Developer Tools

Visual Studio is Microsoft’s primary tool for software development. It supports development of all application types, including cloud, Web, desktop, and mobile on a variety of platforms. It has extensive Azure and GitHub integration.

Visual Studio Code is a popular lightweight development tool separate from Visual Studio. Its extensible model brings support for most popular programming languages and frameworks.

GitHub is a cloud service and on-premises software for source code control, collaboration, deployment, and other functions. It was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 and is receiving substantial innovation and investment, making it a centerpiece for the company’s developer platform.

Azure DevOps Server is application life-cycle management software. It plays a similar role to GitHub, but GitHub has received more recent investment.

.NET provides class libraries and runtimes for developing and running so-called managed code, using programming languages such as C#, F#, and Visual Basic. The latest .NET evolved from what was previously branded .NET Core, and it unifies earlier technologies such as the .NET Framework and Xamarin mobile application development tools.