Visual Studio Code as a development environment

Visual Studio Code is a lightweight and powerful cross-platform development environment for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

You can use a wide range of programming languages such as JavaScript, TypeScript, and Node.js as well as C++, C#, Python, PHP, Go, and the .NET Core and Unity runtimes via language and runtime extensions.

It comes with a streamlined, clean, and very efficient user interface. There is a file and folder explorer on the left and a source code editor on the right, showing the contents of files you have opened and are currently working on:

The user interface consists of the following areas:

• Activity bar: Provides several different views and additional context-specific indicators such as outgoing code changes when Git is enabled.
• Sidebar: Contains a file and folder explorer for working on your projects.
• Editor groups: This is the main area for working with your code and navigating within it. Up to three source code editor windows can be opened side by side at the same time.
• Panels: Serves to display panels with output or debug information, errors and warnings, or an integrated terminal.
• Status bar: Additional information concerning projects and files you have edited.

Please go to https://code.visualstudio.com/docs for additional information on Visual Studio Code and its capacities and functionalities. It will be our primary choice for illustrating how to build ASP.NET Core 2.0 applications on Linux.