The current Visual Studio 2005 version supports development in the following languages: Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++ and Visual J#. It also supports editing of HTML, CSS and JScript (Microsoft's version of JavaScript). Naturally the emphasis is on Microsoft's .NET framework -- Microsoft products such as the IIS Web server, SQL Server database, and the Windows operating system in all its various forms.
The first version of Visual Studio appeared ten years ago, but it has evolved far beyond that initial version. As with the NetBeans and Eclipse IDEs I discussed in earlier articles, Visual Studio is trying to keep up with the trends in development languages and architectures that keep appearing on the developer scene. This means a major upheaval every few years. The current version, Visual Studio 2005 will be replaced by Visual Studio 2007 later this year. Beta test versions of this next version are available now and many of the technologies which will be part of the 2007 version are available in early forms.
