Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio (VS) Code is a free code editor and debugger derived from open source technologies and offered as open source software.

VS Code is supported on Linux, Mac, and Windows OSs, and it is available as a Web-hosted IDE, including from within the GitHub portal.

VS Code is geared toward building Web and cloud applications with an emphasis on keyboard access to features and tools and support for VS features such as IntelliSense. Plug-ins from Microsoft, third parties, and customers enable VS Code to support most popular programming languages and frameworks.

VS Code’s license is not as restrictive as the VS Community edition; it may be used for commercial development.

VS Code has rapidly gained popularity since its 2016 debut and has been adopted by many teams that might have otherwise selected VS. New and enhanced extensions continue to arrive and in many cases VS Code support is prioritized over VS support. The overlap with VS has influenced recent, and likely future, design updates to VS, such as simplifying its installation and user experience. It is possible that VS will become compatible with VS Code extensions in the future to make it easier to use both or remove barriers to using VS.