Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 is the new version of the Microsoft IDE that now allows develop applications for Windows, Mac y Linux, as well as for other platforms.
The software, available for Windows and macOS, has everything you need to create great mobile apps, desk, websites and cloud applications.
What's more, now you can write code for iOS, Android, Linux, Windows and other systems, increasing your productivity and facilitating work as a freelance or team developer.
Visual Studio 2017
The new version of the Microsoft development environment allows you to create smarter applications, easily locate and correct errors, integrate with the cloud, create quality mobile applications and support for more programming languages.
Mirosoft Visual Studio 2017 have 3 editions (for Windows and Mac), each for specific purposes:
- Business: The most comprehensive edition for the demanding quality and scale needs of equipment of all sizes.
- Professional: The professional development tool for small teams.
- Community: The free open source IDE, ideal for students and independent developers.
What's more, has the following tools:
- Professional test: Get quality and collaboration throughout the development process. Integrated test case management, manual and exploratory testing tools.
- Test agent: Identifiers and components to run automated tests and remote load tests.
- Test controller: Distribute automated tests to multiple machines.
- Construction tools: Provides the necessary tools to create MSBuild-based applications.
- Feedback Client: Users provide feedback for Visual Studio Team Services or Team Foundation Server.
Visual Studio for Mac
With Visual Studio 2017 for Mac Can develop Android applications, iOS, tvOS, watchOS (.NET technology), desktop programs for Mac, .NET Core applications, ASP.NET Core web apps and even cross-platform Unity games.
Depending on the version you install (Enterprise, Professiona o Community), you will get different functionalities like a code editor, depuration, source code control, etc.
What programming languages does it support?
By default, it's compatible with Languages C # y F #. Although it is also compatible with the .NET Core platform (to create applications for Windows, Linux y Mac) y Xamarin (Android apps, macOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS).
Thanks to its compatibility with Xamarin, which has its own Android SDK manager, you can create user interfaces visually from Android Designer.
In the same way, with the iOS designer, also know as IOS Designer, you will be able to create user interfaces and transitions for iOS, tvOS and watchOS.
But that is not all:
Visual Studio for Mac also supports cross-platform game development with Unity. If you are interested, you can see this complete start guide.
What's new?
- Redesigned home page.
- New installation experience.
- Improved code navigation.
- Office development tools enhancements for Visual Studio, SQL Server, Data and Developer Analytics, XAML applications and Node.js tools.
- Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova.
- Tools for Universal Windows App.
- .NET Core y ASP.NET Core.
- Testing tools.
- A fresh installation of Team Explorer.
- Visual Studio Tools for Unity.
- Python development workload improvements.
- ReSharper Ultimate 2017.1.
- Accessibility improvements.
- Azure Stack y Azure Government Clouds.
- .NET Framework development tools 4.7.
- SQL Server data tools (SSDT)
- New Windows Application Packaging Project Templates.
- Xamarin Live Player for Xamarin.Forms.
- Visual Studio ClickOnce Tools.
- iOS Remote Simulator for Windows.
- New templates for iOS and Android projects.
- .NET productivity improvements.
- Azure compatibility, UWP and other workloads.
- Enhancements to the Entity Framework tool.
- Support for the Android Hyper-V emulator when running on the April update 2018 Windows 10.
- Visual Basic has performance improvements.
- F compiler improvements #.
- Support for ASP.NET .NET Framework Secrets.
- New extensibility features.
Supported languages
As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, this version now supports more languages, ideal for creating applications for different platforms.
In general, These are the programming languages supported by Visual Studio 2017:
- C #: A modern object-oriented programming language with functional programming capabilities for the creation of any application on the platform. GRANDCHILD.
- Visual Basic: Another object-oriented programming language, easy to learn and platform based. NET, focused on creating Windows applications without difficulty.
- Visual C ++: Efficient and flexible for creating Windows applications, Linux, iOS and Android.
- F#: A modern and functional programming language with object-oriented capabilities for the platform. NET, focused on facilitating functional programming for any task.
- JavaScript: A lightweight, cross-platform scripting language that is widely used to facilitate the creation of more interactive websites.
- Typescript: A superset of JavaScript that compiles to raw JavaScript and allows you to create more scalable code.
- Python (preview): A high-level dynamic object-oriented programming language often used for rapid application development.
- A: An extensible programming language often used for graphing and statistical calculations.
Development tools
This new version of Visual Studio allows you to create applications and games for Android, iOS, Linux, Windows and other devices.
What's more, you can choose the tools you need based on your application needs and the language you want to use:
- Xamarin for Visual Studio: A common code base in C # for each and every device.
- Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova: A common code base for HTML, CSS y JavaScript.
- Visual Studio Tools for Unity: For 2D game development / 3D to C #.
- C ++ for various development platforms: C code share libraries and apps ++.
- Visual Studio Emulator for Android: Debug and test your Android apps no matter what IDE you use.
- Create games with Visual Studio development tools, as DirectX, Unity, Unreal, Coconuts and more.
On the other hand, ASP.NET Core it is a major update of MVC, WebAPI and SignalR, and runs on Windows, Mac y Linux.
Supported platforms
The version 2017 Visual Studio supports application development for Windows, Linux, Android, iOS and macOS (no debugging), as we will see in detail below:
Windows
These are the Windows platforms for which applications can be created:
- Windows 10 / 8.1 / 8/7 / Vista / XP
- Windows Server 2016/2012 R2 / 2012/2008 R2 / 2008/2003
- Xbox One
- Hololens
- Windows 10 mobile
- Windows Phone 8.1
Android
Create native applications for Android using the tool Xamarin along with various programming languages like C #, Java, C ++, etc.
What's more, for Android game development, you can use Visual Studio Tools for Unity and Unreal Engine. You can also use Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio for Mac to create Android applications with a Mac.
Linux
The final version of Visual Studio 2017 allows you to compile Linux applications using C ++, Python y Node.js.
In general, you will be able to develop applications for the following GNU distributions / Linux:
- CentOS 7.1 y Oracle Linux 7.1
- Debian 8
- Fedora 23
- Linux Mint 17
- openSUSE 13.2
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2
- Ubuntu 14.04 Y 16.04
ios
Create and debug Applications para iOS with Apache Cordova, C ++, Unity or Xamarin and a Mac configured for iOS development using remotebuild, vcremote, Visual Studio Tools for Unity or Mac Xamarin Agent.
You can also use Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio for Mac to create iOS applications using a Mac.
Mac OS
Create console apps and ASP.NET apps for macOS. However, debugging is not accepted.
Both Xamarin Studio and Visual Studio for Mac let you manage a feature-rich IDE that allows you to create native applications for MacOS, including ASP.NET and C #.
The software is available for Windows PC 7 SP1, 8.1 (with to update 2919355), Windows 10 (version 1507 onwards), Windows Server 2012 R2 o 2016.
For his part, Mac users must have Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11 or macOS Sierra 10.12.
