Visual Studio Code

Before joining Directions on Microsoft, Rob worked at Microsoft for 14 years where he designed technologies for Microsoft products and... more

Visual Studio (VS) Code is a free code editor derived from open source technologies and offered as open source software. A large catalog of extensions enables it to work with most programming languages, frameworks, and services. These extensions can bring debugging and other capabilities that give VS Code much of the functionality of an integrated development environment (IDE) that can be used for enterprise development teams. However, VS Code is based on different technologies from VS (sans the “Code” suffix), which is a different product. VS includes a more extensive set of development and testing features, albeit with licensing fees.

Product: Visual Studio Code

Licensing: Visual Studio Code

Near-Term Roadmap (2026-2027)

VS Code continues to be highly popular among developers. It receives approximately monthly updates to address security issues and provide minor feature changes. The latest VS Code version as of June 2026 is 1.124, and it brings enhancements to features for working with AI agents and editor productivity improvements. However, most updates that developers receive within VS Code are delivered through extensions.

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