Microsoft Livestream Series Bolsters Python in VS Code (250 Million Installs)
The three most popular extensions in the Visual Studio Code Marketplace are for Python coding, totaling more than 176 million installs.
Leading that list is the main Python tool, accounting for more than 74 million of those installs, with the others being Jupyter (for working with Notebooks — 55 million) and the Pylance language server with 47 million. Two other tools in the top six are also related to Python, accounting for another 73 million installs. Taking into account hundreds of other Python tools, the total number of Python-related tool downloads must be around 250 million.
The company’s dev team has been quite active in supporting that community, and those efforts are continuing in the new year with an upcoming livestream series devoted to the super-popular programming language and Microsoft’s equally super-popular, open source-based, cross-platform code editor that acts like an IDE thanks to all those extensions, VS Code. The latter has been named the No. 1 development tool overall in major coding surveys.
Called the Python Pulse, the monthly livestream series will kick off Jan. 13, tackling news in the Azure/VS Code/Python tech ecosystem and featuring special segments with guests.
Microsoft’s dev team said the new program was launched because it loves the programming language and its impact on the world, with the livestream series being a new way to share its passion for the language with the community.
“Microsoft aims to build fast, feature-rich language support for Python projects in the Microsoft ecosystem,” said the company’s Dawn Wages, product manager in the Python community, in a Jan. 9 announcement post. “Our teams across Microsoft are committed to helping every technologist succeed — students, enterprise and startups alike. The Python Pulse will be a way for developers to interact with the teams behind the products. We value the work our Microsoft MVPs and community partners bring. The Python Pulse will showcase the great work that sets our teams apart and how we provide an unmatched developer experience.”
Wages, who will host the livestream series, kicks things off Friday with guest Pamela Fox, Microsoft cloud advocate, who will present on PostgreSQL in Dev Containers and Codespaces.
“Dev Containers and Codespaces allow you to open and clone in a local or cloud-hosted dev container,” the event’s description reads. “You’re now able to take advantage of the VS Code full development features — including support for the SQLTools extension and Postgres Extension in Codespaces (dev containers) where you can make decisions for and query your database with Postgres or SQLTools extensions.” More details about the event are presented in a GitHub repo.
Other events will include:
- Advanced features in GitHub Codespaces and Dev Containers
- Azure Developer CLI, from GitHub to Cloud with Python
- The VS Code Python Extension Team’s Python Tools Template
- Python and the Humanities
- Python Cloud Developer Advocates
- Testing with Playwright and Python: A conversation with Python Consultants and Advocates