A few months ago I heard “Visual Studio is coming for Mac.” At first, I did not believe the person who told me. But once I gained confidence in their sensibilities, I was thrilled. And now that it has arrived … well, it really isn’t Visual Studio for Mac. This is Visual Studio Code.
The idea was great. I was going to dump my slow Windows 7 box containing my decked out Visual Studio 2012 — extensions and all — and my dev onto my super fast 4K iMac. All without conceding to Boot Camp; but it looks like that time has not yet come.
Visual Studio Code is an integrated development environment (IDE) that runs on Mac — as well as Linux and Windows (for some reason). But Visual Studio it is not.
I gave it a good three hours of testing: the install was easy, until I needed to update Mono. And opening the first project from GitHub was easy as well. Here is what I found:
Since it was released a little more than a year ago, Visual Studio 2017 for Mac has grown from being an IDE primarily focused on mobile application development using Xamarin to one that includes support for all major.NET cross-platform workloads including Xamarin, Unity, and.NET Core. Persistent performance and reliability issues in the Visual Studio for Mac IDE will be addressed by replacing most of the editor internals with code from the Visual Studio Code editor. That news comes in a blog post today (Oct. 16) announcing Visual Studio for Mac 2019 and a new roadmap.
Pros
Light Weight
Yep, it is totally light. It is all about get in, code, commit and leave. Which is nice, because if you are used to Visual Studio, you know it can be very heavy. Visual Studio Code takes much less time to launch, and auto-complete is way faster.
![Mac Mac](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/content/binary/Windows-Live-Writer/992fcb4583b4_14A53/Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 11.28.35 PM_fdf8ac31-b250-4bd9-801c-fc4c360a5b54.png)
JSON Settings
Love the fact that all settings for the IDE are project-based and JSON files.
Search
The search interface is really nice. It is responsive and supports Regex.
Cons
Language Support
For the supported languages — JSON, CSS, HTML, {less}, and Node.js — intellisense and autocomplete work. And it’s fast. But for other languages, like PHP, all you get is syntax highlighting.
Mono
Well it’s pretty cool they support Mono, but my testing intellisense and autocomplete are not supported. It is .NET for Mac, for God’s sake. Why would you not put more effort into the code support here?
Build my Code!
You can only run Mono and Node.js projects. Which is pretty confusing, as the language support is not great for Mono, but you can debug for it. This was a freebie for them. All they do is call your locally installed mono compiler, which does the work. It is not likely, even with the really cute debug icon, you will be doing any debugging.
It was a bit of a let down, but it is still neat. The actual use cases must be pretty limited. I’m picturing a small team, or working on a very small component quickly. But I do not see Visual Studio Code replacing the developer’s dedicated IDE. Nor do I see it being used in any sustained capacity.
So why does it exist? I think it’s mostly a marketing play. It certainly was developed well. But likely it was the the path of least resistance, to see how their all-important “Developer Tools” focus was going to fit into Linux and Mac. It also builds confidence in Microsoft’s reconciliation with other applications. If I am Microsoft, I’m watching the download numbers and reviewing all feedback to simply gauge the reality of people using it. If you can get developers across any platform addicted to an IDE, then you have an “in” for the entire VSO suite.
But I also get this weird feeling, which I also got at Build 2015, that Microsoft and Xamarin are up to something. Although on so many levels they are competitors, they go out of their way to work together. And the more Microsoft places products on the same machine as Xamarin tools, the better. Conspiracy, much?
So I do not get to dump my Dell just yet, and at this pace I might fully move to a Cloud IDE before I do Visual Studio Code. I think it’s worth a try. But after a few hours you will get the gist. And honestly, if you have the Git client installed and need to make a quick change to your code before bed, it’s great.
Feature image via Flickr Creative Commons.
In this tutorial, I will show how to install visual studio code on mac. Visual Studio Code is free and available on your favorite platform – Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows. Download Visual Studio Code to experience a redefined code editor, optimized for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications.
Content Overview
Install visual studio code on mac.
Four easy steps can do the job for you. How can i run fl studio 12 on crossover for mac.
- Download Visual Studio Code for Mac.
- Double-click on the downloaded archive to expand the contents.
- Drag Visual Studio Code.app to the Applications folder, making it available in the Launchpad.
- Add VS Code to your Dock by right-clicking on the icon and choosing Options Keep in Doc.
After installing the VS Code, we can also configure the code to open from a command line, and it is pretty darn easy for us to do that.
- Launch VS Code.
- Open the Command Palette (⇧⌘P) and type ‘shell command‘ to find the Shell Command: Install ‘code’ command in PATH command.
Now, if you have created any project that goes into that folder and hit the following command to open that project into the Visual Studio Code.
See, it is very easy to install visual studio code on mac.
Languages Support.
Visual Studio Code For Mac Install
Some of the best language supports are as follows.
JavaScript
PHP
HTML
CSS, Sass, Less
TypeScript
Python
Go
C++
Visual Studio Mac Download
VS Code Extension Marketplace.
The features that Visual Studio Code includes out-of-the-box are just the start. VS Code extensions let you add languages, debuggers, and tools to your installation to support your development workflow. Visual Studio Code provides best tooling support for some Javascript frameworks like React.js, Angular, and Vue.js.
Code Intellisense.
VS Code IntelliSense is intelligent code completion, parameter info, and member lists. VS Code provides IntelliSense using TypeScript type declaration (typings) files to provide metadata about the JavaScript-based frameworks you are consuming in your application.
PHP extensions.
There are many PHP extensions out there, and some of the famous are as following.
- PHP Intellisense
- PHP Debug
Debugging
One of the main features of Visual Studio Code is its great debugging support. VS Code’s built-in debugger helps accelerate your edit, compile and debug loop.
Using Version Control in VS Code
Visual Studio Code has integrated source control and includes Git support in-the-box. Many other source control providers are available through extensions on the VS Code Marketplace.
Integrated Terminal
Visual Studio 2017 For Mac
In Visual Studio Code, you can open an integrated terminal, initially starting at the root of your workspace. R studio download for mac. It can be very convenient as you don’t have to switch windows or alter the state of an existing terminal to perform a quick command line task. If you are working in JS environment then often you need to install the new packages, and at this time this integrated terminal works fantastic.