Visual Studio Live Share brings collaborative coding to developers

Visual Studio Live Share

Speaking at its Connect(); 2017 developer event today, Microsoft took the wraps off of Visual Studio Live Share, a new collaborative coding feature for developers. Currently in development, Visual Studio Live Share will allow developers using Visual Studio 2017 or Visual Studio Code to work on a project together in real-time.

When you start a collaborative session, Microsoft says, your teammates can read code you've shared without having to clone a repo or install any dependencies. From Microsoft:

When your teammate edits a file, they get editor enhancements like IntelliSense, statement completion, and suggestions. Each of you can open files, navigate, edit code, highlight, or refactor - and changes are instantly reflected. As you edit you can see your teammate's cursor, jump to the location of your teammate's carat, or follow their actions.

Visual Studio Live Share will be available soon in a limited private preview, and you can ​check it out in action in the video below.

On top of Visual Studio Live Share, Microsoft had a number of other announcements for the developer crowd at Connect();. Of note are new Visual Studio tools for AI, which developers can now leverage to develop AI models within Visual Studio. Azure has also received some updates based around machine learning, AI, and more:

  • Azure IoT Edge - Azure IoT Edge preview availability, enabling AI, advanced analytics and machine learning at the Internet of Things (IoT) edge.
  • Azure Machine Learning updates - Integration with Azure IoT Edge and AI deployment on iOS devices with Core ML, bringing AI everywhere from the cloud to the IoT edge of devices.
  • Azure Databricks - Designed in collaboration with the founders of Apache Spark, the preview of Azure Databricks is a fast, easy and collaborative Apache Spark-based analytics platform that delivers one-click setup, streamlined workflows and an interactive workspace. Native integration with Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Storage, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Active Directory and Power BI simplifies the creation of modern data warehouses that enable organizations to provide self-service analytics and machine learning over all data with enterprise-grade performance and governance.

For more, developers can check out Microsoft's full list of announcements from Connect();.

Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl