Roger Fingas
Presenting at its Build developer conference on Wednesday, Microsoft announced the first version of Visual Studio compatible with Mac and Linux, Visual Studio Code.
The newly released software lets users develop code in .NET, JavaScript, and a number of other frameworks and languages. Microsoft described the app as "incredibly lightweight," but with features such as Git version tracking and full IntelliSense support. IntelliSense attempts to automatically detect problems like bad syntax or spelling mistakes.
Previously Visual Studio was a Windows-only platform. Its arrival on the Mac is reflective of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's policy towards cross-platform products, which has been more open than that of his predecessor, Steve Ballmer. Under Nadella's tenure, the company has for instance released a number of Office apps for iOS and Android.
Accompanying the launch is a preview release of .NET Core runtime distributions for Mac and Linux. Like Visual Studio, the .NET software framework was previously Windows-oriented. In November, however, Microsoft revealed plans to make .NET both cross-platform and open-source.
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36 Comments
Like I would ever, EVER let ANYTHING written in .Net touch my Mac! That language is almost as bloated and horrifically slow as Java, and now Microshit wants to contaminate Mac's with it???!!!
Satya Nadella is impressing me more and more.
"By downloading and using Visual Studio Code, you agree to the license terms and privacy statement for Visual Studio Code. When this tool crashes, we automatically collect crash dumps so we can figure out what went wrong. If you don't want to send your crash dumps to Microsoft, don't install this tool." [emphasis added]
The price of "free" here is that MS gets to see your code. Needless to say, along with Windows, this piece of MS software will not grace any of my computers.
"By downloading and using Visual Studio Code, you agree to the license terms and privacy statement for Visual Studio Code. When this tool crashes, we automatically collect crash dumps so we can figure out what went wrong. If you don't want to send your crash dumps to Microsoft, don't install this tool." [emphasis added]
The price of "free" here is that MS gets to see your code. Needless to say, along with Windows, this piece of MS software will not grace any of my computers.
Microsoft probably doesn't want to see most people's code.
Sweeeeet! Visual Studio and .NET are very nice to work with. I'm happy about this!