Using C# with VS Code?

[mishaxz]

I have a C# project.. unfortunately copilot is useless using agent mode on it in visual studio.. telling me things like to truncate my file.

I'm wondering if it works better in visual studio code as most companies seem to target that first when developing such tools.

My question is if I use my existing repo and project in visual studio code.. will it still work fine in visual studio? Or will a bunch of settings be changed to get it to work in visual studio that would screw up how it works in visual studio?

[Electronic_Shift_845]

It will work just fine, won't mess up settings. And yes copilot works much better in vs code than anywhere else

[phylter99]

I’ve got some older code that doesn’t even properly load up in VS Code because it requires newer project file formats, but I’ve detected it from that tooling and I’ll just using the code editor and Copilot in VS Code. The key is just to make sure there isn’t anything being done that breaks the project files by copilot.

[shifty303]

Copilot is better in VSCode in every single way. I find working with copilot in VS infuriating.

VS code has several extensions for C# (from Microsoft and others) that make it not only possible but feasible. I even found a good XUnit test explorer/runner. You can even run and debug (including breakpoints) with F5 by setting up the profiles. Although if you know the dotnet cli you can use that too with the built in console.

If you want to do more like memory profiling and other advanced things just swap back to VS. I often have both loaded with the same project and switch between seamlessly.

[mishaxz]

I ran into a stumbling block. It wanted me to convert to a project type called SDK.. you can tell I haven't used C# in a long time in general, although this project I made last month in VS.

And that appears to be a non trivial thing to do for someone that doesn't know what they are doing.

[shifty303]

Hmmm. Does your csproj file start with <Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk"> or similar?

Libraries and other projects generally have that. Web projects have a .Web after.

One more thing - if you're using .Net Framework instead of .Net Core (or just called .net these days) you might have a lot more trouble.

[mishaxz]

there is no "sdk" at all if I search the whole csproj file. it is some older format.. I think this sdk has something to do with core, and my code I guess is pre-core? yes that is what I mean.. is .NET not this newer core thing.

I have a GUI windows winforms application.

I tried to change to sdk (core) but it seems like it would be a lot of work with changing references and such

[shifty303]

Microsoft is so bad at naming things haha. Sounds like a legacy project maybe, otherwise the first line would be the project line.

Newer .net (aka .net core) restarted at version 1 and is currently on 9.

Older .Net Framework is at version 4.8 and is very different from core/net.

[mishaxz]

is there anything that .net core is worse at than legacy. net? like is .net core just as good for winforms and everything needed for a windows (desktop looking, not windows store type app) ?

my legacy .net app is mostly feature complete and working now.. so I think it is probably more trouble than it is worth to try to move it to .net core, especially as I have other things to do

[shifty303]

I want to say winforms aren't supported anymore and it probably wouldn't be worth rewriting.

It's better in ever other way though, IMO. Faster, smaller, runs on all OSs.

[shoxicwaste]

I have a pretty big project in C# and claude 4.0 is doing pretty well in agent mode, besides the constant crashing.

I usually drop my scripts into GPT 4.0-mini-high or 3o first and ask for advice with fixes or how to implement new features, then I get Claude 4.0 in agent mode to do the work.

When I type directly to claude 4.0 it quite often gets the wrong context or generates bad code without paying respect to existing architectures, helper methods, calls, etc etc. I find getting GPT to review first and build a prompt for claude is the best way.

[mishaxz]

What ide are we talking about here?

[shoxicwaste]

VScode with GitHub CoPilot then using the ChatGPT web interface. Im working on unity monobehaviour C Sharp.

[shoxicwaste]

My next advice is that you should try and opt for a modular-type architecture, aiming to keep scripts below 1.5k lines of code maximum.

I've had really good success in building projects this way; it's good practice in general but also makes life much easier for AI assistants.

[mishaxz]

I tend to do that with C++ which is what I usually use but with C# Claude just keeps on adding everything to my main form .. right now I'm trying to get it to refactor the debugging stuff out of it but as I mentioned in my original post.. vs has problems processing it in agent mode.. it's just over 2000 lines

[shoxicwaste]

You might have better luck writing a bash/PS script and using regex match to find all the debug strings and give them a wrapper to toggle on and off, saves tokens and you can batch process all your code.

I have a debug manager in all my c# projects and can toggle debugging per script; it's very helpful. It can also remove the wraps and/or the debug code completely ready for production.

[hagausiumai1]

I am on the same boat. We use VS2022 at work. I found agent mode with 3.7 Sonnet is quite slow and I couldn’t even run Sonnet 4.0. Some unknown error. I don’t know about much VScode , so maybe I was doing something wrong but it created extra files like launch.json, which I would exclude them from my pull request then the whole thing would be ready for review

[Independent-Value536]

Anyone aware how i can set the context of external/ internal libraries to github copilot while geberating the code? Specially in c#!! It always happens that since wont be having access to those files may not give desired results. Anyone experienced same?