Build is Microsoft's annual developer conference. It's a busy couple of weeks for developers with Facebook running their event last week and Google has their event kicking off now as well. Microsoft has announced several new tools and services for developers today. Here's a snapshot of some of the more interesting announcements.

Microsoft’s free and cross-platform code editor Visual Studio Code will now be included in the Anaconda data science distribution. As Microsoft continues their path to greater cohesion with the open source community and playing nicely with multiple platforms, this is another move that signals Microsoft's continuing commitment to be a part of everyone's computing experience, whether they want to run Microsoft's tools exclusively or not.

The full-blown version of Visual Studio its still limited to Windows machines, but if you want a similar experience on non-Microsoft platforms, the open-source Visual Studio Code is about as close as you can get. Official builds are available for macOS and Linux and thanks to a fellow by the name of Jay Rodgers, you can get it on Chromebook and the Raspberry Pi.

You'd never suspect the humble cursor as a source of performance issues in your IDE, but that appears to be precisely the case with Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, a cross-platform development environment built on Electron. A few days ago, a user reported the program consuming a large number of CPU cycles when idle and tracked it down to the blinking caret.

The ever-increasing sophistication of coding tools coupled with more powerful hardware makes "live editing" a reality in scenarios that weren't possible ten, or even five years ago. Web development is about as live as it gets and we still have yet to reach the limits of software for this stuff. Take the newly released "Quokka", which provides JavaScript coders with another option for fast experimentation... and it doesn't hurt that it's named after the Australia's most adorable marsupial.

If you're a developer who want to start creating cross-platform mobile apps using Xamarin tools in Visual Studio, Microsoft has released a series of detailed videos that guide you through the process.

Many developers prefer to use Apple Mac devices for their coding needs and up until this point, Microsoft's flagship integrated development environment (IDE) was only available on Windows. Now the company has announced that it will be releasing a preview of Visual Studio for Mac, which will run natively on macOS. The preview will launch at Microsoft Connect() conference later this week. But despite the name, Visual Studio for Mac isn't a direct port of the Windows version of the IDE. Here's what you need to know.

Microsoft has released a tool called iOS Web Debugger for Visual Studio Code. It allows web developers to debug JavaScript running on their iOS devices directly from the Visual Studio editor on a Windows or Mac machine. Previously, debugging could be done through Safari Web Inspector which was only available on MacOS. Here's what you need to know.

No one person could ever hope to master every shortcut an expansive IDE such as Visual Studio has to offer. The best thing you can do is get a handle on the most useful ones, though "most useful" doesn't mean "well-known", as Microsoft's Scott Hanselman highlights.

So, Xamarin is now bundled with Visual Studio and licensed in such a way that you can use it for whatever you like, but that doesn't help the budding cross-platform developer get a handle on the "how". If you're looking for a head start, Microsoft has an excellent video just for you.

.NET Core might be all the rage these days, but the original .NET Framework is still being updated. Last week Microsoft upped the version number to 4.6.2 and while it doesn't include any killer features, it's a solid update nonetheless.

Microsoft has unveiled its open source Language Server Protocol which aims to give a consistent experience for developers that edit their code in Visual Studio Code, regardless of what programming language they use. Here's what you need to know.

Microsoft has launched an extension for Visual Studio that lets developers code using C++ for Linux servers, desktops and devices in the integrated development environment. Here's what you need to know.

Last month JetBrains -- of ReSharper fame -- unveiled its plans for a C# integrated development environment that would effectively come with ReSharper and IntelliJ built-in. If you want to give it a try, JetBrains is now taking down details for its Early Access program.

Microsoft is ramping up efforts to woo developers to its Visual Studio Dev Essentials program by offering up US$300 worth of credits for services on the company's Azure public cloud platform. Here are the details.

Visual Studio with ReSharper installed is hard to beat when it comes to .NET development, but that doesn't mean competition isn't welcome. If you're a C# developer willing to experiment, JetBrains has announced its own cross-platform IDE, called Project Rider, that will include "a lot of functionality that you are already familiar with from ReSharper and IntelliJ-based IDEs".

Android++ is a tool that simplifies the development process for high performance Android apps in Microsoft's Visual Studio. The latest version of the software has now been open sourced.

With Visual Studio you can develop apps for Windows as well as Android, iOS, and the web. Microsoft has released a Visual Studio Dev Essentials program to give you the tools you need to start coding -- including Parallels for Mac and Pluralsight training.

Microsoft has made its first update for Office Developer Tools For Visual Studio 2015 available along with a preview of some features developers can expect to see in the next round of improvements.