| Song Details | Music Details | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Line/Song Title | Tune Name or Composer/Meter | Lyrics/PDF Score/Site Links | More detail | Style (Player Link) | Verses/Key | 'Lo Fi' Snippet |
Other Files | Full MP3 | |
| God of mercy and compassion | Au Sang Qu Hymn Code: 176133217176176 |
PDF Score Hymnary.org |
|
Organ (CM) |
4/Em | 193.3kb |
|
2.7mb | |
| Small Band (CM) |
4/Em | 491kb |
|
2.4mb | |||||
| Piano & Instrumental (CM) |
4/Em Chord Sheet |
485.9kb |
|
2.6mb | |||||
With the release of Visual Studio 2017 and 2019, Microsoft shifted the focus of extensibility. The modern "Visual Studio Tools for Applications" (often associated with the VS 2019 isolated shell) began to pivot heavily toward C#. In many modern implementations of VSTA (and its successor technologies), VB.NET is either deprecated or discouraged, reflecting the broader industry trend where C# has become the dominant .NET language.
In the ecosystem of enterprise software development, the ability for end-users to write custom code within a host application is a critical feature. This capability, known as extensibility or scripting, bridges the gap between out-of-the-box functionality and specific business logic. For years, Microsoft provided a robust solution for this through Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA). The 2015 version, specifically "Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Applications 2015," represents a significant milestone in this lineage. It served as a bridge between the legacy .NET Framework era and the modern needs of application customization. This essay explores the architecture, language support, and operational context of VSTA 2015, analyzing how its language support mechanisms empowered developers while signaling the end of an era for isolated customization environments. With the release of Visual Studio 2017 and
However, the language support in VSTA 2015 is notable for what it excludes. It does not natively support dynamic scripting languages like IronPython or IronRuby, nor does it offer a full REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) environment akin to more modern scripting hosts. This limitation is intentional. VSTA is not a general-purpose scripting sandbox; it is an integrated development environment (IDE) embedded within a host application (e.g., Dynamics AX, SolidWorks, or various industrial control systems). The host’s object model is exposed to both VB.NET and C# through a consistent set of primary interop assemblies. By restricting language support to two statically-typed (albeit with dynamic capabilities in C#) languages, VSTA ensures that the host application’s API contract is unambiguous. Type resolution, IntelliSense, and compile-time checking work predictably across all customizations, reducing runtime errors that could destabilize the host. In the ecosystem of enterprise software development, the