Microsoft introduced a new development tool this week called Visual Studio Code.
I have spent a lot of time in Visual Studio over the years, so what caught my attention is that this is not another version of the full Visual Studio IDE. It is a much lighter editor, and Microsoft is making it available on Windows, Mac and Linux.
That alone makes it interesting.
Microsoft has been talking more about cross-platform development lately, and Visual Studio Code feels like another sign that they are serious about developers using Microsoft tools even when they are not working on Windows.
It is still a preview, so I would not expect it to replace Visual Studio for the kind of .NET development I normally do. But for editing JavaScript, web projects, configuration files, or just quickly opening a folder of code, I can see where something lighter could be useful.
I am going to install it and spend some time with it.
It is definitely not what I would have expected Microsoft to release a few years ago.