Visual Studio is Microsoft’s integrated development environment (IDE): a single program that combines a code editor, compilers, a debugger, and design tools for building software. Microsoft announced the first version, Visual Studio 97, on January 28, 1997.
Before Visual Studio, Microsoft sold its development tools separately. The 1997 announcement described Visual Studio 97 as “the first comprehensive set of tools” that brought these products together, bundling Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual J++, Visual FoxPro, and Visual InterDev into one suite. The goal was to let developers work across several languages within a common environment.
Over time Visual Studio became the central hub for Microsoft’s languages. When Microsoft introduced the .NET Framework, the IDE became the home for new languages and language versions: its documentation ties each release of Visual Basic .NET to a specific Visual Studio version, beginning with the first release of Visual Basic .NET in Visual Studio .NET 2002.
Visual Studio has continued through many releases over the following decades, remaining Microsoft’s flagship environment for professional software development on Windows and, increasingly, across other platforms.