improvements in Visual Studio 2017. In this post, we are going to go into more depth on the improvements for the Python Interactive Window. These are currently available in Visual Studio Preview, and ...

Released: Python support in Visual Studio 2017

Today is launch day for Visual Studio 2017, and you can see all the info and join the live event at launch.visualstudio.com. But over in this corner of our world, we are announcing something special. As you likely know, once software is officially released, it normally gets less frequent updates. For those of us who love getting new toys, ...

Python support in Visual Studio 2017

[Updated 7 March 2015] We have now released the preview version of Visual Studio 2017 referred to in this post. Please see our release blog post for more information. Over the last few months, Visual Studio 2017 has been in preview and many of you have been trying it out and providing feedback. We are very appreciative of everyone who has ...

Publish to Azure in Visual Studio 2017

This week, those of you using Visual Studio 2017 RC will be getting an update notification. This is a refresh of RC, with a whole lot of improvements and fixes (based on your feedback), and a selection of features that didn't quite make the initial RC release. For Python support, we've largely focused on bugfixes. There were 34 bugs resolved ...

Python in Visual Studio “15” Preview 5

Last week, Visual Studio "15" Preview 5 was made available for download. This release has a number of exciting changes and improvements for Python developers that we are going to be covering over the next few weeks. Today's post will look at the new install experience, covering the improvements and the new options to be aware of. When you ...

Upgrading Python on Azure App Service

App Service is Microsoft Azure's platform-as-a-service offering for web apps, whether they are sites accessed through a browser, REST APIs used by your own clients, or event-triggered processing. Many of you are already using Python to implement your apps on App Service (and rightly so!). When we first enabled Python on App Service we wanted ...

Python and Django on Nano Server

This post is contributed by Refaat Issa from the Nano Server team, and was originally posted on their blog. Nano Server has also blogged about their support for MySQL and Node.js. One of Nano Server’s core scenarios is to serve as a lightweight OS for born-in-the-cloud applications running in a VM or a container. Nano Server already ...

Microsoft at PyCon US 2016

This coming weekend is the start of PyCon US 2016 in Portland, USA. And as usual, we've sponsored the conference and will be bringing some of our engineering team. Here's where you'll be able to find us: Booth For many people, the main attraction is the Expo Hall. Here most of the sponsoring organizations will have booths set up to tell you ...

Using CPython’s Embeddable Zip File

On the download page for CPython 3.5.1, you'll see a wide range of options. Not all of these are well explained, especially for Windows users who have seven (seven!) choices. (image) Let me restructure the Windows items into a more feature-focused table: As is fairly common with installers these days, you have the choice to download ...