Microsoft Visual Studio 2015, released Monday (20-Jul-2015), provides a way for a developer to write a single application to run across multiple Windows platforms, such as mobile, desktop and even Microsoft's experimental HoloLens environment. It also provides a way to build applications that don't run on Windows computers at all, but instead run on iOS devices or as Web applications in the cloud.

The update also comes with hundreds of new features, many focusing on debugging, diagnostics, code editing and refactoring.

This is the first version of the IDE to include the Roslyn next-generation compiler, said S. "Soma" Somasegar, Microsoft corporate vice president for its developer division. Developed by Microsoft, Roslyn offers many advanced debugging capabilities for the company's C# and Visual Basic programming languages.

Visual Studio 2015 unifies debugging and profiling into a single Diagnostics Tools window, bringing insights about the correctness and performance of your running application into context during development. And with PerfTips, you even get performance information right in your code as you set breakpoints and step with the debugger.

Visual Studio 2015 editor, C# and VB developers can use the new Roslyn-based tooling, including Light Bulbs that proactively suggest potential fixes or code refactorings tooling. With Roslyn’s code analyzers, developers can even customize the warnings and suggestions delivered inside the editor to meet their team’s needs.

Along with Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 4.6 come the final versions of C# 6 and Visual Basic 14. With dozens of new language features that simplify common coding patterns, the new versions of C# and VB.NET offer a big step forward for .NET developer productivity.

Visual Studio 2015 also includes significantly improved support for C++ 11/14/17 along with TypeScript 1.5, F# 4.0 and tools for Python and dozens of other languages.

Along with .NET 4.6, we are also making available ASP.NET 4.6, the newest version of our Web development framework. ASP.NET 4.6 adds support for HTTP/2 as well as support for the newest C# features and the new Entity Framework 6.1.3. Visual Studio tooling for web development continues to expand to offer HTML and CSS tooling with up-to-date standards support and a much richer JSON editor.

Mobile development is increasingly about building mobile experiences that run across many mobile platforms. Visual Studio 2015 includes cross-platform mobile development tools for building applications targeting iOS, Android and Windows, and offers developers choice in what languages and technologies to use to developer their mobile applications.

Many developers start by building mobile-ready browser based applications using responsive HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Visual Studio 2015’s rich web tooling, integrated debugging and support for the latest web UI frameworks provide the tools needed to build great mobile-ready web sites.