Microsoft Visual Studio Team just opened sourced the C++ Standard Library (aka STL)

What is the C++ STL ?

The STL (Standard Template Library) was developed separately, and then submitted to the C++ standard committee for consideration, giving them the option of adopting it into the language. But it was not developed as part of the C++ standard, and for this reason, it is designed in a style that is very different from the rest of the C++ standard library. 

The STL at it's code provides the most fundamental functionality you expect of a standard library: The ability to store sequences of data, and the ability to process these sequences.

Every other language has a Collections/Containers part of its standard library, containing implementations of dynamic arrays (known as arraylists in Java, List in C#, and vectors in C++), linked lists, dictionaries and other common data structures.

They also typically provide some mechanims for traversing these structures. (Enumerators or iterators, for example)

The STL provides the same functionality in C++, but does it in a unusually elegant way, and with some interesting abstractions.

Press Release

Today (Sept 16, 2019) at CppCon 2019, we (the MSVC team) announced that we’re releasing our implementation of the C++ Standard Library (also known as the STL) as open source.

https://github.com/microsoft/STL is our new repository, containing all of our product source code, a new CMake build system, and a README with more information.

Sources: 

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/827236/what-is-the-stl
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/open-sourcing-msvcs-stl/

MakeCert.exe Error: CryptCertStrToNameW failed => 0x80092023 (-2146885597) fix

If you getting the following error using makecert.exe ? 

Error: CryptCertStrToNameW failed => 0x80092023 (-2146885597)

Make sure the default location for makecert.exe  c:\windows\System32 or your output directory does not contain the same .cer or .pvk file you are trying to generate. makecert.exe does not overwrite those files.

PowerToys for Windows 10 Released

Power Toys for Windows 10 is now available!

Power Toys was originally released for Windows 95 but is now being re-developed for Windows 10. 

https://insider.windows.com/en-us/articles/announcing-the-first-preview-and-code-release-of-powertoys/ provides information on the first two features included in Power Toys:  FancyZones and Shortcut Guide.

Another open source Microsoft Project at https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases
Also, hot of the press and just released Clipboard Plaintext PowerTool!