Anyone who is a fan of cross-platform coding will be happy to know that Microsoft has decided to bring Visual Studio to the Mac. This shouldn't be overly surprising seeing as Microsoft has been adopting a new strategy as of late where many of its in-house software have been ported over to third-party operating systems.
This change has also been made possible due to Microsoft's shift to the cloud. Programming is usually done on a local server, but with the rise of the cloud, many developers are using Microsoft Azure and other competing platforms to get work done.
By allowing Visual Studio to be cross-platform, Microsoft is hoping to hold on to professional programmers who prefer to work on their projects from any operating system. It's also a move that could increase the amount of apps developers submit to the Windows Store.
You see, developing apps through Visual Studio is based on the app development platform Xamarin. Microsoft purchased Xamarin earlier this year in a bid to make it easier for developers to port their Android and iOS apps over to Windows 10. This is the next move to achieve this goal, and time will tell if it works out.
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it would be adding native support for Bash, the popular command line found on Linux. This was well received by the open source community, and we expect the same to happen here with Visual Studio coming to the Mac with Xamarin inside.
"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," according to Microsoft. "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."
Now, we have no idea how it performs on a Mac, but we're almost certain there should be no differences when compared with the Windows version of the software. Furthermore, interested folks should keep an eye out for Microsoft's Connect conference later this week, for the company will give developers a look into what it's working on.
While Microsoft is preparing to deliver Visual Studio to Mac users, the company must now contend with one of its partners. The Russian anti-virus company Kaspersky is not pleased with Microsoft bundling Windows Defender with Windows 10 and how the company goes about it.
