Facebook has decided to embrace Visual Studio Code to drive its own development. Microsoft’s solution is a good choice considering its widespread support in the open source community. Indeed, VS is mature platform that is perfect of a major development environment. In a blog post, the social network explains why it chose Microsoft’s tool to drive internal development: “Visual Studio Code is a very popular development tool, with great investment and support from Microsoft and the open-source community. It runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and has a robust and well-defined extension API that enables us to continue building the important capabilities required for the large-scale development that is done at the company. Visual Studio Code is a platform we can safely bet our development platform future.” Furthermore, Facebook will also help to improve Visual Studio code remote development (IDE) by contributing to the open source. “For example, when it comes to code, Facebook is a polyglot. Code is written in Python, C++, Java and in some of our own created languages like Flow, Hack and Reason. Extensions exist to support these languages, which include syntax highlighting, formatters, linters, etc. Flow, for example, has had a Facebook-developed public Visual Studio Code extension since 2015. With Facebook’s internal move to Visual Studio, Flow has been in active development, through areas like Language Service Protocol (LSP) improvements, to better ensure the language works great with Visual Studio Code.”
Renewed Friendship
It’s been a while since Microsoft and Facebook partnered in a significant way. The two companies used to be regular co-collaborators, teaming on various solutions such as app development and promotional efforts. However, in recent years Facebook has preferred to walk its own path and develop its own software internally. The new connection with Visual Studio changes the recent trend and teams Microsoft and FB once again.
