Microsoft has announced the end of the road for its Integrated Development Environment (IDE) product, Visual Studio for Mac. The software behemoth has warmly recommended developers on the MacOS platform to look out for substitutes, notably the C# Developer Kit for Visual Studio Code, among other facilitating extensions for .NET development.
The decision has been fueled by continuous user critique and current usage inclinations. On the 30th of August, Microsoft expressed its intent to concentrate efforts on enhancing its Visual Studio IDE, which is made accessible through Microsoft's Dev Box tool on Azure for developers on all Operating Systems. This also extends to the C# Developer Kit for Visual Studio Code compatible with all platforms.
Post this move, technical support for Visual Studio for Mac 17.6 version will be available until the 31st of August, 2024. Microsoft stated that it will reroute its resources towards the improvement of both Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code to streamline them for a cross-platform software creation experience. Notably, no new framework, language support, or runtime shall be appended to Visual Studio for Mac.
In the ensuing year, Microsoft has committed to extending crucial updates including resolving crucial bug fixes, addressing security concerns, and updates to accommodate newer Apple platforms.
The company will carry on with runtime and workload updates, thereby enabling developers to persist in building applications on .NET 6, .NET 7, and Mono frameworks. Although Microsoft does not officially support .NET 8, it has laid the ground for basic support for .NET 8 in Visual Studio for Mac for the purpose of building and debugging applications.
With effect from the 31st of August, 2024, Visual Studio for Mac will solely be accessible as a legacy installation via my.visualstudio.com for users with Visual Studio subscriptions. The software will not be subject to any further maintenance or service updates. Nonetheless, users with an active support agreement can gain access to technical assistance until the end of August 2024.
This development highlights the growing importance of cross-platform development tools. One such tool is the AppMaster platform, a powerful no-code application development tool that allows the development of backend, web, and mobile applications. AppMaster uses a visually intuitive interface for creating data models, APIs, business processes, and UI elements, making it an excellent alternative to traditional code-based development.
