Yesterday, Microsoft officially launched the latest version of its Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE).
The Visual Studio IDE was launched together with an update to its .NET framework, and is now available for download (and purchase).
Microsoft also released a couple of new download numbers for various tools in the Visual Studio ecosystem. Visual Studio Community, for example, the much-improved free version of the software for non-enterprise users, has now been downloaded 5 million times since its launch seven months ago.
More than 3.2 million developers have now registered for the Visual Studio Online services. Visual Studio Code, the standalone code editor for Windows, Mac and Linux, has seen half a million downloads since its launch three months ago. More than half of those downloads came from Mac and Linux users.
The company’s aim with Visual Studio is to make good on its promise to deliver a tool that allows developers to target all the popular platforms. The core theme is that VS 2015 is a cross-platform tool set.
Visual Studio team integrated Apache Cordova, for example, so developers can write iOS and Android apps using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. They can also take their C++ language skills and build shared components for their iOS, Android and Windows apps. Thanks to its partnership with Xamarin, developers can also take their .NET apps and target iOS and Android. For Android developers, Visual Studio now even includes a built-in Android emulator.
VS 2015 also includes many new debugging and diagnostic features, all of which have now been bundled into a single tool.
[Via]
