Many people think that "Visual Studio" is the same as "Visual Studio Code" even though it is not. I don't know why Microsoft decided to confuse everyone with the names of these two development tools 🤦‍♀️.

Introduction

“Visual Studio” and “Visual Studio Code” are not the same thing. Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) and Visual Studio Code is a rich text editor like Sublime Text and Atom.
But the difference between the tools is more than just IDE and text editor.
While both provide the ability to edit code, IDEs provide support for compiling and debugging code. A code editor (text editor) can open files in different formats for making changes, but they are missing the building and evaluation aspects of an IDE.

What is Visual Studio ?

Visual Studio was first released in 1997 by Microsoft. It's an integrated development environment (IDE) for developing, editing, and debugging websites, web, and mobile applications as well as cloud services.

Because it's an IDE, programming utilities like a debugger, compiler, intelliSence, and more are all bundled into it for you.

Visual Studio comes with built-in support for C# and .NET. It also supports other programming languages like C, C++, Python, F#, web languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), and a lot more. Support for Java was removed back in Visual Studio 2017.

Visual Studio runs on Windows and Mac. It has 3 editions – community, professional, and enterprise. The community version is free, while the professional and enterprise are not.

The installation is quite a bit more robust on Windows than Mac. So, on Windows, you might have to download more than 42 GB depending on what you want to do.

But on Mac, as of the time of writing this article, you need around 6.2 GB of disk space.

What is Visual Studio Code ?

Visual Studio Code (also called VS Code) is like the mini version of Visual Studio. It is an open-source and lightweight text editor available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

VS Code comes with built-in support for JavaScript, TypeScript and Node JS, but you can use it to code in any language you want. All you need to do is download the relevant extensions.

Some of the extensions are made by Microsoft, but a lot of others are third-party extensions.

Unlike Visual Studio, you don’t need much space to download VS Code. You might not need more than 200 MB of disk space to download it.

Since it supports JavaScript, TypeScript, and Node JS by default, you get a debugger and intelliSence, too. But to get intelliSence, a compiler, and debuggers for other languages, you have to download relevant extensions.

Which should you choose between "Visual Studio" and "Visual Studio Code" ?

There has been a long-running debate about which is better and which to choose between Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. Well, it depends on what you are doing.

If you’re developing exclusively with a language supported by Visual Studio such as C#, C, C++, Python, and others, Visual Studio or other relevant IDEs are likely the best option for you.

But even if you’re developing in those languages but you require a React, Vue, or Angular frontend, VS code might be the best option for you.

If you’re working in a team, they might provide you with the enterprise version of Visual Studio, or any other IDE that correlates with the language you are working with. For example, PyCharm for Python and IntelliJ Idea for Java.

If you’re using Linux, you have to choose Visual Studio Code or some other IDE apart from Visual Studio. That’s because Visual Studio does not run on Linux.

If you’re the kind of person that likes to customize your editor to your taste, just go for VS Code because it's highly customizable. You also should probably choose VS Code if you are mixing technologies.

Conclusion

The debate should never be which one is better than the other, but which is best for what you want to do, or what you need. That’s why we looked at some scenarios that might encourage you to choose one over the other.

Thank you for reading!

Made with 💙 by Hadil Ben Abdallah.

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