4 ms·

Microsoft has always had a huge developer tools footprint, so it's a natural fit.

• orthoxerox 6y ago
  That they did, but VS had always been aimed at MS tech stack: VC++, VB, C#, F#. And then VS Code appeared seemingly out of the blue, rapidly becoming the editor of choice for languages all across the tech landscape.
  • scudd 6y ago
    I think the VSCode extension marketplace greatly helps with the huge breadth of tooling. Not sure if this is applicable to regular Visual Studio as well, I've honestly never used it.
    • Osiris 6y ago
      Visual Studio (full edition) doesn't have extensions. It's a full blown IDE and everything is built-in. Despite having a similar name, the two products sharing almost nothing in common.
      • nvrspyx 6y ago
        I'm pretty late to this, but Visual Studio (full edition) does have extensions. Resharper, for instance, is a popular Visual Studio extension. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/ https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/
  • WorldMaker 6y ago
    The first version of Microsoft made BASIC interpreters for any and every "home computer" that asked them to (and was willing to buy it). For a large chunk of the lifetime of the Macintosh, Microsoft was the largest Mac OS application developer, and cross-platform C++ tools was important for that. The Microsoft of "only one tech stack" is probably the outlier, more than the rule.