Visual Studio Online: Public Preview of Microsoft's Online Development Environment

The original announcement dates back to May. The well-known development environment from Redmond had arrived on the web as a private preview, and it was only a matter of time before its public release. That's exactly what Microsoft did during the opening of its Ignite conference. Whether you plan to create a long-term project or something simple and disposable, Visual Studio Online is within your reach, directly in the browser.

Microsoft's bet on the cloud is, for lack of a better word, gigantic. Almost everything the company offers behaves as a service, or is on its way to doing so. Office 365 and Windows 10 are the two most important examples, but Redmond wants to add (or rather, seduce) a very special audience: software developers. Bash and the Linux subsystem in Windows 10 were just the first step. What's next on the list? Online development environments.

Visual Studio Online: A Browser-Based Development Environment

Let's make room for Visual Studio Online. Originally announced as a private preview limited to a handful of developers, it now has a public profile. Custom development environments accessible from any point with an internet connection and a browser, backed by the monster that is Azure. Microsoft highlights that software development is increasingly collaborative, so developers need to move from projects to codebases and vice versa quickly, without losing productivity. Visual Studio Online is the key.

As expected, the service has integration with GitHub (let's not forget that Microsoft bought it in 2018). But if someone wants to register their own virtual and physical machines, they can do so without too much trouble. The alternative is to let Azure handle all the heavy lifting, although that will cost us some money. Two of the most relevant resources we will find in Visual Studio Online (according to Microsoft) are LiveShare for real-time collaboration, and IntelliCode, its AI-assisted development module. Ready to try it? Visit the official page and sign in with a Microsoft account, but it may also ask for an Azure account.

Official site: Click here — Source: TechCrunch.