The main purpose of Visual Studio Code is to support the developer lifecycle (or, rather, a loop): Coding (using Rich Language Services) > Debugging > Checking your code in (using the Git Source Control integration). You'd also choose Visual Studio if you target Windows GUI development. For instance, you can't write cross-platform Xamarin mobile apps in Visual Studio Code (at least not at the time of this writing). Of course, Visual Studio Code doesn't replace Visual Studio there are still a few things that Visual Studio does on a much deeper level than Visual Studio Code. It includes, in particular, the ability to introduce any programming language to it, to create syntax highlighting for any language, and to create a debugger for any language. The main advantages of Visual Studio Code, compared to Visual Studio, is its extensibility. First, Visual Studio Code is available for free on all major platforms: Windows, macOS, and Linux. “Dogfooding” is a term coined at Microsoft, meaning using your own product from very early stages of development.īut how can you compare it to its “big brother,” Microsoft Visual Studio? They don't share much, except the name and similar-looking icons.

Now 100% of Visual Studio Code is written in Visual Studio Code itself. Why did it become so popular in such a short time? According to the Visual Studio Code team, they started dogfooding on very early stages of development. Visual Studio Code started gaining popularity quickly and within four years, became the most popular IDE among developers. It's based on the Electron open-source framework. Visual Studio Code is a lightweight multiplatform IDE (Integrated Development Environment), that lets users add a wide variety of extensions (commonly called plug-ins in other IDEs). I encourage you to watch this very interesting Visual Studio Code launch interview with Erich Gamma on Channel 9 ( ). In April 2015, the team released the initial version of Visual Studio Code.

At Microsoft, Gamma led a small development lab out of Zurich, Switzerland. He's most known as one of the “gang of four” authors of the influential “Design Patterns” book. In 2011, a Swiss computer scientist named Erich Gamma joined Microsoft.

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