At Microsoft Build this year we have many exciting announcements - .NET Core 2.1 RC, Future of Windows Desktop Development, Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7, Visual Studio for Mac version 7.5, Xamarin Forms 3.0 General Availability, Visual Studio Live Share Public Preview, and we introduce Visual Studio IntelliCode.

Since we released the Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate, we’ve had nearly 700,000 downloads! We’ve been busy taking customer feedback and enhancing the user experience to deliver the most powerful and productive version of Visual Studio yet. We’ve also been fine-tuning the Visual Studio family of tools. Now, the day that we have been working toward is here.

Twenty-five years ago, I started my first day at Microsoft as a developer on the Access team, and then as a developer on a newly created product – Visual InterDev. I remember how the emphasis was on the Visual part of our various product offerings, we have come a long way to the Visual Studio we have now. Today, I’m proud and humbled that Visual Studio is turning twenty – we’re celebrating two decades of Visual Studio! As we hit this great milestone, I’m also excited to announce that Visual Studio 2017 will be released on March 7.