Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) exclusively developed by Microsoft. It was first introduced in the year 2000 and is actively used to develop software programs, such as desktop applications, websites, web apps, web services, mobile applications, games, etc.
An integrated development environment (IDE) is a feature-rich application that can be used for many aspects of software development. The Visual Studio IDE makes it easy to edit, debug, build, and publish your app.
The first version of Visual Studio was released in 1997 and it was known as Visual Studio 97. Here is the brief version history for Visual Studio.
| Product name | Version | Release date |
|---|---|---|
| Visual Studio 2019 | 16.0 | 2019-04-02 |
| Visual Studio 2017 | 15.0 | 2017-03-07 |
| Visual Studio 2015 | 14.0 | 2015-07-20 |
| Visual Studio 2013 | 12.0 | 2013-10-17 |
| Visual Studio 2012 | 11.0 | 2012-09-12 |
| Visual Studio 2010 | 10.0 | 2010-04-12 |
| Visual Studio 2008 | 9.0 | 2007-11-19 |
| Visual Studio 2005 | 8.0 | 2005-11-07 |
| Visual Studio .NET 2003 | 7.1 | 2003-04-24 |
| Visual Studio .NET (2002) | 7.0 | 2002-02-13 |
| Visual Studio 6.0 | 6.0 | 1998-09-02 |
| Visual Studio 97 | 50 | 1997-03-19 |
The currently supported Visual Studio version is 2019. It is available since 2 April 2019 for download.
Here is the basic information on the system requirements for installing and running the Visual Studio 2019 family of products.
The following are the minimum system requirements for Visual Studio 2019.
| Operating Systems | Windows 10 version 1703 or higher: Home, Professional, Education, and Enterprise Windows Server 2019: Standard and Datacenter Windows Server 2016: Standard and Datacenter Windows 8.1 (with Update 2919355): Core, Professional, and Enterprise Windows Server 2012 R2 (with Update 2919355): Essentials, Standard, Datacenter Windows 7 SP1 (with latest Windows Updates): Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate |
| Hardware | 1.8 GHz or faster processor. Quad-core or better recommended 2 GB of RAM; 8 GB of RAM recommended (2.5 GB minimum if running on a virtual machine) Hard disk space: Minimum of 800MB up to 210 GB of available space, depending on features installed; typical installations require 20-50 GB of free space. Hard disk speed: to improve performance, install Windows and Visual Studio on a solid state drive (SSD). Video card that supports a minimum display resolution of 720p (1280 by 720); Visual Studio will work best at a resolution of WXGA (1366 by 768) or higher. |
| Supported Languages | English, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. |
The following are the minimum system requirements for Visual Studio 2019 for Mac.
| Operating Systems | macOS Catalina 10.15 macOS Mojave 10.14 macOS High Sierra 10.13 The latest version of Xcode 11 requires macOS Mojave 10.14, therefore Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Mac projects also require that minimum version. |
| Hardware | 1.8 GHz or faster processor. Dual-core or better recommended. 4 GB of RAM; 8 GB of RAM recommended (4 GB minimum if running on a virtual machine). Hard disk required, by default: approx 5.6GB. |
| Supported Languages | English, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. |
Microsoft Visual Studio is available in the following three editions.
The Community Edition was announced on 12 November 2014, as a new free version, with similar functionality to Visual Studio Professional.
The following uses also allow unlimited usage.
Visual Studio Community is oriented towards individual developers and small teams.
As of Visual Studio 2010, the Professional edition is the entry-level commercial edition of Visual Studio.
In addition to the features provided by the Professional edition, the Enterprise edition provides a new set of software development, database development, collaboration, metrics, architecture, testing, and reporting tools.