Microsoft's first preview of Visual Studio 2026: Deeper AI and a design refresh

Microsoft has released a preview of Visual Studio 2026, the first major version update since 2021, promising deeper AI integration and a new look and feel. Fluent Design in Visual Studio 2026 Visual Studio 2026 embraces fluent design and offers new themes, but developers care more about the code and tools Visual Studio is …

[DarkwavePunk]

Of course

What we need is more AI rather than a less bloated buggy pile of crap. I still can't work out what the end game for foisting all this AI bollocks on us is. It must be costing them a bomb with no tangible ROI that I can see.

[Scotthva5]

Re: Of course

Every time I see the phrase "AI hooks" I read it as "microtransaction".

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Of course

what the end game

The end game is yacht, mansion, a collection of cars and maybe an island filled with people hoping for a private jet lift. Of course it needs a timed exit before the whole bubble bursts.

[Terry 6]

Re: Of course

To be fair(ish) no C-Suite type anywhere in tech would be able to hold on to their job if they didn't shoehorn in some kind/mention of AI into their product

[Anonymous Coward]

Tick Tock ... Tick Tock ...

At some point all the 'Holding of hands & mopping of brows' will turn into 'Holding of Wallets ...

This will facilitate the charging of everyone for the huge assistance being given by the 'AI' built into all things !!!

The mega-spend will morph into the continuous charging for 'AI' assistance throughout your day.

Everything will cost you a few cents here & a few cents there ... Tick Tock ... Tick Tock ... as your bank account slowly drips away into the coffers of the 'AI' Behemoths .

You don't think this amount of spending is for 'YOUR' benefit ???

:)

[BasicReality]

I don't understand the popularity of VSCode, I've used it, hate it. Visual Studio is fine, but Jetbrains is better, and runs on Linux and Mac as well. Visual Studio really needs to become cross platform.

[elsergiovolador]

Do you also roll a dice in the morning? Which system I am going to log into. Hmm. Ahh snap. It's 2. Where is my floppy with QNX.

[Richard 12]

A huge amount of commercial software is multi platform.

Usually Windows and macOS, which Visual Studio used to (kind of) be and isn't anymore.

VS 2022 added support for remote dev into macOS and Linux fairly recently, I don't know how well that works though.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Microsoft is doing everything in its power to thwart cross-platform development of desktop applications. The future of Windows desktop UI development is....Win32 in combination with wxWidgets.

[Alan Bourke]

It's free?

And open source (ish)

[elsergiovolador]

AI

I am disappointed it doesn't have more AI.

Like why keystrokes are not AI driven or why the UI isn't generated in realtime via Stable Diffusion?

I want to say to Visual Studio: "Look like a tractor website. Make me edit code near combine harvester. Animate hay falling from the sky. Quick quick, there is a giant cat dressed as a guitar and it's playing "Call on meeeeeow!" and there is an oak tree. Beautiful tree. The greatest tree I've ever seen! And there is clippy and Isaac Newton sleeping. Oh no Newton got hit by an Apple. Apples on oak trees? See I told you they are special! Special like me!"

[Alan Bourke]

Why do people still want visual designers?

Do they make sense outside the older VB6\Winforms paradigm?

Given a declarative UI based on XAML or similar, where layout is largely based on the relationship of elements to each other in terms of position and size, what would it give you that a live preview of changes to the XAML wouldn't?

[abend0c4]

Re: Why do people still want visual designers?

In the last version of Visual Studio I tried, the forms designer simply didn't work - no messages, just a blank window. Fortunately, I don't need it for paid work any more and that's the point I switched to VS Code: Visual Studio had grown ever-more enormous and ever-more flaky and that was simply the final straw.

However, unless you're designing purely for a corporate desktop environment where all the screens are more or less the same, visual designers are probably counterproductive: your UI is likely to have to deal with viewports that aren't landscape and of known dimensions. It's also increasingly likely to have to deal with non-Windows devices and Microsoft don't really have a credible story to tell there right now.

[Alan Bourke]

Re: Why do people still want visual designers?

"credible story to tell there right now."

Indeed, the credible story there is Avalonia.

[CorwinX]

In real life...

... a Copilot (Co-Pilot) is someone who is trusted to be able to fly and land a plane.

This idiocy is more likely to crater it in just short of the runway.