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Microsoft Launching 'Visual Studio' Coding Platform for Mac This Week

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Microsoft plans to launch its integrated developer environment Visual Studio for the Mac later this week, turning its cloud-first development program into a cross-platform experience that developers can use on both Mac and Windows. Although the official press release has since been deleted, TechCrunch spotted the news and noted that the launch of Visual Studio on the Mac is expected to happen during the Connect() conference this week.

visual-studio-for-mac.jpg

Visual Studio for Mac will allow developers to create Windows apps on Apple's macOS platform, with the use of cloud platforms like Microsoft's Azure and Amazon Web Services to keep work stored across devices. Microsoft called Visual Studio for Mac a "counterpart" to its Windows version, and said that any Windows user "should feel right at home."
At its heart, Visual Studio for Mac is a macOS counterpart of the Windows version of Visual Studio. If you enjoy the Visual Studio development experience, but need or want to use macOS, you should feel right at home. Its UX is inspired by Visual Studio, yet designed to look and feel like a native citizen of macOS. And like Visual Studio for Windows, it's complemented by Visual Studio Code for times when you don't need a full IDE, but want a lightweight yet rich standalone source editor.
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Visual Studio on the Mac is said to run Microsoft's .NET software framework and include the programming language of C#. The Microsoft Connect() 2016 developer conference is set to run later this week, from November 16-18, so an official announcement from Microsoft about Visual Studio on the Mac is likely to happen sometime during the event.

Article Link: Microsoft Launching 'Visual Studio' Coding Platform for Mac This Week
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/14/microsoft-visual-studio-mac/
So does this mean that I can create C# Mac applications (meh - maybe a learning opportunity?)
or that I can edit and run Windows applications on a mac if I have the source code? (cool!)

Or can I just collaborate with others and just 'edit' code in the same environment that I'd use on Windows? (would work for those who have windows at work and macs at home)
 
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Yeah, I wonder how the debugging process will work or is this just an IDE and nothing else
 
Looks like they just rebranded their recently purchased Xamarin Studio. At least Windows VS users will now be able to complain louder about their being stuck with a 32-bit IDE.
 
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This might be more slated for iOS developers using their Xarmin framework.
 
bbeagle said:
So does this mean that I can create C# Mac applications (meh - maybe a learning opportunity?)
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Mostly, Microsoft cares about mobile and the Web, but yeah, you can also target those C# apps to macOS (and iOS, Android, and the Web).

or that I can edit and run Windows applications on a mac if I have the source code? (cool!)
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No.

No WPF, no Win32, no WinForms.

Or can I just collaborate with others and just 'edit' code in the same environment that I'd use on Windows? (would work for those who have windows at work and macs at home)
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Sort of.
 
As a ASP.Net developer, this is fantastic news. Have used Xamarin Studio in the past, and great to see MS taking the mac dev environment seriously!
 
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Great news. I love visual studio but have to use my VM to use it right now. Hopefully performance will be better having a MacOS version.
 
"Visual Studio for Mac will allow developers to create Windows apps on Apple's macOS platform"

I'm not sure why I'd want to do that. I might be interested in using .NET to build Mac apps, but if I need to build Windows apps, I'd probably just get a Windows machine (just like I'd get a Mac to build Mac or iOS apps).

"any Windows user 'should feel right at home.'"

Seems like they should have been aiming to make Mac users feel "right at home", since Windows users would presumably just use the Windows version of Visual Studio.
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cube said:
It is not a coding platform, it is a development environment.
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What do you see as the distinction? Every "development environment" I've ever used has fundamentally been a coding platform.
 
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Elbon said:
I'm not sure why I'd want to do that. I might be interested in using .NET to build Mac apps, but if I need to build Windows apps, I'd probably just get a Windows machine (just like I'd get a Mac to build Mac or iOS apps).
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It is a cloud development environment. Why should you need to use a junk OS to run that?
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Elbon said:
What do you see as the distinction? Every "development environment" I've ever used has fundamentally been a coding platform.
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Software development is much more than coding.

And you develop in an environment to deploy on a platform.
 
Tentatively interested in this. It would be a lot more useful if it supported Obj-C or Swift though. Both can be compiled on Windows.
 
flszen said:
Looks like they just rebranded their recently purchased Xamarin Studio. At least Windows VS users will now be able to complain louder about their being stuck with a 32-bit IDE.
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Hopefully it's better integrated. Xamarin downloads and installs a ton of completely separate projects as helpers and libraries and runtimes and SDKs. Try and put all that crap onto 300 lab Macs to support teaching software development - and have it actually work.
Xcode was almost as bad but Apple have made it much more self-contained with the latest version. It includes all the "current version" SDKs and docsets out-of-the-box and only needs to download bits if you want to work with older platforms.
 
stevet said:
It is Xamarin with the VisualStudio tags. Debugging works pretty good, it uses Xcode to compile, link, and debug.
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Does it support ASP.Net? I have to maintain a couple of programs written in that and if I could do that without having to use a VM, that would be fantastic.
 
Hm... I still prefer XCode 3 but as I write cross plattform code... Writing code on a Mac laptop instead of a windows one is quite an advantage for me... I would need the newer XCodes only for deploying... Surely will give this a try!

I wonder what compiler comes with!
 
richpjr said:
Does it support ASP.Net? I have to maintain a couple of programs written in that and if I could do that without having to use a VM, that would be fantastic.
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I don't know that, all my dev has been with android and iOS using C# and xamarin.
 
If this would really work and I could take a .net project from wi does and build it in OS X, that would be a really big deal. Of course without third party components such as active x and other but I'd love to have this.
 
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