1. Visual Studio
2. C++ Visual Studio Mac

Visual Studio Enterprise is an integrated, end-to-end solution for teams of any size with demanding quality and scale needs. Whether it’s for a phone, desktop, or the cloud, Visual Studio makes it easier to build great software on PC and Mac.

First, don’t get confused by name “Visual Studio Code”. Initially when I heard this name “VS Code”, my instant reaction was “it may be a plug-in and it has some connection with Visual Studio 2015. But I was wrong”. Visual studio code is a separate product from Microsoft and it is completely different from Visual studio 2015.

What is Visual Studio Code?

Visual Studio Code is free, cross platform, super fast and lightweight code editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux and OS X. Since a lot of developers use windows as their development environment, but there are also lots of developers using Linux and Mac. So, Visual studio code is for them. Though, you can also use it on windows. Since ASP.NET 5 is also cross platform as having a code editor on linux and mac makes sense. Recently ASP.NET 5 RC1 was released and please give a read to What’s new in ASP.NET 5 RC1 and RC2 and if you are new to ASP.NET 5 then read Quick summary of what’s changed in ASP.NET 5. and ASP.NET 5 is now ASP.NET Core 1.0

Visual studio code is based on Electron framework, which is used to build cross platform desktop application using web technologies.

Features of Visual studio code

• Developers can use VS Code to build web applications in JavaScript, TypeScript, ASP.NET 5, Node.js and others.
• Support for debugging: Debugging support for Node.js (JavaScript and TypeScript) on all platforms and experimental support for Mono (C# and F#) on OS X and Linux.
• Intellisense support. See below image for list of language supported and for intellisense support.
  
• Customizable editor: You can change themes, keyboard shortcuts and workspace settings.
• Create your own snippets and it also allows you to work with up to 3 files side by side.
• Editing features
• Bracket matching
• Parameter hints for methods
• Selection and multi cursor
• Go to definition and Go to Symbol support
• Shows errors and warnings in status bar
• Read about all the editing settings here.

Look and feel

VS Code is based on files and folders. You can open a file or folder that contains project files or code. The UI has an editor, view bar, status bar and sidebar. It also has an explorer window to manage folders and files. And from here you can create, rename, move or delete any file and folder. There is also an Auto save feature, when enabled your changes will be saved automatically to disk.

Difference between Visual Studio Code vs Visual Studio 2015

Visual Studio Code	Visual Studio 2015
It is cross platform. Works on windows, linux and mac.	This only works on windows.
Visual studio code is based on files and folders.	Visual Studio 2015 is based on project and solutions.
It is fast as its lightweight.	Compare to VS code, it’s not that fast. But it does lots of other stuff which makes it a little heavy.
It mainly targets front-end developers.	This can be used by any developer.
Intellisense support is very little compare to VS 2015.	No match with VS code as far as intellisense and debugging is concerned.
For now, it supports only limited languages.	Supports almost all .net related languages.

So give Visual Studio code a try. You can download it from here. And also read Why to use VS Code.

Microsoft recently released Visual Studio Code and I am a little confused about its usage, since Visual Studio has lot of similarities functionally with it.

Steven M. VascellaroAswajithAswajith

6 Answers

Visual Studio (full version) is a 'full-featured' and 'convenient' development environment.

Visual Studio (free 'Express' versions - only until 2017) are feature-centered and simplified versions of the full version. Feature-centered meaning that there are different versions (Visual Studio Web Developer, Visual Studio C#, etc.) depending on your goal.

Visual Studio (free Community edition - since 2015) is a simplified version of the full version and replaces the separated express editions used before 2015.

Visual Studio Code (VSCode) is a cross-platform (Linux, Mac OS, Windows) editor that can be extended with plugins to your needs.

For example if you want to create an ASP.NET application using VS Code you need to perform several steps on your own to setup the project. There is a separate tutorial for each OS.

Jenny O'ReillyJenny O'Reilly

Visual Studio Code is an editor while Visual Studio is an IDE.

Visual Studio Code is cross-platform and fast, while Visual Studio is Windows/Mac only and not fast.

Note that Visual Studio for Mac is available now but is a different product compared to Visual Studio (Windows). It's based on Xamarin Studio and lacks support for some older .NET project types. It does successfully build solutions created in VS 2017. VS mac has a more limited UI (for example, no customizable toolbar). So for cross-platform work. VS Code may still be preferable.

DaveInCazJohn PapaJohn Papa

I will provide a detailed differences between Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code below.

If you really look at it the most obvious difference is that .NET has been split into two:

• .NET Core (Mac, Linux, and Windows)
• .NET Framework (Windows only)

All native user interface technologies (Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Forms, etc.) are part of the framework, not the core.

The 'Visual' in Visual Studio (from Visual Basic) was largely synonymous with visual UI (drag & drop WYSIWYG) design, so in that sense, Visual Studio Code is Visual Studio without the Visual!

The second most obvious difference is that Visual Studio tends to be oriented around projects & solutions.

Visual Studio Code:

• It's a lightweight source code editor which can be used to view, edit, run, and debug source code for applications.
• Simply it is Visual Studio without the Visual UI, majorly a superman’s text-editor.
• It is mainly oriented around files, not projects.
• It does not have any scaffolding support.
• It is a competitor of Sublime Text or Atom on Electron.
• It is based on the Electron framework, which is used to build cross platform desktop application using web technologies.
• It does not have support for Microsoft's version control system; Team Foundation Server.
• It has limited IntelliSense for Microsoft file types and similar features.
• It is mainly used by developers on a Mac who deal with client-side technologies (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS).

Visual Studio:

• As the name indicates, it is an IDE, and it contains all the features required for project development. Like code auto completion, debugger, database integration, server setup, configurations, and so on.
• It is a complete solution mostly used by and for .NET related developers.It includes everything from source control to bug tracker to deployment tools, etc. It has everything required to develop.
• It is widely used on .NET related projects (though you can use it for other things). The community version is free, but if you want to make most of it then it is not free.

• Visual Studio is aimed to be the world’s best IDE (integrated development environment), which provide full stack develop toolsets, including a powerful code completion component called IntelliSense, a debugger which can debug both source code and machine code, everything about ASP.NET development, and something about SQL development.

• In the latest version of Visual Studio, you can develop cross-platform application without leaving the IDE. And Visual Studio takes more than 8 GB disk space (according to the components you select).

• In brief, Visual Studio is an ultimate development environment, and it’s quite heavy.

Reference:https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Visual-Studio-and-Visual-Studio-Code

Peter MortensenSajeetharan - MSFTSajeetharan - MSFT

Complementing the previous answers, one big difference between both is that Visual Studio Code comes in a so called 'portable' version that does not require full administrative permissions to run on Windows and can be placed in a removable drive for convenience.

Peter Mortensen

Visual Studio

• IDE
• Except for free editions, it is a paid IDE.
• It is quite heavy on CPU and lags on lower end PCs.
• It is mostly used for Windows software development including DirectX programs, Windows API, etc.
• Advanced IntelliSense (best one ever; Visual Studio Code's IntelliSense extension takes second place)
• It features built-in debuggers, easy-to-configure project settings (though developers tend to not use the GUI ones)
• Microsoft support (more than Visual Studio Code)
• Mostly used for C/C++ (Windows), .NET and C# projects along with SQL Server, database, etc.
• Extreme large download size, space utilization and the slow downs over time.
  • It is the only con that forces me to use Visual Studio Code for smaller projects*
• Includes tools to generate dependency graphs. Refactoring tools have great support for Visual Studio.
• Has a VYSIWYG editor for VB.NET, C++.NET, and C#. (It is easy enough for first time users instead of getting through windows.h)

Visual Studio Code

• Free open source text editor
• Has IntelliSense (but it doesn't work out of box if Visual Studio is not installed, need to configure to point to MinGW, etc.)
• Smaller download size and RAM requirements. With IntelliSense it requires around 300 MB RAM. (Edit : Some header files tend to blow up memory requirements to 7-8 GBs eg. OpenGL and GLM Libraries)
• It works on lower-end PCs. (it is still slow to start up especially if PowerShell is used instead of CMD)
• Lower support (open source, so you can modify it yourself)
• Build tasks are project specific. Even if you want to build it in a vanilla configuration.
• Mostly used for web development (this applies to all free text editors). They tend to show off JavaScript / HTML support over C/C++. Visual Studio shows off Visual Basic/C++ over other languages.
• Lack of good extensions (it's still new though)
• Gives you a hard time to reconfigure your project/workspace settings. I prefer the GUI way.
• Cross platform
• Has an integrated terminal (PowerShell is too slow at startup though)
• It is best for smaller projects and test code (you know if you are bored and want to print 'Hello, World!', it does not make sense to wait 3-5 minutes while Visual Studio loads up, and then another minute or 2 at project creation and then finally getting it to print 'Hello, World!').

Visual Studio

Visual Studio Code is integrated with a command prompt / terminal, hence it will be handy when there is switching between IDE and terminal / command prompt required, for example: connecting to Linux.

Peter Mortensen

C++ Visual Studio Mac

protected by Community♦Nov 17 '18 at 1:09

Thank you for your interest in this question. Because it has attracted low-quality or spam answers that had to be removed, posting an answer now requires 10 reputation on this site (the association bonus does not count).
Would you like to answer one of these unanswered questions instead?

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged visual-studiovisual-studio-code or ask your own question.