Visual Studio 2019 Preview 1 is available to download for Windows and Mac. Simultaneously, Microsoft said .NET Core 2.2 is now generally available, while .NET Core 3.0 Preview 1 is also available from today. However, the company has not confirmed when the full launch of VS 2019 will happen. As the name suggests, we know it will be some time during the coming year. As there are plenty of new features to discuss, let’s dive straight in. Microsoft says Visual Studio 2019 provides significant improvements in collaboration and productivity. Leading an array of new features is a new start window environment that allows developers to begin code entry faster.
This new start window experience also increases the available coding space, while also boasting a new search tool, smarter debugging, AI-powered assistance, and access to VS Live Share. Microsoft has also tweaked the UI and UX, albeit to a lesser degree than the start window. Visual Studio 2019 provides a cleaner UI experience while retaining the platform’s blue theme. Microsoft has reduced the size of the title and menu bar for a more compact look and feel. In terms of coding, VS 2019 makes code more maintainable and consistent by adding new refactoring capabilities. Microsoft has also added a document health indicator and code clean-up too.
IntelliCode and Live Share
IntelliCode is a feature Microsoft introduced at Build 2018 earlier this year and is now available in Visual Studio 2019. If you are unfamiliar with IntelliCode is a suite of AI-powered tools that provide developers with more functionality for increasing productivity. The company says its AI has been trained on over 2,000 open-source repos. As for Live Share, the VS extension has new features to boost collaboration abilities for dev’s, including real-time tools. Developers can now share desktop applications, comment on code while sharing, and more.
