
Microsoft Launches Visual Studio Code, a Free Cross-Platform Code Editor - MikusR
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/microsoft-shocks-the-world-with-visual-studio-code-a-free-code-editor-for-os-x-linux-and-windows/
======
krylon
Ever since Nadella took over at Microsoft, such news items are becoming more
and more frequent. Ten years ago, my first reaction at such a headline would
have been to check my calendar if it's April 1st.

Microsoft has come a long way from the company that everybody loved to hate.
IMHO, they still have a long way ahead of them, but it's nice to see they seem
to be serious about it.

With Ballmer at the helm, I had the impression he didn't really know how to
handle the rise of mobile devices and cloud services. Nadella seems determined
to really change Microsoft from the old Windows-and-Office monopoly to
something new.

~~~
frik
Sorry to nick pick but the following download statement is "not optimal":

    
    
      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. 
    

So no check box to deactivate this phone-home feature that used to be standard
in Microsoft products like Visual Studio, Office and Windows. That's a
regression. (Source - bottom grey text: [https://code.visualstudio.com//#alt-
downloads](https://code.visualstudio.com//#alt-downloads) )

Edit: there is only a small "preview" symbol on the top left, beside that no
text or screenshot mentions it:
[https://code.visualstudio.com/](https://code.visualstudio.com/)

~~~
shankun
Visual Code is a brand new tool, and we only use the telemetry to help improve
product quality, and better understand how our tool and features are being
used so we can know how to improve VSCode. By the time we exit Preview, we
will provide a way to opt out of this reporting.

~~~
tomjen3
Whats in the crash info? Because even the name of the file or any memory
content means I can't use it because it might leak company secrets (e.g
product names).

~~~
timboslice
Then don't use it until it is stable. This is a preview release

~~~
emodendroket
What, you mean you don't use a bunch of preview products to work on your top-
secret company code?

~~~
ianstallings
Somewhere at MS: "I told you this scheme would work! We finally got their
product name. Send word to our team to begin immediately." _rubbing hands
together_

------
NicoJuicy
Fun thing that nobody seems to mention is that a lot of "Visual Studio Code"
is actually based on opensource. It's a atom shell app using omnisharp as
server... Here some relative links where it's based upon:

[https://atom.io/](https://atom.io/)

[https://github.com/atom/electron](https://github.com/atom/electron)

[http://www.omnisharp.net/](http://www.omnisharp.net/)

I think it's funny that MS uses 3rd party opensource for building a editor
that supports Visual Basic (and other languages of course).. According to me,
Roslyn does the intellisense (it's opensource now) and CoreCLR is the RyuJIT-
compiler (also recently opensourced).

I suppose the Asp.Net 5 framework is perfect for beginning with this ( grunt,
bower, ...). Debugging currently works with Mono 4.0.1 and node, soon all of
them will be supported because of CoreCLR (source:
[https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/593454392851845120](https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/593454392851845120)
). .Net has a lot of nice things to offer ( odata, f#, entity framework,
typescript), i'd be happy to see them getting more traction :)

~~~
Bahamut
We were talking about this at work today. Most interestingly, it is
significantly faster than regular Atom.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Yeah, well, Atom is based on
[https://github.com/atom/electron](https://github.com/atom/electron) and so is
Microsoft Visual Code ;) . I thought it was better then Brackets ( Adobe)
also, but that's another discussion :p

------
ceronman
Cross platform developers tools by Microsoft! Great news! MS has some of the
best developer tools out there. In my opinion, the only downside has been the
dependency on the Windows platform. As a developer, I feel much more
comfortable in a Unix environment.

This move was unthinkable a decade ago. I'm very glad to see MS moving in this
direction. Just because of this announcement I want to start playing with
TypeScript and C# again.

~~~
dchichkov
This move was very thinkable a decade ago. Even two decades. In fact, a good
example from 1995:

From Wikipedia: The strategy and phrase "embrace, extend and extinguish", was
first introduced in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial when the
vice president of Intel, Steven McGeady, testified[8] that Microsoft vice
president Paul Maritz used the phrase in a 1995 meeting with Intel to describe
Microsoft's strategy toward Netscape, Java, and the Internet.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguis...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish)

~~~
pyre
Even when Microsoft 'Embraced and Extended' Java, it was only on the Windows
platform. It was not _cross_ -platform. The whole point of that methodology
wasn't to make sure that everyone was using Microsoft-flavoured Java, but to
make sure that everyone was using Microsoft-flavoured Java _on the Microsoft
Windows platform._

~~~
aaronbrethorst

        It was not cross-platform
    

Cross-platform didn't mean much in 1995. _Which_ other platform was there at
the time? Apple was dead in the water. Red Hat had just come into existence.
Netscape Navigator 1.0 had just shipped in December 1994.

~~~
pyre
The fact that Java was device-agnostic due to the JVM is something that
Microsoft viewed as a threat. Bill Gates saw Netscape as a threat with their
plugin system because of the idea that the OS would just be a shell to the
browser which would run programs via plugins. This one of the reasons that
they wanted to destroy the Internet. They feared that it would make Windows
irrelevant.

"Write once, run everywhere" is a threat to a company whose entire business
model is based on "everywhere" being owned by them.

~~~
sangnoir
Marc Andreessen probably stoked Microsoft's paranoia when he said "[Netscape
will soon reduce Windows to] a poorly debugged set of device drivers"[1]

1\.
[http://www.wired.com/2012/04/ff_andreessen/2/](http://www.wired.com/2012/04/ff_andreessen/2/)

------
nothrabannosir
Wow. I seriously don't know what to think anymore. What is their end game?
Which platform are they hoping to become / remain dominant in?

Don't get me wrong---I'm as happy as the next guy about this. VS is the only
tolerable language-dedicated IDE, if they take 25% of their VS engineering
mantra to this it will be better than almost anything else.

But where does it end? I am clearly so not in touch with my inner mba. I just
cannot even think of how what they are planning in the long run, here.

What's going on? Have they lost their minds? Is there a secret master plan?
How realistic could that be? Is this the red giant to their eventual white
dwarf?

Just... what?!

~~~
fragmede
Windows is becoming irrelevant, Microsoft Office is being supplanted by Google
Docs being both free and 'good enough', and worst of all, Microsoft completely
missed the boat on mobile.

The Microsoft of old would have died out eventually. What we are seeing is not
something you see often - a behemoth of a company doing a 'pivot'.

What would you do remain relevant in the face of the majority of the internet
services not going anywhere near Microsoft for material income?

~~~
dsg42
You're completely lost in your Silicon Valley mindset. Most of the western
world still shows up to work and uses Office on Windows. Even in tech, I've
seen non-technical workers request PC's just so they can use "real" Office.
Office for Mac doesn't cut it. And while it might be good enough for you, it's
not for many people who rely on Word, Office, and PowerPoint for work. Oh, and
Google Docs is hardly free in the office.

~~~
fragmede
I'm not saying this would happen _tomorrow_. Microsoft has enough inertia to
fire all their developers and just sell the current version of Windows and
Office for a _long_ time. Hell, some 30% of computer users in China still use
_Windows XP_.

After a few generations raised on smartphones and tablets without any
Microsoft apps, Microsoft Office would just be a curiosity their parents used,
like Corel Draw or dBase.

Fortunately Microsoft has taken note; there's rumor of Android Office apps,
and the latest version of the Surface tablet is quite popular.

Microsoft, and in particular, Office is still going strong, but the
stranglehold it had in the 90's is gone.

\--

Google may _want_ businesses to pay, but going to docs.google.com and using
your personal email address works just fine - much to the chagrin of IT
departments everywhere.

~~~
oblio
Still he has a point. Kids will toy around with Google Docs but when push
comes to shove when they're hired by PWC or Deloitte, Microsoft Office is
where it's at.

Google Docs doesn't hold a candle against it while LibreOffice can barely
sneeze in front of it.

------
daigoba66
I'm curious about how the editor itself was built. Is it itself written with
cross-platform .NET? And if so, what UI library?

Edit: Got my answer. Electron and TypeScript:
[https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/593454574297427968](https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/593454574297427968)

~~~
jbeja
Can access without school or work account, I don't know how to get this.

~~~
jffry
It will evidently be available "later today":
[https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/593454156779687937](https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/593454156779687937)

EDIT: Apparently at 11AM PDT:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9459632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9459632)
(aka in an hour-ish)

------
mmgutz
I prefer it to atom already on OSX.

* handles multiple files well. atom ends up being too many tabs with no quick way to get to them

* MRU file switching

* shows side by side default v user settings

* launches must faster (which is strange since it is based on electron)

* JS debbuger

Can't wait to try the CoreCLR.

~~~
Jare
I just tried a 100MB C++ file; it opened in 2 seconds, and navigated very
fast. No syntax highlighting, however a 20MB C++ file did receive syntax
highlighting in the background (took around 30 seconds to reach the bottom),
with navigation still 100% fast and responsive.

Right now, this thing blows the Atom editor out of the water in terms of
performance. For plugins and breadth of available functionality, Atom is miles
ahead of course.

~~~
billrobertson42
Seriously? A 100MB C++ file?

~~~
Jare
For stress testing, of course! I just replicated a ~25kb file 4096 times.

------
edgyswingset
This is very exciting. If the debugger is anywhere near the quality of what
ships with Visual Studio, this will be a joy for developers to use.

------
gbl08ma
The description says it's lightweight, but on my machine it uses over 200 MB
of RAM with no files open, and appears to be a Chromium-based thing, much like
Atom (as others pointed out, it's based on Electron). Meanwhile, Sublime Text
is using less than 100 MB of RAM with dozens of files open, some of them quite
big. Visual Studio tends to use less memory than this, too. If "the language
services [Microsoft] built for Visual Studio Code [are going to] be available
in other editors as well", then I will definitely pass on this one (and this,
assuming I ever get interested in developing in .NET again).

On second thought, for now this looks nothing more than a marketing trick,
very well pulled off.

~~~
DatBear
On my machine with no files open it's at ~80-85MB RAM, VS2012 is at 500MB with
nothing open. Not sure why 200MB is of any consequence unless you're in a
third world country. 8GB of RAM is ~$50.

~~~
robwilliams
Code is only using 20MB on my Win8 box.

~~~
gbl08ma
This is interesting. I only tested it on Linux, just opened it again and it's
definitely using over 150 MB of RAM, across five threads. This may mean it
uses more memory on Linux than on Windows. 20 MB looks definitely lightweight,
and it may be an interesting alternative to Sublime and Notepad++ which is
what I use on Windows.

~~~
robwilliams
After opening a few files it's up to 100-150MB, so not as lightweight as I
originally thought. That doesn't affect its responsiveness, though, and I have
plenty of free memory.

------
keithwarren
tldr; light weight Visual Studio for OSX/Windows/Linux with support for dozens
of languages, intellisense (autocomplete), refactoring, debugging (yes, real
debugging), git integration and it is free

~~~
venomsnake
So ... pretty much perfect?

~~~
marssaxman
except for the part where it's written in Javascript and is thus a bloated
memory hog, yes.

~~~
dijit
worth it... this is a specialist application, I dont mind developers having
another chunk of memory for a better development environment.

~~~
WorldWideWayne
As a developer I will mind if it's not fast though, or if it does not behave
like other native apps. The fact that it uses more memory is not a fact that
stands alone either. The reason it uses more memory is because it has to do
more. Because it has to do more, it's always going to be slower.

So far on Fedora 21, VSCode is a slow and buggy experience. Atom was never as
good as any of the native dev tools that I've used IMO. As a matter of fact, I
can't think of one application developed with web tech that performs as well
as it's native counterpart.

------
segaboy81
If anyone needs it (since Microsoft didn't supply it) I made an installer for
Visual Studio Code Linux.

The installer grabs the archive, puts things where they go, and makes sure you
have the nice shiny icon that it ships with.

[http://www.thepowerbase.com/2015/04/install-visual-studio-
co...](http://www.thepowerbase.com/2015/04/install-visual-studio-code-
ubuntu-14-04-14-10-15-04/)

~~~
aembleton
Thank you. That worked really well.

------
octref
Surprisingly, VS Code handles large files quite well.

Just tested it on my Mac opening an uncompressed ember.js (~1.5MB). The file
loads instantly and syntax highlighting is done in less than 1 sec. Movement
and editing are very responsive.

On the other hand, when I open ember.js on Atom, it takes more than 10 sec to
load and syntax highlight, and moving & editing take .2 ~ .3 sec to complete.

~~~
sedouard
I've been using it with an ember cli app on OS X for a couple weeks (had pre
release access). It's pretty nice some kinks here and there specifically with
my tmp folder being giant. But for being what it is now its pretty awesome.

Handles builds and debugging too although it'll take some setup depending on
your project type.

They basically took the vs Monaco online browser editor which was already
awesome and put it on atom shell/electron for everyone to be able to use
natively. Definitely a smart move. Compared to paying $70 for sublime it's a
really good deal.

------
highmastdon
Website seems offline, download links are below. Cached version shows links:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nfE4FmK...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nfE4FmKtztkJ:https://code.visualstudio.com/+&cd=9&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=nl)

OS X:
[http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/D/5/0D57186C-834B-4...](http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/D/5/0D57186C-834B-463A-AECB-
BC55A8E466AE/VSCode-osx.zip)

Windows:
[http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/D/5/0D57186C-834B-4...](http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/D/5/0D57186C-834B-463A-AECB-
BC55A8E466AE/VSCodeSetup.exe)

Linux:
[http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/D/5/0D57186C-834B-4...](http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/D/5/0D57186C-834B-463A-AECB-
BC55A8E466AE/VSCode-linux-x64.zip)

~~~
jrieken
Sorry guys but there is an issue with our load balancer which is being worked
on right now. In the meantime you can find us here: [https://vscode-
westeu.azurewebsites.net/](https://vscode-westeu.azurewebsites.net/)

~~~
jrieken
Page is back up. Sorry for the fuzz. Happy Coding!

------
gonestale
Hmmm, from bundled dependancies point of view Visual Studio Code looks very
much like Atom, but with out of date versions?

Bill of Materials for Atom version 0.194.0 for OS X
[[http://www.bomtotal.com/#85c7e5b85a0ea17e50676c621eaaceaa](http://www.bomtotal.com/#85c7e5b85a0ea17e50676c621eaaceaa)]
has e.g. nodejs 0.10.35, openssl 1.0.1j AND 1.0.1k, zlib 1.2.5 AND 1.2.8 and
libuv 0.10.30.

Whereas,

Bill of Materials for Code version 0.1.0 for OS X
[[http://www.bomtotal.com/#26be3e80807532937c65c575360bfb91](http://www.bomtotal.com/#26be3e80807532937c65c575360bfb91)]
has e.g. nodejs 0.10.22, openssl 1.0.1e AND 1.0.1k, zlib 1.2.3 AND 1.2.8 and
libuv 0.10.19.

So Visual Studio Code ships with openssl released in Feb 2013 while Atom ships
with openssl released in Oct 2014. :)

Furthermore Visual Studio Code ships with nodejs released in Nov 2013 while
Atom ships with nodejs released in Dec 2014.

From this perspective Visual Studio Code is a blast from the past, lets hope
it is not dangerously out of date.

------
namelezz
I was so excited for a moment.

\+ Syntax coloring, bracket matching: C++, jade, PHP, Python, XML, Batch, F#,
DockerFile, Coffee Script, Java, HandleBars, R, Objective-C, PowerShell, Luna,
Visual Basic, Markdown

\+ IntelliSense, linting, outline: JavaScript, JSON, HTML, CSS, LESS, SASS

\+ Refactoring, find all references: C#, TypeScript

~~~
Joe4evr
Keep in mind, this is only a preview, and they're working hard to get all
those languages to IntelliSense/Refactoring level. And once their
extensibility framework is finalized, you can add support for whatever
language you want.

------
alfredxing
Seems like it has lots of potential.

The product/download site should be at
[http://code.visualstudio.com](http://code.visualstudio.com) when it goes live
later today (it's currently showing a login page).

~~~
strictnein
Download works from here.

~~~
deeviant
The download worked for me, but the zip archive was corrupted, so I didn't
even get a chance to try it out on linux (ubuntu 12.04)

~~~
mavdi
Yup can confirm, doesn't seem to work on Ubuntu

~~~
nivertech
works for me on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

------
yulaow
A real question, not for flaming but just for understand: is free as in beer
or in freedom? I mean, is it also open-source?

~~~
micampe
When most companies say free they mean free of charge, if they want to say
open source they say open source, because that’s the term the world
understands. Basically only the FSF uses free to mean Free Software.

~~~
joshuapants
Open source doesn't imply free (or libre, if you prefer)

~~~
clarry
It pretty much always does.

~~~
davexunit
Many companies use "open source" or simply "open" in a way that isn't
compatible with the open source definition. This is known as open washing. A
good, non-Microsoft example is Epic Games and Unreal Tournament 4. They talk a
lot about being "open", but the source code and assets are all proprietary.

~~~
nailer
Neither Epic (I've contributed to UE) or Microsoft assert their products are
Open Source, merely 'open'.

~~~
davexunit
And they do that explicitly to confuse people. What they do isn't open, it's
smoke and mirrors.

~~~
nailer
Actually I think only MS say open. Epic says free.

------
porker
Do have a read of the privacy policy, especially the extra clause for free
programs: [https://www.visualstudio.com/en-
us/dn948229](https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/dn948229)

Will your customers mind if the following data is sent to Microsoft when
you're working on-site?

 _Usage data. We collect information about how you interact with our products
and services. This includes information about how you use the products and
services, such as the features you use, the web pages you visit, and the
search terms you enter. It includes information about the device you use with
the services, including IP address, device identifiers, regional and language
settings, and information about the network, operating system, browser or
other software you use to connect to the services. And it also includes
information about the performance of the product or service and any errors or
problems you experience with them. In order to create a richer picture of your
product usage, we will correlate usage data across other Microsoft services,
like Visual Studio Online._

~~~
Aradalf
I believe it's for the Preview version only. Afterwards you can opt out.

------
RandallBrown
What's most impressive to me is the number of open source projects used to
build it. In my old org at Microsoft it would have taken months to get
approval for that many projects. It took us THREE WEEKS to get approval to use
Google Mock for C++.

When I left Microsoft about a year ago I had the thought that it would be a
cool company to work for again in about 3 years. They really seem to be taking
some steps in the right direction.

------
captn3m0
I'm getting a weird error:

    
    
        AADSTS50020: User account 'me@captnemo.in' from external identity provider 'live.com' is not supported for application 'caf83767-0da8-454f-ae8d-77f63deaf359'. The account needs to be added as an external user in the tenant. Please sign out and sign in again with an Azure Active Directory user account.
    

I'm guessing only proper microsoft accounts are allowed? (@outlook.com,
@live.com etc). I understand it might not be live yet, but I don't get the
"unavailable yet" error.

~~~
mmgutz
fyi, same error with @outlook.com account

~~~
captn3m0
cool then. Let the wait begin.

------
DonHopkins
Who else experienced a secret guilt about thinking "oh good, I'm going to try
this out, and I hope it works well"?

If it helps with Unity C# development on a Mac, I will be very happy. Please
be better than MonoDevelop!

Note: I installed the latest version of Mono and now Intellisense is working
with my Unity project!

I voted for this:

[http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/293070-visual-
studi...](http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/293070-visual-studio-
code/suggestions/7752702-unity-integration)

>Unity Integration

>Visual Studio for Mac is a breath of fresh air for those of us who use Unity
on a daily basis. Please oh please get it tightly integrated, similar to
UnityVS for Windows.

>The day I can dump MonoDevelop and Xamarin for good would be better than my
last 10 birthday presents combined - and they were pretty sweet!

------
bpicolo
With a brief attempt, it's surely not ready to replace sublime for me. No
package support, doesn't even come close to replacing fuzzy file matching (and
the current file opening doesn't work over osx fuse). Not to say I don't
welcome the attempt to replace Sublime, it just can't compete yet.

It does appear to load large code bases a lot snappier than Atom, and at least
they got panel resizing working unlike Atom (which is still a hilarious thing
not to have in Atom).

Edit: Atom seems to actually support dragging to resize panels in a recent
update. Late coming but definitely welcome.

------
fmitchell0
what am i missing here? a look at their TOS:

"The software may collect information about you and your use of the software,
and send that to Microsoft. Microsoft may use this information to provide
services and improve our products and services. For this pre-release version,
users cannot opt out of data collection. Some features in the software may
enable collection of data from users of applications you develop using the
software."

~~~
kansface
I haven't looked through their code, but Atom (which used atom-shell, now
electron) actually embeds google analytics in the editor. It uploads commands
and file extensions.

------
bandrami
Great. I'm a confirmed UNIX geek and I'll be the first to say MS has always
excelled at developer tools, and I'd be happy to be able to use them on Linux.
(BSD is probably a pipe dream, but this is a decent start.)

~~~
tracker1
If Electron (formerly atom-shell) have a BSD build/target working, it wouldn't
be too hard for MS to support it... if the open-source their work on this,
it'll be easier.

~~~
danesparza
Take a close look at the bottom of this page:
[http://electron.atom.io/](http://electron.atom.io/)

Visual Studio Code is based on Electron!

------
eloy
Satya Nadella is taking the right decisions for Microsoft. I don't think Steve
Ballmer would've done this.

------
guelo
"Visual Studio Code" is deceptive marketing. It has nothing to do with Visual
Studio. It's just another Javascript text editor built on top of Webkit.

~~~
steego
You're missing the point. It is in many ways better than Visual Studio because
it's lightweight editor with a lot of the good stuff like a debugger,
intellisense, refactoring, code navigation, etc.

This caters to people who want good cross-platform tools without all of the
Visual Studio bloat.

------
mariusmg
Tried it and found it very disappointing. Not sure why they decided to use the
name "Visual Studio" for it.

It's just text editor (although has a integrated debugger) built with
Electron, performance is abysmal.

------
outworlder
I've installed and tried it.

I am sure I must be missing something. It is a text editor, feels sublime-y.
But it doesn't seem to be even a smaller cousing to Visual Studio, so the name
is confusing.

It seems to be geared towards JS/Html. If so, we already have plenty of tools
for that.

------
akhilcacharya
That's it, MS is the new Google, Google is the new Apple, Apple is new
Microsoft.

------
abritishguy
This new direction that MS is going in is very interesting

------
orionblastar
Some of my friends remind me that they use emacs already and don't need this
one by Microsoft. Others say they use Sublime Text instead.

I used Visual Studio in the late 1990's and got used to the GUI IDE. I did a
lot of work in Classic Visual BASIC before the Dotnet era.

I see they are open sourcing the CoreCLR and now Visual Studio Core. I gave
the Linux version a quick look over, extracted the zip file to a directory and
ran the ./Core program. It loads quick enough, most likely because there isn't
much there.

I have to remember that this is the Post-Microsoft era, and Microsoft has to
reinvent itself in order to survive. Microsoft knows the Hacker and Startup
community uses OSX and Linux, and many have migrated away from Windows.
Microsoft knows they like open source projects, so Microsoft open sourced
Visual Studio and CoreCLR to have them ported to Linux, *BSD Unix, and Mac
OSX.

Why Microsoft never made a version of Visual Studio for Linux or OSX is beyond
me. We got Mono for a while, but it was always behind the Windows version.
There was DotGNU but I lost track of where they were at.

If anyone is wondering how Microsoft earns money from open source projects,
they will always sell books on it and also certification for it. Like Xamarian
they can always buy out the company that forks it and makes a better version
of it that is cross platform.

------
aikah
Is it webtech based(built with html/css/js) or hardtech based(C++,QT
whatever...) since they are talking about Monaco,it looks webtech based. nice.

~~~
bigdubs
Curious, if they just launched cross platform .net core, why didn't they just
.net? Why typescript?

~~~
tracker1
Cross platform .Net doesn't include a cross platform UI environment... though
cross-platform WPF would be pretty awesome (not sure how much effort to extend
on their efforts for silverlight would go).

~~~
bigdubs
You could use native interop into something like qt. Mono already does this
for cross platform System.Windows.Forms.

------
Sharma
At the bottom of the download page, "If you don't want to send your crash
dumps to Microsoft, don't install this tool."

That is rude!

~~~
sea6ear
From other comments, it appears that this is because this is a preview, and
once it goes into full release, there will be an option to opt out.

~~~
Sharma
Oh yeah. They even have preview badge on the home page. I was just thinking
they could have stated it little bit politely. Something sort of, if you are
not comfortable sharing the logs then wait for 1.0. blah..

But who cares :-). Many are downloading and I have it too!

------
hokkos
The performances are already better than Atom, it can open 30MB XML files and
3MB easily. The syntax coloration is async, the code completion also and
doesn't stop the editor and very sleek. But I already knew it was atom fault,
Ace Cloud9 and even Code Mirror could open big files.

------
jot
They found my 2007 email to Steve: [http://jonathanmarkwell.com/2013/08/23/me-
and-steve-ballmer-...](http://jonathanmarkwell.com/2013/08/23/me-and-steve-
ballmer-in-2007/) ;)

------
spo8
Man, add this to the list of pretty forward thinking moves by Microsoft
recently.

\- Visual Studio Community Edition \- Outlook and Office free for iOS and
Android \- iOS and Android apps running in Windows 10 \- Free Windows 10
upgrade

Not bad. Not bad.

------
alfredxing
Downloaded & running on OS X.

Super impressed with its performance: it opens up & scrolls smoothly through a
~40M text file just fine. Memory usage is quite high though, but that's
expected with an Electron-based app.

~~~
criswell
The only thing I haven't liked so far is the "Go To File..." search isn't
fuzzy. Other than that my very brief usage has been pretty good.

------
learc83
Does anyone know if it has vim emulation?

~~~
jng
I will look into porting ViEmu to this, will probably do so unless it's a huge
amount of work.

~~~
learc83
I would definitely pay for this.

------
orand
Wow, I just ran it, and it says "If you don't have an existing project, we
suggest using Yeoman to scaffold out a new one." Craziness! And very cool.
Congrats to the Yeoman team.

------
Sleaker
I'd just like to point out that this is simply a re-branded version of
Atom.io, with additional plugins.

~~~
atonse
Actually, no it isn't. The runtime is based on Electron (formerly Atom Shell).
But the code editor has been entirely built by MS and been used on their Azure
console.

------
bliti
For some reason this reminds me of how it was impossible for Nintendo to
publish a SEGA game. Growing up as a die-hard Nintendo fan the thought of
Sonic The Hedgehog appearing next to Mario was insane. Now days, I have a
Nintendo Wii with about 5 games that feature Sonic, and one that features
Sonic and Mario. SEGA has pretty much been reduced to a mobile publisher with
questionable product decisions. Nintendo is slowly going down that route,
though the DS and their strong IP keeps them alive.

------
soheil
They have a long way to go, I'm baffled as to why this got 1020+ up-votes.
They knew they've been losing the OS and development tools battles to Apple
and open-source for 10 years now and now skinning an open-source editor is
going to change that overnight? They first need to catch up and then surpass
the competition. They have a monumental mountain to climb to just even be
anything like what they once were.

------
flanbiscuit
can't wait to test this out. I have both a Mac and PC at work and I don't like
always having to switch over to the PC just to work on .NET sites.

------
nocture
[https://code.visualstudio.com/download](https://code.visualstudio.com/download)

------
DigitalSea
Microsoft 2.0. This is a promising sign that a full IDE for Mac is only around
the corner and I am legitimately excited for that.

------
forrestthewoods
Holy shit.

I wonder if this will be open sourced in a way that would allow Visual Studio
intellisense in Sublime Text. I want that for C++ so bad.

~~~
mynameisvlad
[http://www.omnisharp.net/](http://www.omnisharp.net/) is what powers the
intellisense IIRC (it was mentioned in the keynote).

~~~
rhodysurf
ahh so no C++ support then

~~~
forrestthewoods
<sigh> A boy can dream...

~~~
_stephan
Cross platform IDEs for C++ like Qt Creator and JetBrains Clion already made
huge progress over the past years.

There's a good chance that we'll see the emergence of a high quality reusable
open source C++ language service component for editors over the next three
years or so. Google in particular seems to be putting a lot effort into Clang,
LLDB, Kythe and other developer tools. Facebook is also working on a web-based
IDE and presumably has interest in good C++ support. Modules in C++17 (which
Microsoft intends to adopt quickly) will probably make things easier.

~~~
beliu
If you haven't already, check out srclib, an open-source cross-language cross-
editor code analysis library designed to support things like editor plugins:
[https://srclib.org/](https://srclib.org/). I'm one of the creators and would
love to hear your thoughts.

------
aruggirello
_I 've got the power_!? Wow, MS took my request so seriously!

This was my last comment.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9438293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9438293)

> By installing Visual Studio Code, you agree to the terms and data collection
> described here

Just curious, but I can't seem to find the terms.

------
raffapen
Not directly connected to VS Code launch, but rather to the New Microsoft
phenomenon: It is high time the MS offer a FUSE-like userspace filesystem for
Windows (possibly, by purchasing Eldos). Along with package management (which
is now addressed in Windows 10), this is one of the biggest holes in Windows
armor.

------
stass
The title is misleading. It only works on Windows, OS X and Linux. It does not
support any other OSes at all.

~~~
DominikD
Sure, there's no BSD support. Which puts it at what, 95% of machines in the
wild can run it? This is very much cross-platform. Unless you're into BeOS,
then yeah, you're out of luck.

------
aswanson
This is awesome. A tolerable IDE for linux. From microsoft, of all companies.
Awesome.

------
thewhitetulip
Some time ago I had read a blog post I don't remember where which said that
all this credit that Google and Apple are getting for innovating cellphones
and tablets, Bill Gates had envisoned all in MS a long time ago, but Ballmer
or their management after that didn't focus on them, I had seen a windows
phone way way before I had seen a tablet or a phone by apple.

It is nice to see MS changing their strategy, earlier they were all closed up
to the boot, now they are opening up, but the only thing about Visual studio
is that their Intellisense is completely different than Eclipse's auto
complete :D

------
morpheous
Never thought I'd say this ... but I'm beginning to like Microsoft again ...
(not entirely sure this tiger can change it's stripes - but), all I can say is
"Welcome to the the FOSS side!

------
mark_l_watson
Wow, I just opened a Clojure project and the code is color hilited and things
like auto-indentation work. I need to find the documentation on with
programming languages are supported.

------
tdicola
There's a lot more info on it in its documentation here:
[https://code.visualstudio.com/docs](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs) Looks
interesting, but I don't really see much that differentiates it from Atom,
Sublime, Brackets, etc. Also the language support is kinda barebones--no
syntax highlighting for Go or Rust? Only intellisense for Javascript and web
stuff? Debugging only for Node.js?

~~~
Scarbutt
_no syntax highlighting for Go or Rust?_

surely you jest ;)

~~~
shankun
We have Go syntax highlighting today, but not Rust - but look for it in the
next update!

~~~
ledak
What about Stylus (CSS-preprocessor) support?

------
look_lookatme
A quick look at the docs and it doesn't yet support extensibility/plugins,
though they say in the FAQ that they are working out a plan for that. Right
now there is an external task runner that exposes the file name of the current
buffer and some other data.

I look forward to seeing what they do on the plugin front. And hopefully they
will be able to upstream performance changes to Electron and Atom and
hopefully more.

Competition in the editor + dev tools space is always good.

~~~
welder
Dang, was hoping this would make plugins for VS easier. I have to write a
plugin for every release of Visual Studio currently.

------
aceperry
This is definitely a big and newsworthy announcement from MS Build. And one of
the few times that linux was given any respect as a platform. I think it still
remains to be seen as to how serious MS is about real cross-platform products
and work, but it's a great step. If they make their cross platform products
roughly equal, not like that mono crap, then I would consider that to be a
real effort by MS.

~~~
tracker1
In this case, I think they are re-using Electron as a wrapper for their editor
combined with some of their existing efforts for a web based VS editor. In
this case, I'd suspect they'll flush this out to be much closer to what VS
offers as cross platform. I see a _LOT_ of developers using macbooks, and
fewer booting up windows to edit VS projects anymore.

This is to stay relevant and that effort won't change... of course they are a
company and may not offer a _lot_ of energy if there isn't uptake. My limited
use of the new editor is actually a pretty positive so far. I'm going to give
it a try for a week, already I like the UX more than sublimetext.

~~~
nashashmi
Go here ... [https://code.visualstudio.com/](https://code.visualstudio.com/)

and click on the video. The guy is using a macbook air and there is a
Microsoft logo in the background.

------
memnips
It almost feels as though the "Developers! Developers! Developers!" Ballmer
mantra is back! [0]

Microsoft has realized that it can't afford to lose anymore developer
mindshare and it's creating some really spectacular results. This is a
Microsoft I can be excited about!

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE)

------
dudifordMann
Neat. I am all for equivalent look&feel and work flow across different OS's.
One thing that strikes me as strange, this looks very similar to Qt
Creator[1].

[1] [http://doc.qt.digia.com/qtcreator-2.4/creator-
overview.html](http://doc.qt.digia.com/qtcreator-2.4/creator-overview.html)

------
Matthias247
As some members of the development team are reading here:

Text rendering on Win8.1 with 4k screen and 175% scaling is slightly blurry
compared to normal Visual Studio. Is that known and are there any plans to
improve on that? I remembered similar issues with Atom before :(

Otherwise it looks great for a first release! Looking forward to how it
evolves.

~~~
alexdima
Thanks! We'll look into that

------
euroclydon
Microsoft expects to make an increasing portion of their revenue from Azure
PAAS. Visual Studio has a button to deploy to Azure. Amazon has nothing like
an IDE and language/runtime to compare with this.

Even the Economist had an article last week about how the EU countries lament
their lack of platform prowess.

------
mkramlich
a free cross-platform code editor by Microsoft, you say?

vi kids-get-off-my-lawn

------
return0
They should just rename it "Code", visual studio inevitably brings memories of
"bad M$". This is going to be a good trojan horse to lure developers into the
microsoft platforms now with windows 10 and all, esp. as OSX developers are
getting tired working with 80s technologies.

~~~
Retra
There are a billion things called "code" already. Calling it 'Visual Studio'
highlights two fairly important things:

1\. It is an IDE

2\. It is owned by Microsoft

------
LastZactionHero
Does anyone know how to turn on automatic suggestions for non-supported
languages? Syntax highlighting works great for Ruby (not officially
supported), and good suggestions appear with "Ctrl-Space", but not
automatically. Haven't had much luck with the settings JSON.

Pretty neat, though!

~~~
geoelectric
Anyone have a complete list of languages with "non-support"? I was a little
underwhelmed with the official list, but Ruby was one of my wants there. What
else does it highlight that's not on the official page?

------
im3w1l
Microsoft has been doing a lot of cool things lately. I hope their new
strategy will pay off for them.

------
kikki
I wrote a small early review of Code here: [http://jamie.sh/blog/9/an-early-
review-of-visual-studio-code](http://jamie.sh/blog/9/an-early-review-of-
visual-studio-code) TLDR: I liked it a lot :)

------
mariusmg
Just wanted to point out it's not the "real" Visual Studio. But amazing
nonetheless.

------
petecox
Thanks M$ :)

This is a good move if they're hoping to entice Eclipse users on *nix to
migrate from the JVM ecosystem to CLR.

Deploying Windows programs on FreeBSD is one thing but if they want to grow
their developer base, they need to target programmers who don't run VS on
Windows.

~~~
jebblue
That's what I thought when I read the headline, reading the comments it's
clear it's just another programmer's text editor.

Eclipse is a full, powerful, customizable platform, mature with plugins for
everything.

------
harunurhan
May be I am missing something, but I could not see anything about IntelliSense
for Node. I tried exactly what they showed at the conference.

[http://i.imgur.com/lMQvZa0.png](http://i.imgur.com/lMQvZa0.png)

~~~
stevencl
Did you add the typescript definition file for node and reference it?

Download the node.d.ts file from the DefinitelyTyped repo
[https://github.com/borisyankov/DefinitelyTyped](https://github.com/borisyankov/DefinitelyTyped)
then add that file to the folder containing your node app.

Then in the file you are using the http object reference the .d.ts file by
adding the following to the top of the file:

/// <reference path="node.d.ts" />

After that you should get intellisense in the file.

------
tn13
I am waiting for the day where Visual Studio Express will be available for Mac
and Linux!

------
MrBra
Is there someone else thinking of installing Visual Studio and the full stack
required to develop .NET but is a bit scared of filling their system with many
GB of stuff that is probably not immediately necessary and installing services
that will probably not be of use anytime soon, slowing their machine down and
making it not as "versatile" anymore as they would like it to stay?

Of the times I installed VS in past, just to toy with it, I remember that
after installing it I immediately had many ram eager services loading at
startup and had a dozen items more in "installed applications" and whatnot
which were all strictly interconnected making always hard to find - in case
you wanted to remove the full thing - if you managed to do it fully.

..what version of VS would you suggest to install anyway?

------
ijoyce
Tell me about the R# support. That's the only thing making VS usable.

~~~
jmcqk6
Resharper probably isn't going to run on here. Resharper has definitely been a
requirement in the past, but Jetbrains seems to be slow to embrace Rosylen,
which is clearly the future on .NET. It's not at all clear to be how long
they're going to remain in their dominant position.

~~~
x4m
Well, future is not clear yet; but right now VS is a shell to host R#.

------
devmach
I wonder why they didn't allow to work on network folders. It looks like all
files must be local, otherwise it can open the folder and list files in
sidebar but can not open individual files.

------
hekul
The site and download are available now at
[https://code.visualstudio.com/](https://code.visualstudio.com/)

------
antoniuschan99
Been playing around with it and I like it.

It's good for web development, and that's a smart move by microsoft to product
a lighter weight ide for this purpose.

------
antoniuschan99
Can't wait to try this. Been using atom for a year. Been hearing some great
things about the new Visual Studio (compared to a few years ago).

------
lmedinas
I wonder which technology they are using to archive multi platform ? Are they
going native Qt, Gtk and Cocoa or they use Mono and Window.Forms ?

~~~
igorm
it built on top of [http://electron.atom.io/](http://electron.atom.io/)

------
kreek
Microsoft ppls please release a windows phone emulator for OS X and Linux. You
will make my year if I don't have to dual boot anymore :)

~~~
madez
Did you try wine?

------
RaphiePS
Sweet! I don't think I'll be able to use it until it supports React/ES6, but
the debugging features look awesome!

------
edwinnathaniel
The market needs a superb JavaScript IDE. So far, IntelliJ is the leading out
there but there needs to be more competition :).

------
achalkley
I can't wait to use this with typescript!

------
runn1ng
...for a moment I hoped Microsoft has made a usable C++ debugging tool for
Linux.

I know, such dreams were too far-fetched.

------
antaviana
Will the Microsoft and Github consortia be able to dethrone Jon Skinner and
his Sublime Text?

------
jjuhl
It may be cool. It may even work. It's still a Microsoft product and for that
reason alone I won't touch it. They've been shit-talking Linux/UNIX for 20+
years and screwing us over in uncountable ways for even longer. They may be
changing, but I, for one, will never trust them due to their history.

------
djfm
Very cool editor but be warned the download archive is a zipbomb (no root
directory).

~~~
zevyoura
That's not what a zip bomb is:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_bomb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_bomb)

~~~
Gigablah
Probably meant a tarbomb but seems like there's no .zip equivalent.

------
teen
Wow. This is really really good. blows sublime away for node / html / js

------
quonn
I just downloaded and looked inside the package. It's based on Atom.

------
proee
Would this allow for cross platform C# development with a GUI?

------
thespace12
Would be nice if you fixed your login so you could get to the download. Still
the same old Microsoft. Seriously can't you just have a simple link to
download? Tsk tsk, should've hired me for that I'd position

~~~
thespace123
Thank you for fixing it!!! I'm really starting to like you guys again!!!!

------
frevd
pressing F12 in the editor brings up editor debug gui, apparently it is a
webpage.

So that thing potentially runs as a website in the browser as well, cloud
editing.

------
chenzhekl
Wow, it can be downloaded now!

------
gara_gara
jsx files are not highlighted

------
tunnuz
Way to go!

------
suyash
Good bye Sublime and Webstorm!

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
I literally just bought clion a couple days ago.

(not regretting it either, I can't stand visual studio, and am not likely to
switch without very good reason)

------
joaomoreno
omg so exciting

------
scalayer
can't wait to try it out!

------
be5invis
Uninstalling Sublime Text 3...

~~~
zarriak
I'm not sure if you saw, but you can keep it and do the same things as well in
the future.

"Microsoft says the language services it built for Visual Studio Code will be
available in other editors as well, including Sublime Text, Vi and Atom."

~~~
manicgeek
As an example, the OmniSharp engine that powers C# completion is available for
Emacs, Vim, Sublime, Atom, Brackets, etc.
[http://www.omnisharp.net/](http://www.omnisharp.net/)

~~~
flanbiscuit
I just heard about OmniSharp the other day and had some trouble getting it to
properly work. But now that this has been announced I may just switch to that.

I still love Sublime and will use that for all other non-.NET/C# purposes.

------
jstoiko
Lots of "Microsoft" on the front page of HN.

~~~
adolfojp
Today is the first day of the Build conference, which is Microsoft's main
developer conference. Their new dev toys were announced today.

[http://www.buildwindows.com/](http://www.buildwindows.com/)

------
snambi
Microsoft is a shameless company. They used to attack Linux, GNU and GPL. Now,
suddenly they want to be friends with Linux. Why? It has everything to do with
money. Today windows is getting less relevant day by day. So, microsoft is
trying to put their into Linux and Mac.

~~~
unicornporn
Shameless? They are a listed company. Listed companies have one goal: to make
money. They will do whatever they think will make them the most money in the
end.

------
nickysielicki
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

This is the embrace stage, guys. Don't fall for it.

------
lc1
I know HN hates memes but...if ever a thread needed an itshappening.gif, this
is it.

------
jroseattle
Tried -- failed. Login through MS, then get screen that it's unavailable.

Come on, MS.

~~~
mynameisvlad
"(if this link isn’t live yet, give it a few more minutes and then try
again)."

It's literally right after the link. What did you expect? It's a breaking
story, the product was just announced and in the conference it was announced
as available later today.

~~~
jroseattle
I'm not accustomed to logging into a link that's "not yet live."

FWIW, the response I get is: Sorry, but we're having trouble signing you in.
We received a bad request.

(I'm logged in with the same account through other services.)

~~~
mynameisvlad
It was probably put behind a login wall for this very purpose, so it's not
leaked ahead of time. Just have patience.

------
wehadfun
An area that Micro$oft seems to ignoring is their device as in Barcode
scanners that are still stuck on .Net 3.5 and VS 2008. Its matter of time
before Andriod steals this and drives more developers to Java/Google.

~~~
EpicEng
Yeah, if only I could use lamdas in my barcode scanner... Perhaps what you're
ignoring is that MS doesn't see much growth for themselves in the embedded
market and, therefore, doesn't see a reason to invest there.

------
yeasayer
If Mac version is written with Cocoa API then I love Microsoft. If it's not -
it's useless.

