Visual Studio vs Visual Studio Code

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Visual Studio

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33.5K
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1.1K
Visual Studio Code

152.2K
136K
+ 1
2.2K
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Visual Studio vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Developers describe Visual Studio as "State-of-the-art tools and services that you can use to create great apps for devices, the cloud, and everything in between". Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications. On the other hand, Visual Studio Code is detailed as "Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft". Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

Visual Studio can be classified as a tool in the "Integrated Development Environment" category, while Visual Studio Code is grouped under "Text Editor".

"Intellisense, ui", "Complete ide and debugger" and "Plug-ins" are the key factors why developers consider Visual Studio; whereas "Powerful multilanguage IDE", "Fast" and "Front-end develop out of the box" are the primary reasons why Visual Studio Code is favored.

Visual Studio Code is an open source tool with 78.4K GitHub stars and 10.9K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Visual Studio Code's open source repository on GitHub.

According to the StackShare community, Visual Studio Code has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1104 company stacks & 2298 developers stacks; compared to Visual Studio, which is listed in 657 company stacks and 978 developer stacks.

Advice on Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code

The problem I have is whether to choose Android Studio or Visual Studio? I have to develop a simple app for a school project that can work on both iPhone and Android.

The most important factors for me are Android and iOS compatibility. Although note that i would like to become a Software Engineer when i finish my course. (I'd like to work for Apple, just saying!)

After that id like easy integration for Google Ads and such if i do develop another app that people actually use to support development. (I'd also like to stick with one easy programming language that's compatible with a wide variety of platforms since i'm a beginner and have only ever used Pascal)

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FlutterFlutter

First of all - Android Studio and Visual Studio are IDE's. Tools to create code. What you are asking is programming framework. I assume that when you are talking about Android Studio you mean Native Android Development and by Visual Studio you mean Xamarin.

If you want to create crossplatform app then Native Android Development is NOT a way to go. Xamarin might work for you, BUT - you'd rather recommend you to go with Flutter. It's much more performant than Xamarin, programming model is friendlier for developer and technology seems just more refined. It's also officially supported by google, so no worries about support.

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Decisions about Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code
Samriddhi Sinha
Machine Learning Engineer at Chefling · | 6 upvotes · 843.4K views

Lightweight and versatile. Huge library of extensions that enable you to integrate a host of services to your development environment. VS Code's biggest strength is its library of extensions which enables it to directly compete with every single major IDE for almost all major programming languages.

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Kamaleshwar BN
Senior Software Engineer at Pulley · | 12 upvotes · 1.1M views

Visual Studio Code became famous over the past 3+ years I believe. The clean UI, easy to use UX and the plethora of integrations made it a very easy decision for us. Our gripe with Sublime was probably only the UX side. VSCode has not failed us till now, and still is able to support our development env without any significant effort.

Goland being paid, as well as built only for Go seemed like a significant limitation to not consider it.

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Simon Ibssa
Student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo · | 2 upvotes · 1.1M views

I decided to choose VSCode over Sublime text for my Systems Programming class in C. What I love about VSCode is its awesome ability to add extensions. Intellisense is a beautiful debugger, and Remote SSH allows me to login and make real-time changes in VSCode to files on my university server. This is an awesome alternative to going back and forth on pushing/pulling code and logging into servers in the terminal. Great choice for anyone interested in C programming!

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Pros of Visual Studio
Pros of Visual Studio Code
  • 305
    Intellisense, ui
  • 244
    Complete ide and debugger
  • 165
    Plug-ins
  • 104
    Integrated
  • 93
    Documentation
  • 37
    Fast
  • 35
    Node tools for visual studio (ntvs)
  • 33
    Free Community edition
  • 24
    Simple
  • 17
    Bug free
  • 8
    Made by Microsoft
  • 6
    Full free community version
  • 5
    JetBrains plugins (ReSharper etc.) work sufficiently OK
  • 3
    Productivity Power Tools
  • 2
    VIM integration
  • 2
    Vim mode
  • 1
    I develop UWP apps and Intellisense is super useful
  • 1
    Available for Mac and Windows
  • 1
    Cross platform development
  • 1
    The Power and Easiness to Do anything in any.. language
  • 0
    Auto
  • 335
    Powerful multilanguage IDE
  • 302
    Fast
  • 190
    Front-end develop out of the box
  • 157
    Support TypeScript IntelliSense
  • 141
    Very basic but free
  • 124
    Git integration
  • 105
    Intellisense
  • 76
    Faster than Atom
  • 52
    Better ui, easy plugins, and nice git integration
  • 43
    Great Refactoring Tools
  • 42
    Good Plugins
  • 40
    Terminal
  • 37
    Superb markdown support
  • 35
    Open Source
  • 34
    Extensions
  • 26
    Awesome UI
  • 26
    Large & up-to-date extension community
  • 23
    Powerful and fast
  • 21
    Portable
  • 18
    Best code editor
  • 17
    Best editor
  • 16
    Easy to get started with
  • 15
    Crossplatform
  • 15
    Good for begginers
  • 14
    Extensions for everything
  • 14
    Open, cross-platform, fast, monthly updates
  • 14
    Lots of extensions
  • 14
    Built on Electron
  • 13
    All Languages Support
  • 12
    Easy to use and learn
  • 12
    "fast, stable & easy to use"
  • 12
    Extensible
  • 11
    Ui design is great
  • 11
    Git out of the box
  • 11
    Totally customizable
  • 11
    Faster edit for slow computer
  • 11
    Useful for begginer
  • 10
    Great community
  • 9
    SSH support
  • 9
    Great language support
  • 9
    It has terminal and there are lots of shortcuts in it
  • 9
    Powerful Debugger
  • 9
    Works With Almost EveryThing You Need
  • 9
    Fast Startup
  • 8
    Can compile and run .py files
  • 8
    Python extension is fast
  • 7
    Features rich
  • 7
    Great document formater
  • 6
    He is not Michael
  • 6
    She is not Rachel
  • 6
    Awesome multi cursor support
  • 5
    SFTP Workspace
  • 5
    Easy azure
  • 5
    VSCode.pro Course makes it easy to learn
  • 5
    Very proffesional
  • 5
    Language server client
  • 5
    Extension Echosystem
  • 4
    Has better support and more extentions for debugging
  • 4
    Virtualenv integration
  • 4
    Excellent as git difftool and mergetool
  • 3
    'batteries included'
  • 3
    More tools to integrate with vs
  • 3
    Better autocompletes than Atom
  • 3
    Emmet preinstalled
  • 3
    Supports lots of operating systems
  • 3
    Has more than enough languages for any developer
  • 2
    Fast and ruby is built right in
  • 2
    Microsoft
  • 2
    Light
  • 2
    Customizable
  • 2
    VS Code Server: Browser version of VS Code
  • 2
    CMake support with autocomplete
  • 1
    Good
  • 1
    Big extension marketplace

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Cons of Visual Studio
Cons of Visual Studio Code
  • 15
    Bulky
  • 13
    Made by Microsoft
  • 4
    Sometimes you need to restart to finish an update
  • 3
    Too much size for disk
  • 3
    Only avalible on Windows
  • 44
    Slow startup
  • 27
    Resource hog at times
  • 20
    Poor refactoring
  • 15
    Microsoft
  • 13
    Poor UI Designer
  • 11
    Weak Ui design tools
  • 10
    Poor autocomplete
  • 8
    Microsoft sends telemetry data
  • 7
    Poor in PHP
  • 7
    Huge cpu usage with few installed extension
  • 6
    Super Slow
  • 5
    It's MicroSoft
  • 3
    Poor in Python
  • 3
    No Built in Browser Preview
  • 3
    No color Intergrator
  • 3
    Very basic for java development and buggy at times
  • 3
    No built in live Preview
  • 3
    Electron
  • 2
    Bad Plugin Architecture
  • 2
    Powered by Electron
  • 1
    Terminal does not identify path vars sometimes

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- No public GitHub repository available -

What is Visual Studio?

Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications.

What is Visual Studio Code?

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

Jobs that mention Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code as a desired skillset
CBRE
United States of America Washington Redmond
What companies use Visual Studio?
What companies use Visual Studio Code?
See which teams inside your own company are using Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code.
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What tools integrate with Visual Studio?
What tools integrate with Visual Studio Code?

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What are some alternatives to Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code?
IntelliJ IDEA
Out of the box, IntelliJ IDEA provides a comprehensive feature set including tools and integrations with the most important modern technologies and frameworks for enterprise and web development with Java, Scala, Groovy and other languages.
Eclipse
Standard Eclipse package suited for Java and plug-in development plus adding new plugins; already includes Git, Marketplace Client, source code and developer documentation. Click here to file a bug against Eclipse Platform.
Atom
At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.
CLion
Knowing your code through and through, CLion can take care of the routine while you focus on the important things. Boost your productivity with the keyboard-centric approach (Vim-emulation plugin is also available in plugin repository), full coding assistance, smart and relevant code completion, fast project navigation, intelligent intention actions, and reliable refactorings.
Visual Basic
Visual Basic is derived from BASIC and enables the rapid application development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications, access to databases using Data Access Objects, Remote Data Objects, or ActiveX Data Objects, and creation of ActiveX controls and objects.
See all alternatives