During Build 2015 today, Microsoft announced the release of a new tool to help people easily build Minecraft mods in Visual Studio.
The tool is an add-on for Visual Studio that allows users to create their own mods from scratch or using one of three templates provided with the add-on. Importantly, the add-on isn't meant to replace current tools, but is instead meant to give developers extra options for creating their mods in Visual Studio's development environment.
Full story from the WindowsCentral blog...