Build 2024: GitHub Copilot Comes to Visual Studio as Visual Studio Code for Education Goes GA

Microsoft announced two major updates for its Visual Studio family of developer tools at its annual Build conference on Tuesday.

First up, the flagship Visual Studio 2022 integrated developer environment (IDE) is finally getting integrated support for GitHub Copilot in its newly released update, version 17.10. This integration represents “a significant leap in coding productivity,” Microsoft says, one that will transform the way developers code, debug, and manage projects. It “revolutionizes the development experience with smarter, context-aware coding assistance and intuitive interfaces for an enhanced workflow.”

Visual Studio 2022 version 17.10 also includes a simpler, JSON-based settings interface for customizing the IDE (which I assume is based on the system used by Visual Studio Code), new debugging tools like Attach to Process and Conditional Breakpoints, new C++ and game developer advances like pinnable CMake targets and updated Unreal Engine macros, new tools for offline Teams Bot debugging and Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 extensions, AI-powered code reviews, new Visual Studio Marketplace extensibility capabilities, performance upgrades for the Windows Forms designer (!), and Arm support for the SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT).

Microsoft also announced that Visual Studio Code for Education will be generally available (GA) by the end of the month.

“Visual Studio Code for Education is a free, online computer science education platform that will provide an integrated curriculum and a sandbox coding environment for everyone,” Microsoft explains. “With zero setup or installation, anyone can be a developer and start learning to code with Visual Studio Code. [It’s] guided by the support, insights, and partnership of collaborating educators and students.”

Visual Studio Code for Education is free and available across multiple devices, platforms, and browsers. It provides a simplified code-editing experience optimized for education and an education-focused curriculum that’s “designed to be inclusive, offering clear explanations and relevant examples that make learning code a realistic goal for all learners,” Microsoft says. And because Python is the most popular programming language for learners, there’s a special emphasis on this technology, with an Introduction to Python course and many bite-sized coding activities.