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.

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 news writer and apps editor for Windows Central with 11+ years of experience. A Nottingham Trent journalism graduate, Sean has covered the industry’s arc from the Lumia era to the launch of Windows 11 and generative AI. Having started at Thrifter, he uses his expertise in price tracking to help readers find genuine hardware value.

Beyond tech news, Sean is a UK sports media pioneer. In 2017, he became one of the first to stream via smartphone and is an expert in AP Capture systems. A tech-forward coach, he was named 2024 BAFA Youth Coach of the Year. He is focused on using technology—from AI to Clipchamp—to gain a practical edge.