Facebook adopts Visual Studio internally and will help improve remote development

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What you need to know

  • Facebook will adopt Visual Studio internally for development.
  • Facebook already uses Visual Studio internally in beta.
  • Facebook will also help improved remote development through Visual Studio as part of a partnership with Microsoft.

Facebook announced a partnership with Microsoft that will help remote development through Visual Studio. Additionally, Visual Studio Code will become the default development environment at Facebook. Facebook uses a wide variety of coding languages and tools, but the company has been migrating towards Visual Studio for some time.

A new post from Facebook details some of the history of development at Facebook, as well as the company's move towards Visual Studio. The post states that in 2018, Facebook announced that it would move from Nuclide, its own internal development environment, over to Visual Studio Code. Facebook explains that it moved to Visual Studio because "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."

In addition to moving towards Visual Studio as a default development environment, Facebook also plans to improve remote development using the tool. As Facebook points out, a large amount of development is done on servers "While engineers at Facebook have Visual Studio Code installed locally on laptops, most development is done directly on individually-reserved development servers that live within our data centers." Facebook announced that in addition to using remote development extensions, the company will work with Microsoft to improve remote development extensions to help the development community.

Facebook working with Microsoft, brings a massive company into the Visual Studio environment and also provides Microsoft with feedback from a large set of developers at Facebook. Facebook concludes the post by stating, "In teaming with Microsoft, we're looking forward to being part of the community that helps Visual Studio Code continue to be a world class development tool."

Sean Endicott
News Writer and apps editor

Sean Endicott is a tech journalist at Windows Central, specializing in Windows, Microsoft software, AI, and PCs. He's covered major launches, from Windows 10 and 11 to the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT. Sean's journey began with the Lumia 740, leading to strong ties with app developers. Outside writing, he coaches American football, utilizing Microsoft services to manage his team. He studied broadcast journalism at Nottingham Trent University and is active on X @SeanEndicott_ and Threads @sean_endicott_.