Microsoft Visual Studio Reviews

Visual Studio allows us to develop applications with quite powerful code completion. It has quite useful tools for creating and debugging the code. It has a pretty nice community behind it, and it's widely used all over the world.

The software is very heavy, which forces the end user to have a very sophisticated equipment to build the program without major inconveniences. In addition, as well as having easy-to-understand tools, it also has features that a new user cannot easily understand.

The cost of acquiring the software is also quite high, which is a fairly high barrier for users who want to "test" how the software itself works.

Although it has a "Community version", I do not know how to compare it to the paid version, since it lacks many tools that one uses on a day-to-day basis.

a) It's feature-rich and provides strong and seamless integrations with several other products from the Microsoft family.
b) One can develop any kind of application written using any kind of technology through this IDE be it .Net, Java, JavaScript, etc.
c) The software is easily extensible through extensions that help one integrate third-party components easily.
d) It has an intelligent auto-complete sensor that provides accurate suggestions for the variable names you try to create, libraries you try to add into the current code class file, and even tells you all the dependencies of the class in a very easy to read format.
e) There are individual wndows for each kind of tasks like examining the current project and solution, examining the tests written for the application, checking the variable watches, compiler output, errors, etc to name a few.
f) The UI can be customized to one's heart's content. The windows can be arranged as per the needs, multiple windows can be grouped into tabs for easy navigation.
g) It's even intelligent to suggest ways to improve the performance of the application that you are trying to create and how to make the project solution load faster.

a) The IDE takes a long time to load and once it's fully active with the project solution loaded, it really takes up a lot of RAM making even a good and powerful system slow down in the long run.
b) The IDE crashes occasionally, especially when you do a lot of debugging using it. However, when the app restarts after the crash, it does give you the option to recover the last saved work. So that's handy.
c) The menu is way too vast and it's easy to get lost in them trying to find out a certain option. Thankfully there is a global search box for the app to quickly type and find the option you are looking for.
d) The updates are released quite frequently. Since each update is large (> 500MB), its takes a while to update the software thereby interrupting your work.

What is there to dislike about this wonderful IDE. It does EVERYTHING and then some. Probably the best code editor and debugger you can find and the best part its free! I absolutely love all of the add-ons and configuration which makes my life easier.

Nothing is really a con here, at first it was a bit annoying to have to setup a new dev instance all the time however now we can use containers to make life easier.

Installation of third party tools, possibility of live code share session and support for several langauges are the most impactful features in my opinion.
The product is also relatively easy to use only if you use it frequently have spent sometime to learn about the features like formatting, searching files, functions and text, resolving dependencies etc.
Nevertheless it was easier to integrate the product with our business use case.

The product is somehow sometimes not easy to go around for example to search for files and to search for specific text inside all files is bit confusing, the interface sort of works the same way. Also when dealing with ASCII doc files or tabular form files, there are always 3rd party extensions that are required. Excel files are difficult to format (zig zag columns) but however they only be viewed in a user friendly way.
Specifically for python there are sometimes problems with the kernal, even though the right kernal is selected, yet the code fails to run and restarting vs code with the right kernal helps. The same is true for running jupyter inside VS code.

I reinstalled this tool on my laptop to ensure the full process for any new user was understood. I wanted to see what VS community was like, compared to VS Code for Python coding that has been used for some time.
The install whilst downloading is a great feature if you want to get on with life. As for me choosing the various Python related features means a chunky 8GB+ install file and if it can install parts whilst it downloads others then that is a great use of my time.

Actually, I am writing this review whilst the install happens. No lag or stutter from this little laptop. Connecting to my github repositories was very simple for cloning. the next thing that any new user would be interested in is the available documentation. How to Install & Setup, Welcome to the IDE, Whats New and a Training section. That's everything you need.

It is very switched on with dependencies, like VS Code offers solutions and can handle a vast amount of tasks.
The functionality for the test script writing I was doing was excellent. could ask for no more.

The need for an MS Account I expect has a benefit but I do not see how. Anyone going to use this should make sure that they have a fairly modern PC. As like most Microsoft products they are aimed at utilising the potential from modern devices

- Improved search functionality that is on par with IntelliJ editors' search functionality.
- Software hiccups are rare, whereas they used to be very common even in the recent versions.
- Everything is nicely consolidated, you can select the language you're using at the start as well as the type of project, and you can even search for and pull libraries into your project from the internet without ever leaving the editor.
- High quality themes, don't have to fix items that are the same color but were different colors in another theme like you do with IntelliJ themes.
- Shortcuts and hotkeys have slowly been moving towards being similar to IntelliJ editors, which for me is a definite win, but for new users this wont make a difference.

- Occassionally locks up, forcing you to open Task Manager and abort the application, sometimes causing lost work.
- Some features do take getting used to before appreciating them, i.e. some components of the Debug/Release manager and handling deployments, but once you understand how they work, you're in love with their usefulness. If you're coming from command line and config file debug and/or deployment, this isn't much of a con because you can imply most of the setting names, but figuring out what you can do through the IDE and what you have to do through files can be as annoying as finding the right IDE screen to change a setting.

By far the best feature in Visual Studio is IntelliSense; writing code becomes a breeze when you can just tab your way through entire lines, making use of the autocomplete, the smart naming of variables and methods. Having learned .NET as my first programming language, Visual Studio was there with me all the way, holding my hand, making things easier for me.
When dealing with a myriad of configuration files, Visual makes it easy by assisting you with modifying these, even providing UIs for beginners and non-programmers.
Luckily, there's also many extensions available which help overcome some its limitations, a testament to the fidelity of its users, who instead of switching to other IDEs decide to improve upon it.
Interactive design windows really help with page building and desktop apps.
Last but not least, dbml designers are a life saver when dealing with databases, seamless integration with tables, stored procedures and more.

Visual Studio is a heavy application; it really takes a toll on RAM memory and CPU, which makes it impossible to have two instances open at the same time (something very common for me at least). I end up having one in Visual Studio and another on VS Code. Takes quite a while to boot up also.
When building a big solution, it eats up all my resources and essentially blocks my PC until it finishes.
When publishing databases and errors occur, the logs are really poor and make it hard to find the problems.

We program in different languages with the software, plugins facilitate this. It is light, simple, intuitive and for our use it is a hand on the wheel, because we adapt easily, it is incredible!

We found nothing wrong with the software, it was easily adapted to our routine, and it works above expectations!

I have used this software from version VS 2010 to up to date VS2017. Its very handy to work with. It offers a lot of features and functionalities that are really easy to understand. It offers a lot of integrations whether it is Resharper or any coverage tool or your website azure deployment.
For me learning azure deployment was way too easy as it is just a matter of 2-3steps alone.
There are easy steps to find some matching texts that too can be filtered with the type of file you want to search in. The solution explorer offers simple shortcuts to rename a file or just move a file from one location to another.
The find and replace functionality that too can be customized whether you want to match case or not.
The software's integration with Nunit code coverage helped me a lot in gaining confidence in the quality of my tests as while coding I can see the coverage of the lines. The tortoise git integration is something that is really helpful. You can easily see your commit history and differences. I personally like this software very much. Try it.
It has a lot to discover.

The only problem that I see is the heaviness of the software as sometimes it hangs my system and you need to have at least 16gb ram to work greatly with this software. VS2017 is the latest I have worked on and although it has great features but it is a very heavy software and with heavy extensions it become slow.

I like that you can choose features to add or leave out, making it less bloaty than you need. I've been using VS since version 2003 or so, so I'm comfortable with the layout. Search is very powerful. Intellisense gets better every version - the CSS intellisense right now is mind-blowing. Source control is of course one of the biggest features I use. The package manager features are finally working well...I never felt they worked well enough in previous versions. MS keeps adding support for new technologies so that's a welcome feature.

I had problems with not being able to do some basic functions until an update/patch came out - namely getting a package manager to properly install packages. I've wasted time trying to figure out why something wasn't working until I came to the conclusion that it wasn't going to work at all or was deliberately changed. I think it's also quite expensive...maybe that's just because I don't use all the features. And it eventually stops supporting enough stuff that you have to update, and pay.

*It has a very fast learning curve.

*Integrates the design and implementation of Windows forms.

*It allows to easily use the platform of Windows systems, since it has almost total access to the Windows API, including current libraries.

*It is one of the most widely used languages, so it is easy to find information, documentation and sources for projects.

*Easily extensible through DLL libraries and ActiveX components of other languages.

*It makes it possible to add support for executing scripts, VBScript or JScript, in applications using Microsoft Script Control.7

*It has access to the DirectX multimedia API (versions 7 and 8). A component to work with OpenGL 1.1.8 is also available, unofficially.

*There is a version, VBA, integrated into Microsoft Office applications, both Windows and Mac, which allows programming macros to extend and automate functionalities in documents, spreadsheets and databases (Access).
Although it allows to develop large and complex applications, it also provides an adequate environment to make small rapid prototypes.

*Versioning problem associated with several runtime DLL libraries, known as DLL Hell.

*Poor support for object-oriented programming.

*Inability to create multi-threaded applications, without having to resort to calls from the Windows API.

*Dependence on complex and fragile COM registry entries.

*The ability to use controls in a single form is very limited compared to other tools.

It is the most featured Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with bulk of features. It is best choice for .Net developers for building powerful applications for local and cloud environments. Its functionality can also be further extended using plugins. It is also good for mobile application development. Its intellisense is the best among all.

It is heavy to operate. It occupies huge part of my disk space. It hangs sometime during operations. Lack of support to opensource languages.

Visual Studio has almost every tool you might need baked into the product. You want testing? There's a section for that. Code formatting? There's a section for that. Advanced debugging, diagnostics, and analysis? Please. You have to try harder than that. There is a few sections dedicated to those topics. Plus, you can configure Visual Studio for how it will work best for you.

It, somehow, you find something that Visual Studio isn't good at or doesn't have, you can use their amazing extension system to add that feature (usually at no cost).

Speaking of cost, Visual Studio Community Edition is FREE! Not only that, Community Edition isn't some cut-back product. It has everything you need to get the job done. Granted, there are some nice extras you can get with the paid products, but those are extras, not core functionality.

With so many options, it can be a bit confusing to use the first few times. It also has a lot of power that remains hidden unless you go poking around for it.

I'm a .NET developer and the fact that this IDE enables you to rapidly develop all kinds of applications targeting all kinds of platforms easily is what I like the most about this software. Additionally, this software is available for free as a community edition which helps developers who cannot afford the full version of the software. I like the fact that I can develop office add-ins and cross-platform and mobile apps all in one IDE.

The installer comes with many options and not much detail is provided for each component being installed other than the title and brief description. If not careful, the install can take up tens of GB hard disk space. I feel there is a lot of unnecessary components shown even for a simple install. Maybe a different approach to presenting install options would be better. Also, sometimes VS is slow to start up and consumes a lot of cpu and disk resources. Other times, VS crashes sometimes.

In build TFS(team foundation server) impresses me most. Using visual studio, you need not to worry about using third party version control, tfs gives you all advanced features like making shelvesets for your code, managing your pending changes etc.

VS gives you intelisense, going through defination of system class easily using F12.

Latest .Net framework gives you numerous types of project like web api projects,web site project, console application etc.

You can use latest technology like Entity framework with vishal studio. You can code in most of the languages like c, c++, c# , JS etc in VS.

1- it is to bulky, takes alot of ram( min 8 gb ram required)
2- got crashed number of times when high performance is needed.
3- Running application takes longer than expected most of the time as it takes to build the application every time.

I have been working with Microsoft Visual Studio for almost 15+ years. I really this software. It's very user friendly and makes the coding extremely easy. It has almost every toolbox that a normal website developments needs. It supports multiple programming languages so provides ease in choosing the programming language for development. Debugging is very easy in Visual Studio.

New visual studio requires more hard disk space (minimum 1 GB ).Adding additional addons ,components also needs space.

the possibility of programming in multiple languages.
Personally I mainly use the .NET environment by programming in the vb.NET and c # .NET languages.
We can create many different types of solutions that vary from the Web REST API to the CLASSIC descktop Application up to the creation of VMC sites.
I find the tools that allow the performance monitoring of the application we are developing to be very useful.
I currently use the Professional 2017 version and have never had any major problems.

twice the software lost my license and I had to re-insert it, it wasn't a big problem.
after an update, last year I had to reinstall the software because it had lost links to folders on my pc.
in addition, debugging on IIS after the software is changed repeatedly crashes

It has so many perks and can integrate with third party company like devexpress make the software development even better and easier, is very intuitive to use, you can create many types of project from basic windows desktop application to unversal one made from the language that you prefer, in case you use the project setup is easy to use, or you can purchase or install free, software packaging , now you can develop from other OS like andriod or iOS, or just develop games.
Team fundation allows you to create project and shared up to 6 person which is store in the cloud, so you may not lose your project

-Can be very resource consuming, depends of the package that you download, I recommend to only download what you going to use, because it make your pc slower over time
-some bug are hard to understand and force to use bing as browser
-the only control outdated is the browser and is very poor, could be improve or updated to the new edge explorer
-Is hard to use branch to unity code when using team fundation

Visual Studio is a very powerful and efficient IDE for most of the languages available. It allows us to build almost any type of apps or software. The best feature in Visual Studio is IntelliSense which makes programming easy and fun. It has in-built GitHub source control which is a plus. Project collaboration is easy and packages are scalable. Also, debugging and testing is very easy. VS also has the biggest range of features and premade templates which we can use to reduce our development time.

With vast functionality, the use of disk and memory is high which slows down your PC. Licensing is a little expensive. Sometimes, code compilation error messages are misleading that confuses the developers with what the exact issue is.

There is a marketplace of shortcuts that contain so many different add-ons. The debugger that is included helps a ton and makes for a faster and smoother development process .

What I liked least is that when certain files were open the entire program would freeze up, those js files would open fine in other programs but would crash visual studio every time. This has only happened three times to me out of thousands of files.

1. IntelliSense - By far the best code completion of any IDE on the market, especially for C#.

2. Microsoft - Because VS is developed by Microsoft, there is plenty of online support and up to date documentation. Likewise, their support for their own line of products with VS is unparalleled.

3. Source Control integration - Provides a clean and helpful UI for dealing with SCCS like Git.

4. Debugger - Intuitive and easy to use debugger.

1. Bloat - There are so many features but the average person doesn't need 90% of them. They put all of these features on the UI which clutters the screen and makes the IDE unnecessarily complex.

2. Poor performance when dealing with large projects.

3. Lack of UI customization - It doesn't allow you to simplify the UI to match your needs.

4. Only one project can be open at a time - This means you must have two instances of the IDE open if you would like to reference your code in another project.

Visual Studio provides the rich IDE interface to work. It provides the complete platform for software development from planning to delivery of the product. Visual Studio Live Share help in collaboration with the teams on projects. Azure DevOps used for planning, collaborate and release code fast. Working on Code using Visual Studio is really fun as Intelli-Sense help in highlighting the autocomplete based on definitions. Debugger always helps in investigating the code and finds the lacks and helps in fixing it.

Managing the large solution and resolving the dependency take a lot of time depending on the hardware quality we are working on. The worst thing is the critical memory issue while building the large solution.

I've always enjoyed using MS Visual Studio as my preferred IDE. It supports several programming languages and gives you syntax highlighting and colored formatting based on the language. I use it for C++ and Python programming. I love how customizable it is, allowing you to change the layout of the window panes in any fashion desired, and change colors around. It has a debugging feature that allows you to execute, test, and step through your code. It comes with so many features it is hard to even list them all in this review and many of them go from basic to advanced. It even supports addon extensions that can further expand its base features. I haven't played much with the cloud features but I hear it is useful and worthwhile.

Definitely there is a learning curve to using Visual Studio. It may seem daunting at first, but that goes without saying for any tool that is packaged with tons of features. But I view that as a good thing, as any experienced programmer could benefit from an IDE that provides you with the means to develop code faster and easier. The price is also a bit steep in my opinion, not so much for businesses, but for personal use, as there are times I'd like to recommend Visual Studio to starter programmers but are often faced with the price for using it.

A one-window development environment which empowers the developer to develop application for local and cloud environments. The IDE is comprising of very useful and powerful features. Easy to use interface. The best IntelliSense to help speedy development and avoid syntax errors. It enables the developers and organizations to work in teams more interactively and effectively.

For being an IDE with numerous features, usually it is difficult to quickly navigate or find any feature which I didn't used earlier. Easy to use but a bulky interface. For being a huge application, it often causes system very slow.

Visual Studio is a complete development environment and easy to learn to use, covers the creation of all kinds of projects, from the creation of web applications, such as desktop applications, mobile applications, applications for sharepoint, components for crm dynamics, projects for test code, among others. Components such as intellisense help to increase the productivity of the developer, since it suggests and helps you to complete some sentence of code that you may not have fresh at that time, the refactorización is another component of much help when it comes to change things in the code that are used in many areas of the developing application. The community version is completely free and has many components for software development such as the sdk of xamarin for the development of mobile applications for android or iOS, so you write the code once only making it multiplatform

the visual studio versions come out too fast, so it is impossible to manage a version in an acceptable way when another version with new components appears and you must learn the new to be at the forefront with the technology in the development of applications with this tool