These are Microsoft's top 10 most popular open-source GitHub repositories

Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion back in 2018 and even before then, it has been a major customer of the platform, like many other tech firms. We thought that it would be interesting to look at the most popular open-source repositories hosted by GitHub's owner.

In this listicle, we will list the top 10 open-source GitHub repositories developed and maintained by Microsoft, ordered by their number of stars along with some pertinent stats and a brief excerpt from the official description. Without further ado, let's begin!

1- vscode (Visual Studio Code)

• Primary programming language: TypeScript (93.8%)
• Stars: 131,000
• Watching: 3,100
• Forks: 22,300
• Description: Visual Studio Code is a distribution of the Code - OSS repository with Microsoft-specific customizations released under a traditional Microsoft product license. Visual Studio Code combines the simplicity of a code editor with what developers need for their core edit-build-debug cycle. It provides comprehensive code editing, navigation, and understanding support along with lightweight debugging, a rich extensibility model, and lightweight integration with existing tools. Visual Studio Code is updated monthly with new features and bug fixes. You can download it for Windows, macOS, and Linux on Visual Studio Code's website. To get the latest releases every day, install the Insiders build.
• Repository URL: vscode

2- terminal (The new Windows Terminal and the original Windows console host, all in the same place!)

• Primary programming language: C++ (94.6%)
• Stars: 82,800
• Watching: 1,300
• Forks: 7,300
• Description: This repository contains the source code for:
  • Windows Terminal
  • Windows Terminal Preview
  • The Windows console host (conhost.exe)
  • Components shared between the two projects
  • ColorTool
  • Sample projects that show how to consume the Windows Console APIs
• Repository URL: terminal

3- TypeScript (TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that compiles to clean JavaScript output)

• Primary programming language: TypeScript (100%)
• Stars: 80,300
• Watching: 2,100
• Forks: 10,500
• Description: TypeScript is a language for application-scale JavaScript. TypeScript adds optional types to JavaScript that support tools for large-scale JavaScript applications for any browser, for any host, on any OS. TypeScript compiles to readable, standards-based JavaScript.
• Repository URL: TypeScript

4- PowerToys (Windows system utilities to maximize productivity)

• Primary programming language: C# (53.6%)
• Stars: 72,600
• Watching: 1,000
• Forks: 4,100
• Description: Microsoft PowerToys is a set of utilities for power users to tune and streamline their Windows experience for greater productivity.
• Repository URL: PowerToys

5- Web-Dev-For-Beginners (24 Lessons, 12 Weeks, Get Started as a Web Developer)

• Primary programming language: JavaScript (78.5%)
• Stars: 46,500
• Watching: 2,300
• Forks: 6,800
• Description: Azure Cloud Advocates at Microsoft are pleased to offer a 12-week, 24-lesson curriculum all about JavaScript, CSS, and HTML basics. Each lesson includes pre- and post-lesson quizzes, written instructions to complete the lesson, a solution, an assignment and more. Our project-based pedagogy allows you to learn while building, a proven way for new skills to 'stick'.
• Repository URL: Web-Dev-For-Beginners

6- playwright (Playwright is a framework for Web Testing and Automation. It allows testing Chromium, Firefox and WebKit with a single API)

• Primary programming language: TypeScript (85.1%)
• Stars: 37,300
• Watching: 328
• Forks: 1,700
• Description: Playwright is a framework for Web Testing and Automation. It allows testing Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with a single API. Playwright is built to enable cross-browser web automation that is ever-green, capable, reliable and fast.
• Repository URL: playwright

7- ML-For-Beginners (12 weeks, 26 lessons, 52 quizzes, classic Machine Learning for all)

• Primary platform: Jupyter Notebook (99.4%)
• Stars: 35,100
• Watching: 680
• Forks: 6,800
• Description: Azure Cloud Advocates at Microsoft are pleased to offer a 12-week, 26-lesson curriculum all about Machine Learning. In this curriculum, you will learn about what is sometimes called classic machine learning, using primarily Scikit-learn as a library and avoiding deep learning, which is covered in our forthcoming 'AI for Beginners' curriculum. Pair these lessons with our 'Data Science for Beginners' curriculum, as well! Travel with us around the world as we apply these classic techniques to data from many areas of the world. Each lesson includes pre- and post-lesson quizzes, written instructions to complete the lesson, a solution, an assignment, and more. Our project-based pedagogy allows you to learn while building, a proven way for new skills to 'stick'.

• Repository URL: ML-For-Beginners

8- monaco-editor (A browser based code editor)

• Primary programming language: JavaScript (81.1%)
• Stars: 29,300
• Watching: 505
• Forks: 2,800
• Description: The Monaco Editor is the code editor which powers VS Code. Please note that this repository contains no source code for the code editor, it only contains the scripts to package everything together and ship the monaco-editor npm module.

• Repository URL: monaco-editor

9- calculator (Windows Calculator: A simple yet powerful calculator that ships with Windows)

• Primary programming language: C++ (71.9%)
• Stars: 24,200
• Watching: 561
• Forks: 4,400
• Description: The Windows Calculator app is a modern Windows app written in C++ and C# that ships pre-installed with Windows. The app provides standard, scientific, and programmer calculator functionality, as well as a set of converters between various units of measurement and currencies. Calculator ships regularly with new features and bug fixes.

• Repository URL: calculator

10- cascadia-code (This is a fun, new monospaced font that includes programming ligatures and is designed to enhance the modern look and feel of the Windows Terminal)

• Primary programming language: Python (100%)
• Stars: 19,900
• Watching: 237
• Forks: 666
• Description: Cascadia is a fun new coding font that comes bundled with Windows Terminal, and is now the default font in Visual Studio as well.

• Repository URL: cascadia-code

Well, that's it for the top 10 open-source GitHub repositories developed and maintained by Microsoft. Were there any surprises in there for you? Have you contributed to any of the aforementioned or other Microsoft respositories? Let us know the details in the comments section below!