Microsoft’s IDE platform, Visual Studio is turning twenty years old this year. And this calls for a celebration. Thus, Microsoft is planning to treat developers with the official — complete — release of Visual Studio 2017 on March 7, said the blog post. The platform saw its first official release back in 1997 when it started out with the aim of bringing together all developer tools under one roof.

Talking about the launch, Julia Liuson, Corporate VP, Visual Studio at Microsoft says,

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.

Back in March 2016, the Redmond giant announced the launch of Visual Studio 2017 in public preview. It was then being internally referred to as Visual Studio Next (or Visual Studio “15”) and saw an official beta release in November of last year. This was the release which extended the scope of the IDE beyond Windows, by making a preview version available for Mac users as well. Now, Microsoft is sticking to its planned release in early 2017. And we cannot be more pumped for an improved and integrated coding tool.

To commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Visual Studio, Microsoft will launch the said iteration through a two-day livestreamed launch event. It will kick off on March 7 with a keynote address and interactive technical demo sessions led by Julia Liuson, VSTS CVP Brian Harry, VS Mobile Distinguished Engineer Miguel de Icaza, and VS and .NET PPM Scott Hanselman. Then, the following day will focus on hosting a full day of live interactive training sessions for developers.

The next iteration of this IDE software kit, Visual Studio 2017 introduces improvements to feedback workflow, code navigation, code fixes, IntelliSense, refactoring and debugging practices. It also tones down and simplifies the install process, which also allows you to choose the Github extension in the very beginning. The installation process is now also more quick, with less system impact and completely redesigned experience.

Further, reminiscing over the launch of Visual Studio and its development over the years, Liuson continues to add,

As part of the team that created the first version of Visual Studio, it was an ambitious goal to bring together everything developers needed to build applications for the client, the server, and the web. Twenty years ago, on January 28, 1997, we announced that we were going to launch Visual Studio 97 – a single product that would bring together best-of-breed productivity tools for any developer.

Also, she adds that Visual Studio has since managed to grow from an IDE platform into a complete suite of products and services, including Visual Studio Team Services, Visual Studio Code, and many others. It, however, now extends their mobile-first, cloud-first offerings to span across every platform — Android, iOS, Linux, MacOS, and Windows. Now, get ready for Visual Studio 2o17!