Visual Studio vs Visual Studio Code

Overview

Visual Studio

Stacks59.6K

Followers37.9K

Votes1.1K

Visual Studio Code

Stacks186.5K

Followers169.1K

Votes2.3K

GitHub Stars178.2K

Forks35.9K

Visual Studio vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code are both Microsoft products. Visual Studio is a robust Integrated Development Environment (IDE) equipped with extensive tools and features for multi-platform application development. In contrast, Visual Studio Code is a lightweight code editor designed to deliver a streamlined coding experience, particularly for web and cloud development. Here are the key distinctions between the two:

Functionality and Scope: Visual Studio is an extensive Integrated Development Environment (IDE) offering a broad range of tools and features to support application development across multiple platforms. On the other hand, Visual Studio Code is a lightweight code editor with a focus on providing a seamless coding experience, particularly for web and cloud development.
Supported Languages and Platforms: Visual Studio supports multiple programming languages, with deep integration into Microsoft technologies and frameworks. It is primarily designed for Windows development but offers limited support for macOS and Linux. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, supports a wide range of programming languages and is platform-agnostic, running on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
User Interface and Customization: Visual Studio has a feature-rich and complex user interface, with multiple windows, panes, and toolbars. It offers advanced IDE features like designers for building user interfaces, integrated SQL Server support, and project templates. Visual Studio Code has a minimalistic and lightweight user interface, providing a more focused coding experience. It allows for customization, supports themes, and offers a wide range of extensions.
Debugging and Testing: Visual Studio provides comprehensive debugging and testing capabilities, including advanced features like remote debugging and profiling. Visual Studio Code offers basic debugging and testing functionalities but lacks some advanced debugging features.
Collaboration and Team Development: Visual Studio includes features for team collaboration, such as integrated version control systems and tools for code reviews. Visual Studio Code can be used for collaboration but requires additional extensions and integrations to match the collaborative capabilities of Visual Studio.

In summary, Visual Studio is a powerful and feature-rich IDE suitable for a wide range of application development scenarios, particularly for Microsoft technologies and enterprise solutions. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, is a lightweight and extensible code editor with a focus on web and cloud development, providing a flexible and customizable coding experience.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs

CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code

Kamaleshwar

Software Engineer at Dibiz Pte. Ltd.

Jul 8, 2020

Decided

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.

1.36M views1.36M

Comments

Samriddhi

Machine Learning Engineer at Chefling

Sep 26, 2020

Decided

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.

1.04M views1.04M

Comments

410-Ventures

Nov 18, 2020

Review

PyCharm (pro)

great editor designed specifically for Python and python apps
complex (good for configurability, bad for simplicity)
expensive ($200 first year, $120 third year)

PyCharm (free)

same as above but without a REST client or support for other web development tools (which you will likely end up using)
ok to get your feet wet (you can always upgrade later) Full comparison: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/features/editions_comparison_matrix.html

VS Code (free)

Configurable "IDE" with support for most modern languages
TONS of simple-to-install extensions that add functionality
Great docs and UI

Sublime Text (free)

one of the most minimal editors out there
it just works

It's really down to personal preference. But I would recommend downloading all of the FREE editors, getting setup in each, and keeping only the ones you like.

My personal choice for web development is VS Code but I started with Pycharm (free), and use Sublime text on occasion.

Just focus on learning and developing and you will find what features you're looking for.

12.1k views12.1k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Visual Studio	Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio is a suite of component-based software development tools and other technologies for building powerful, high-performance applications.	Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.
-	Combines UI of a modern editor with code assistance and navigation; Integrated debugging experience
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 178.2K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 35.9K
Stacks 59.6K	Stacks 186.5K
Followers 37.9K	Followers 169.1K
Votes 1.1K	Votes 2.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros 305 Intellisense, ui 244 Complete ide and debugger 165 Plug-ins 104 Integrated 93 Documentation Cons 16 Bulky 14 Made by Microsoft 6 Sometimes you need to restart to finish an update 3 Only avalible on Windows 3 Too much size for disk	Pros 341 Powerful multilanguage IDE 310 Fast 194 Front-end develop out of the box 158 Support TypeScript IntelliSense 142 Very basic but free Cons 46 Slow startup 29 Resource hog at times 20 Poor refactoring 14 Poor UI Designer 11 Weak Ui design tools

What are some alternatives to Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code?

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each 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.

Vim

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

PhpStorm

PhpStorm is a PHP IDE which keeps up with latest PHP & web languages trends, integrates a variety of modern tools, and brings even more extensibility with support for major PHP frameworks.

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.

WebStorm

WebStorm is a lightweight and intelligent IDE for front-end development and server-side JavaScript.

NetBeans IDE

NetBeans IDE is FREE, open source, and has a worldwide community of users and developers.

PyCharm

PyCharm’s smart code editor provides first-class support for Python, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, CSS, popular template languages and more. Take advantage of language-aware code completion, error detection, and on-the-fly code fixes!

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

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.

Related Comparisons

Functionality and Scope: Visual Studio is an extensive Integrated Development Environment (IDE) offering a broad range of tools and features to support application development across multiple platforms. On the other hand, Visual Studio Code is a lightweight code editor with a focus on providing a seamless coding experience, particularly for web and cloud development.
Supported Languages and Platforms: Visual Studio supports multiple programming languages, with deep integration into Microsoft technologies and frameworks. It is primarily designed for Windows development but offers limited support for macOS and Linux. Visual Studio Code, on the other hand, supports a wide range of programming languages and is platform-agnostic, running on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
User Interface and Customization: Visual Studio has a feature-rich and complex user interface, with multiple windows, panes, and toolbars. It offers advanced IDE features like designers for building user interfaces, integrated SQL Server support, and project templates. Visual Studio Code has a minimalistic and lightweight user interface, providing a more focused coding experience. It allows for customization, supports themes, and offers a wide range of extensions.
Debugging and Testing: Visual Studio provides comprehensive debugging and testing capabilities, including advanced features like remote debugging and profiling. Visual Studio Code offers basic debugging and testing functionalities but lacks some advanced debugging features.
Collaboration and Team Development: Visual Studio includes features for team collaboration, such as integrated version control systems and tools for code reviews. Visual Studio Code can be used for collaboration but requires additional extensions and integrations to match the collaborative capabilities of Visual Studio.

Visual Studio vs Visual Studio Code