I have been trying to figure out Microsoft's investment in Visual Studio Code. They spend a lot of time and energy working on the system and expanding it and given that they are a publicly traded company it isn't just because they heart Open Source so darned much.<p>I think that the recent efforts to make Visual Studio Code run in a browser are the first steps in MS making a modern 'Java' that not only allows you to build Mac, Windows and Linux apps but also web apps that look and act like desktop apps.<p>MS has Typescript and via Github it has Electron. So it has a language and a 'platform'. It doesn't control Node or Chromium though so the entire delivery chain isn't under their control but it looks as if they are working on a system that will let them promise 'write once' by removing the underlying OS.<p>What does everyone else think? Likely?
JavaScript is the new Java. But Google holds Chromium, the One True Runtime. Microsoft, scared of that, focused on owning the <i>entire</i> ecosystem around it: npm, TypeScript, GitHub, VS Code, Electron are all are in Microsoft's hands. It's very clever.