Microsoft has announced Visual Studio for Mac at the Connect(); conference this month.
For the first time in its history, Microsoft is bringing its Visual Studio development tool to the Mac. As Microsoft explains in its blog, “At its heart, Visual Studio for Mac is a macOS counterpart of the Windows version of Visual Studio.” The IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is designed to feel familiar to a macOS user, while still offering the cross-platform and cloud-based development capabilities of its Windows counterpart.
This IDE will reside alongside Visual Studio Code for macOS, which is a stand-alone, cross-platform text editor for developers.
Microsoft’s sudden interest in cross-platform development seems to stem from a deeper desire to connect with developers, regardless of their OS of choice, and offer them a common, connected platform to work on.
Microsoft has shown tremendous interest in cross-platform development this year, notably with their acquisition of Xamarin. Xamarin started out as a cross-platform development tool for developing iOS, Android, Windows and Mac apps. With its acquisition, Microsoft integrated its workflows into Visual Studio itself.
As TechCrunch suggests, Microsoft has realised that the future depends on cloud-based tools and services like Azure and that’s also where the company is making its money. If more developers start using Visual Studio, more developers will inevitably start using Microsoft’s Azure cloud services.
For developers, this is a win-win anyway.