New Visual Studio installer is 12 times smaller now

Aug 27, 2016 01:05 GMT  ·  By

Early this week, Microsoft released the fourth preview of Visual Studio 15 (VS15), the company's IDE (Integrated Development Environment).

The biggest and the most obvious change is the package's size. Visual Studio's huge 6GB size has become a running joke on Twitter, Hacker News, and other programming communities.

Surprise, surprise! Visual Studio 15 is now just 500MB, according to John Montgomery, Director of Program Management for Visual Studio.

But this was not the biggest news regarding VS15.P4. Two days later, Microsoft announced that VS15 Preview 4 also includes an early version of C# 7.0, the next version of its iconic programming language.

Bear in mind that C# 7.0 is still under development, but Microsoft says that all of the big features that will eventually end up in the final version are now live in VS15.P4.

Without a doubt, the star of C# 7.0 will be a new feature called tuples. Reception on community sites such as Reddit and Hacker News was overwhelmingly positive.

Other new features include out variables, the new "patterns" feature, local functions, and a deconstruction declaration. All these terms are very generic on a first read, but Microsoft provided a short explanation and usage syntax.

More in-depth documentation for all the new features will be offered once C# 7.0 is finalized and officially released. Until then, users can download VS15.P4 for a test drive.