Visual Studio 2019 lets you code, create and collaborate faster

Developers will be able to create apps and programs faster after Microsoft released Visual Studio 2019.

The latest version of the popular tool uses artificial intelligence to help people write code by making recommendations and spotting potential bugs and errors. For the first time, Visual Studio will also feature Live Share, allowing people to collaborate on code in real-time.

The program should help anyone who builds web applications and games to build and release apps faster and with fewer errors.

John Montgomery, Corporate Vice-President of Program Management at Microsoft, said: “These capabilities work with both your existing project and new projects – from cross-platform C++ applications, to .NET mobile apps for Android and iOS written using Xamarin, to cloud-native applications using Azure services. The goal with Visual Studio 2019 is to support these projects from development, through testing, debugging, and even deployment, all while minimising the need for you to switch between different applications, portals and websites.”

How British Airways uses Visual Studio

Click here to load media

Visual Studio uses AI in IntelliCode, which works with programming languages such as C#, Java and Python to learn how developers like to code, saving them time. It can also recommend C# code that isn’t available on open-source platforms.

Intellicode automatically scans code and uses machine learning and other techniques to spot irregular patterns that could be bugs or errors. It can also guide people to files that may need more attention.

Visual Studio 2019 offers more screen space for code, a one-click code clean-up, a document health indicator that will check when code is perfect, and improvements to the template selection screen and debugging. Developers can work on code offline before publishing to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform in minutes, where they can be used with Cognitive Services, Key Vault, Azure Storage and more.

During development of your code, users can now share it with colleagues in real-time using Live Share.

“Live Share complements the many diverse ways you work – whether it be together while co-located in the same office, remotely from home, or in different countries on opposite sides of the world,” said Jon Chu, Program Manager at Microsoft.

It now contains a read-only mode, and will partner with third-party extensions, including OzCode and CodeStream.

Visual Studio 2019 will also be available for Mac, featuring a new code editor, Start Window to create projects, the Unity debugger and web tool improvements.