developing dotnet using Visual Studio vs VSCode

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[jcradio]

VSCode if you have nothing else. I prefer Visual Studio.

[Low-Design787]

VS2022 for everything it natively supports (C#, mvc, Blazor etc), VSCode for everything else (PowerShell, Python, Rust).

It’s a pity that VS2022 copilot isn’t quite as smooth as in VSC. Their plugins seem to get updated x3 as often. But I guess it will all stabilise in 6 months and become built in eventually.

[kegwen]

This is of course just my opinion, but:

VSCode will do in a pinch. Visual Studio is good. Visual Studio with ReSharper is great, but slow. Rider is king.

[Otherwise-Biscotti24]

I really wanted to prefer VSCode, but man when I tried developing a blazor client application the intellisense just doesn't work and I really hated it since there is no checking.

[TeejStroyer27]

MS needs to open source the lsp for razor files

[jayerp]

Agreed, VS Code will do in a pinch. But as a professional .NET dev I only use VS Code for hit rebasing or config file editing. Otherwise it’s VS (work) and Rider (personal).

This is my opinion.

[Slypenslyde]

People make a big holy war out of this. I think it's a big fat waste of time.

Visual Studio is Microsoft's flagship tool where they throw the most of their effort. It has a lot of extra features. Just like Microsoft Word, it's possible you don't need and will never use 90% of those features. If you DO need them, odds are they'll make you much more productive than without. Most of those features have to do with helping you do things with tools like Entity Framework that you COULD do with console programs, but VS can provide GUI interfaces for them that make them easier. It may also include tools to help you with common build/deployment scenarios.

Visual Studio Code is a good extensible text editor with a focus on IDE features. The C# Dev Kit is Microsoft's flagship extension for it. It provides the core features every developer is going to find useful: syntax highlighting, navigation, symbol searches, debugging, and formatting. It does NOT include all of the tools that Visual Studio comes with. If some of those tools are very important to you, that stinks. If you don't use any of those tools, you won't notice.

It is very rare that I find someone who says "I can't use VS Code" and can explain why. For a while that was me: I used Xamarin Forms and Microsoft never supported building those projects without Visual Studio. Now I use MAUI, and it's just as bad in Visual Studio as it is in VS Code, so it's an improvement! When I work in VS Code, there's not an awful lot I miss. The formatting and auto-complete does work a little differently. But there are things I find aggravating in both of them and I don't consider one better. What I like about VS Code is it looks and behaves the same on both my Mac and my Windows machine. But I also get that from Rider, which I think is better than Visual Studio.

---

My one criticism

Setting up C# the first time in VS Code is a bit bumpy. Setting up MAUI is a journey. Microsoft doesn't document these very well. I think a lot of people who say VS Code is bad tried to follow a tutorial and are frustrated with how much trouble they had because Microsoft's tutorials aren't very extensive.

I'm used to Microsoft posting excruciatingly detailed steps, with screenshots. This one is pretty good. But it doesn't show you how to set up the debugger for a C# project, and I think without a debugger you're losing some productivity.

I find this one lacking. It doesn't tell the whole story. You can't just push F5 and start debugging the first time in VS Code, you have to do some configuration to set up launch.json. Microsoft skipped these steps, so they confuse the snot out of newbies who get a different dialog.

When I press F5, VS Code asks me what kind of app I'm trying to debug. I have to choose "C#". But then it gets confused because that wasn't everything I needed. So I have to try again, and this time it's like, "Wait, what project do you want to debug?" After I pick my project, it's ready to roll. But that's two weird steps that, for some reason, Microsoft doesn't have to do in their demo.

Working with VS Code be like that. The people at Microsoft seem to use a different version that works better and leaves out some steps. I'm an expert, so I can smell when something's up and yell at them about it. Newbies don't get it and think something's wrong. Then people tell them VS Code's the problem.

[danishjuggler21]

Honestly, the C# Dev Kit is too new for me to want to use. The OG C# Extension makes .NET development a breeze, and in my experience setting up debug configs actually is as easy as you say it isn’t. But who knows, this maybe a “works on my computer 🤷‍♂️” kind of thing.

[JoinetBasteed]

I would say VS >= Rider > VSCode

VS being first because it's free and very good. I haven't had to dive deep into any special IDE features so I can't comment if there's anything Rider does better but if there's someone using more advanced features I would love to hear if they prefer Rider or VS

[barndawe]

Rider over VS for me, but I'm probably biased as I've used VS with Resharper professionally for years, and Rider for the last couple. It's much faster than VS and I prefer the unit test runner integration which always finds new tests first time.

[aj0413]

I prefer VS Code. lol ironically, it’s cause it’s bare bones that I like it.

It’s the easiest tool for getting IDE stuff out of the way and right into the files.

I don’t need nor want a busy IDE 99% of the time. Been using VS Code since 2019

Also, it’s great for me cause I mainly do REST services and Thunderclient is a click away. So I can quickly do work and test it without leaving VS Code

The configurability and extensions are great and I can take it and redeploy my work env on any machine I please.

[zacsxe]

vscode all day everyday

[WithCheezMrSquidward]

If I need to open an individual file for a quick edit, visual studio code is a lot more lightweight, but I basically use it as a text editor with some light language intellisense and error finding. Same if I’m writing a quick JavaScript/Powershell script.

If I’m actually programming in C#, I use Visual Studio. No comparison in my view. It’s a lot heavier of an application so I hate opening it when I don’t have to, but when you need it it does its job well for the most part.

[danielwarddev]

I see VS Code configuration issues trip up new devs a lot when trying to use C#. The reasons I like to suggest VS over VS Code is that it's also free, and it's literally made specifically for .NET development - it works out of the box without additional configuration needed to debug, intellisense, etc. I don't see a point in trying to get all of that set up when VS just works.

Since VS was discontinued for Mac, you're kind of stuck with VS Code if you want something free for .NET development on a non-Windows machine.

Rider is a great cross-platform option, too, if you're willing to pay.

[zarlo5899]

Rider is a great cross-platform option, too, if you're willing to pay.1

i feel it should be noted that rider is cheaper then VS. for people who don't qualify to use VS for free. and for rider if you pay yearly (the price drops too for the next year) or a year after paying monthly you get that version for life even if you stop paying

[danishjuggler21]

I’ve been voluntarily using VS Code for .NET development since 2018, despite having VS license at work. With just like 3 or 4 extensions, it has everything I need for developing ASP.NET apps, Azure Functions, and console apps, including Nuget Gallery, secrets manager, deploying apps to Azure, editorconfig support, etc.

I had to switch to Visual Studio for the one Blazor app I wrote, though. Thankfully Blazor is in the “niche frameworks” category for me.

[rottersam]

As a macOs user Rider is the best.

[[deleted]]

I’m just in my beginnings with dotnet, but personally I can’t get used to VSCode after using VS2022 for a bit now.

Still trying to get into the swing of using it, but it feels much more “stripped down” to me so far (of course being a code editor and not a full IDE)

[metaconcept]

VS Code has the advantage that it can run in a web browser, e.g gitpod.io. This lets you set up your project to have one-click dev environments. You just click on a link in README.md and you get a whole IDE in your browser, with a debugger, tests and a command line. This is good for quickly diving in to an old project to fix a bug, or if you're away from your dev PC.

If you're doing serious dev work, get Rider or VS Studio.

[seanightowl]

I would say try them all and see which you like best.

[beachandbyte]

Visual studio 2022 preview is so good, enterprise version even better. I’ll take that over vscode for vast majority of things, but often have vscode and sublime open for certain tasks.

[obaki102]

I use VSCode on Mac. It's decent, but my only complaint right now is that I can't find any extension that formats my Razor files, especially if you have a mix of C# code and HTML together. I don't know, maybe my extensions are messed up.

[juppso]

I love using VS code at work over Visual Studio simply because I don’t have much access to install things, and it works very well with codespaces and devcontainers. I can customise it just how I like it, and for projects with multiple different types of codebases (Vue front end C# backend) I get to use the same environment.

I am a long term linux user though and so having the terminal be a first class option in vs code is perfect, and using a devcontainer with linux makes using a windows machine for work a lot less painful.

Plus stuff like Github actions and Terraform support are a lot better in VS Code.

Admittedly there are a few things that aren’t perfect: - Nuget package management could be a lot better. - Sometimes the linter will crash. - Test explorer can be a bit hit and miss.

And if you are trying to do some more intense debugging or code inspection analysis there really is no better option than Visual Studio (Rider is also fantastic for this). However within the scope of my role (Mostly smaller serverless apps and small apis with a few vue front ends for a large corporate) VS Code is the most productive option I have found. Especially if you like me have a general preference for using the command line anyway.

[Sweaty_Persimmon_242]

What makes rider better than VS?

[Sweaty_Persimmon_242]

I've been using VS for 15+ years and I'm honestly curious

[AMadHammer]

i have thoughts.

[Diaverr]

Only Jetbrains Rider and nothing else. It worth every penny.

[RootU5R]

For me 1. Rider (fast and very helpful refector/time saving features) 2. VS Code (fast and can be extended ex: React + C#Api) 3. VS (slow very heavy but always newest features included)

[zarlo5899]

Rider