Visual Studio Code, often abbreviated as VS Code, is a source-code editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, and macOS. It includes support for debugging, embedded Git control, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, and code refactoring. The editor is free and open-source, although the term "open-source" applies differently to different components of Visual Studio Code.
Visual Studio Code was first announced in November 2013 under the codename "Monaco". The project was developed as a lightweight editor to complement the existing Visual Studio suite, aiming to provide an editor with a rich set of features for web and cloud development. It was officially released on April 29, 2015, for Windows, Linux, and macOS.
Since its initial release, Visual Studio Code has seen numerous updates and enhancements, focusing on improving performance, usability, and adding new features. Here are some key milestones:
Visual Studio Code is built using Electron, a framework for creating desktop applications with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. The core of VS Code, known as the "Monaco Editor", is the actual code editor component, which is also used in other Microsoft products like Azure DevOps.
While Visual Studio Code is open-source, its source code is available under the MIT License with some proprietary components like telemetry. The core editor is open-source, but features like telemetry, license key checks, and some branding elements are not part of the open-source release. Instead, there's a community project named VSCodium which offers VS Code without Microsoft branding or telemetry.