Competition has become intense in the market for AI coding services. Microsoft is working on an answer.

The first preview of Visual Studio 2022 17.6 boosts GitHub integration and also sees AI-assisted IntelliCode instantly offering up real-world API code examples -- no more context switching required.

StarCoder, a new open-access large language model (LLM) for code generation from ServiceNow and Hugging Face, is now available for Visual Studio Code, positioned as an alternative to GitHub Copilot.

It steps through installing git, Java, Kick Assembler, and Visual Studio Code. Beyond that, it even explains how to use these tools in partnership with VICE – the Versatile Commodore Emulator.

Microsoft’s new C# Dev Kit extension for Visual Studio Code turns the programmer’s editor into a complete development environment for .NET.

Numerous new functions for the AI assistant, MCP support and accessibility features are among the updates in this release.