Behind Visual Studio's slight version bump from 15.2 to 15.3, we have a major update.
First of all, .NET Core is finally here accompanied with .NET Standard 2.0. Both have greatly increased API coverage and hope is that they will help with greater acceptance of the whole new (open-source) ecosystem.
In addition there is C# 7.1 which is first time Microsoft updated a language in a minor Visual Studio version. True, there are not many changes to the language itself (albeit async Main was longed for) but it signals a new direction of decoupling Visual Studio, C#, .NET Standard releases.
I hope this .NET Standard 2.0 will do what .NET 2.0 did back in 2005 and unite fragmented developers around a new common denominator.
More details at Channel 9.