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Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Microsoft Visual Studio Code

Overview

What is Microsoft Visual Studio Code?

Microsoft offers Visual Studio Code, a text editor that supports code editing, debugging, IntelliSense syntax highlighting, and other features.

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Recent Reviews

Visual Studio Code - happy coding

9 out of 10
July 12, 2023
It is a mighty and lightweight IDE which never seen. It supports almost all the languages. It has extensive verities of extensions for …
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One of the best code editors

8 out of 10
January 17, 2023
Visual Studio Code has been really helpful to me, allowing me to utilize my time more effectively and accomplish the task, more thanks to …
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Awesome IDE for Developers

8 out of 10
December 15, 2022
Visual Code Studio is used in my organization for development operations like coding, debugging, sharing code, using git clone thorough …
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VS Code - You will love it

10 out of 10
April 30, 2022
1. Writing day-to-day code 2. running and debugging my Flutter apps 3. Write Test code for my projects 4. Access remote host via pem file …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is Microsoft Visual Studio Code?

Microsoft offers Visual Studio Code, a text editor that supports code editing, debugging, IntelliSense syntax highlighting, and other features.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Details

What is Microsoft Visual Studio Code?

Microsoft Visual Studio Code Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Microsoft offers Visual Studio Code, a text editor that supports code editing, debugging, IntelliSense syntax highlighting, and other features.

Microsoft Visual Studio Code starts at $0.

Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Microsoft Visual Studio Code are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(845)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(76-89 of 89)
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Matthew Deakyne | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MS Visual Code is an amazing IDE for a generalist developer. My team uses it primarily for web development in Javascript and Python, but it can be used for practically any language. The biggest features are the extensions which integrate with DevOps software such as version control (Git), continuous integration (Travis) and container management (docker).
  • Language support. The IDE supports various languages through extensions. It's also smart enough to recommend extensions based on the file extensions used, and makes installing these incredibly easy. Other IDEs are typically focused on one language, such as Eclipse for Java or PyCharm for Python - but VS Code really provides a great language inclusive experience.
  • DevOps integrations. The Git integration is really well done. Having integrations with continuous deployment and containers is another really great feature. The flexibility of extensions allows it to work well with whatever tool your team standardizes around - and to manage them all from one IDE.
  • Usability. MS made a really good cross-platform application. This runs on Linux. That's... kind of a big deal, considering Microsoft's history. I can configure my IDE and use it on any platform, or standardize the application for all developers on my team. The design is pretty good, and it works really well.
  • Working on a single file. Sometimes you are working on a project, and you would like to create an unrelated file. This is hard to do in MS Visual Code. It's much better at organizing all files in one project folder and working out of that folder.
  • Jupyter Integration. This is coming, and has improved, but I do a lot of Data Science work in python -- and I need to open up Jupyter notebooks distinct from VS Code. It would be nice to have everything running out of VS Code instead.
  • Configuration. I see this as both a strength and a weakness. My team still uses Eclipse for Java, because it comes configured with everything they need, or the things they need are more obvious. VS Code is more general, and they tried to configure it to meet their needs, but ended up going back to Eclipse for Java. Importing configurations or settings from other IDEs would make switching much easier.
MS Visual Code is an amazing all-purpose IDE and will fit into the toolkit of any developer that uses a multitude of languages. It creates an easier pathway to start using deployment technologies, and can be extended/configured to a large extent. If you or your team already has a go-to IDE that works really well, and it's free, then MS Visual Code may not be for you. Pricey IDEs may also work better with specific languages than MS Visual Code does.
Felix Markman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VSCode) to write web applications using C#, Javascript, Python, HTML, CSS, Visual Studio Code is sleek, smooth-running and offers a host of nice add-ons to customize the look and feel of the user experience. In addition, because it's a Microsoft product, the documentation and support are solid.

In the web development boot camp I recently participated in, VSCode was the editor of choice because it offers a wide variety of features that are not available in Sublime, Atom and other competitors.
  • Built-in code validator with output, terminal, debug console and problems tab.
  • Built-in GitHub integration including history.
  • A wide variety of plugins that expedite and verify code quality like the .NET Core Extension Pack, Python Linter, and apps for Angular.js
  • A split-screen option is possible. Like in a web browser, the user can display multiple tabs (windows) inside the single window.
  • A higher learning curve than that of simpler competitor application (ie Sublime).
  • More areas of the editor to manage due to multiple component windows.
  • It may be slow to start depending on the loaded plugins.
  • Uses a lot of computer memory. It doesn't run as light as Sublime.
Since it's a free application, released under the MIT License, Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VSCode) is an excellent piece of software for developers of all languages. There are frequent software updates, and the integrated terminal makes testing code seamless. VSCode is a suitable application for development teams large and small. It's perhaps the best all-purpose code editor given its support, documentation and deep extensions store.
Brendan McKenna | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have ported to Visual Studio code for our latest Angular development project. Initially - and still for older projects - we use Visual Studio for our Angular front end development. Visual Studio code is really a marked improvement when developing in Angular. It is incredibly fast and more lightweight than Visual Studio. Really cool to have a powershell terminal integrated right into the development environment which makes issuing Angular CLI commands all the much easier. Seamless integration with Git. The syntax highlighting is much improved as well. Visual Studio will still incorrectly flag false syntax errors; no such issue in VS Code that I have seen.
  • It has incredible speed for Angular development purposes - it makes Visual Studio seem clunky in comparison
  • Seamless Git integration
  • Very nice Angular syntax highlighting and recognition
  • Can be slow occasionally when loading large files
I have used it for Angular development purposes. If you are developing in Angular on Windows this is the development environment to go with.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I can only speak for my specific group and out of that group I am the only one actually using VS Code. That isn't because of anything with VS Code, it is because of the nature of the work my telecommunications team does. I'm the only one in a programming-adjacent role. VS Code provides me with a flexible IDE for coding in multiple languages that is lightweight and fast.

If I don't need to compile code, this is my IDE of choice. VS Code allows me to quickly write scripts ranging from Powershell to Python to Javascript or troubleshoot existing code with the debugging extensions.
  • The extensions marketplace greatly extends the functionality of the IDE beyond what the core contribution team could ever hope to.
  • The application doesn't feel sluggish or bloated. I don't work on massive projects, but I've never felt like I could describe it as any way other than responsive.
  • It's open source with a very nice license for internal development purposes, which is entirely what I do.
  • Requires additional tools to compile code, so some of the perks of lightweight and speed are made sacrificing a bit of convenience (arguably).
  • Occasional seemingly random error banners on launch that don't really impact performance, but just happen (to me, at least).
  • Leaning on market place extensions for a lot of debugging/linting functions puts you at the mercy of parties outside of your IDE vendor.
If you are coding for educational purposes or developing internal user only applications, VS Code is fantastic. VS Code is also a fantastic option if you are more of a jack of all trades rather than focused on one specific language being that the extensions make it very flexible in what functionality it can provide that text editors and text+ type IDE's simply don't.

I would say if you need to compile code, perhaps this will work well for you with some external tools, but there's a good chance there's an IDE for the language you're using that would be better suited. The same goes for if you are only using one language consistently: there are language-focused IDEs that have an amazing quality of life features that VS Code simply aren't likely to implement.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In our organization we use Visual Studio Code everyday. I can work on multiple files by splitting the editor in two tabs as opposed to having different windows open and it is very useful. There are many plugins and extensions available in this IDE. I use it to develop small and large projects. Specially when working with React project. Its free and easy to understand.
  • Helps in writing code efficiently
  • Great for HTML editing
  • Easy to write and Debug JAVA scripts
  • Live server plugin sometimes hangs.
  • Ubuntu support is not very good. It doesn't work properly.
  • It is mainly used for back-end development. It should also support front-end technologies.
If you are working on Node.js, this is a must-have tool. Any HTML editing can be done with this tool.
Christopher Boyd | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Visual Studio Code (VS Code, for short) is used in tandem with a few other development tools within my company, primarily as an intermediary IDE somewhere between Sublime Text and PHPStorm.

As users of the Visual Studio 2017 DevSense plugin for PHP, we were interested in VS Code. It quickly led us to recognize that VS Code worked well for .NET Core applications, Unity editing, and pretty much anything else we've thrown at it.
  • Code analysis and completion, especially when working within our PHP projects.
  • Provides a fantastic number of plugins, many of which were formerly Sublime Text plugins, but were abandoned in favor of VS Code.
  • Works out of the box with many programming languages much more smoothly than other intermediary IDEs do, such as Atom.
  • Fast and responsive, though not as lightweight as a text editor. It especially is quick to use as a comparison against full IDEs for code analysis because it catches different errors or applies different standards than some other IDEs do.
  • It can be rather resource intensive on your system, especially when opening a project for the first time and indexing and code analysis occurs.
  • I've run into a handful of bugs where certain plugins, including ones that are supposed to be part of VS Code, freeze up and don't function, or cause the whole editor to freeze up or crash. There never is any rhyme or reason, and rarely anything useful in the logs about WHY something isn't working correctly.
VS Code is an excellent all-around intermediary IDE and text editor. Being open source and cross-platform makes it an ideal development tool for anyone in a mixed OS environment, especially where Mac and Linux are involved.

Surprisingly, the most unpleasant mainstream language that I would have expected to work well and out-of-the-box, but took some effort and felt wrong trying to use with VS Code, was C#. It can be done, but full Visual Studio is still a better fit.
Aaron Pace | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
For a long time, Visual Studio has been my primary development tool of choice. Prior to that, I was a scrappy coder doing mostly old-school Visual Basic (think VB 6) work. I found Visual Studio Code about the same time I started dabbling in Python and a few other functional programming languages. Now, I use Visual Studio Code for most of my Python coding efforts. It's the primary tool used at Insytes for data analytics functions. We are currently using Visual Studio Code and Python to develop novel statistical methods for analyzing certain key business functions for small and mid-sized distributors (mostly of durable goods).
  • Visual Studio Code is lightweight. A traditional Visual Studio install can take more than an hour, depending on the type of extensions being added at install. Visual Studio Code installs completely in a matter of minutes and loads quickly.
  • Extensions make Visual Studio Code a highly adaptable tool. A simple extension can enable functions like Python compiling without having all the extensions you don't need. That means less strain on system resources, even during project build.
  • For being lightweight, Visual Studio Code still comes with just the right feature set out of the box to get you started.
  • Oh, and did I mention it's completely free to use? No MSDN or developer license to buy. Ever.
  • Code-type detection is one feature I wish it had. That is, most coding languages are syntactically different enough for each other that the IDE should be able to detect the language before a file is saved. If you create a functional snippet of code, you should be able to test it without having to save it first. If you have a lot of plug-ins and extensions installed, the list of available file types can grow quite long.
  • The Intelli-sense doesn't seem quite as robust in Visual Studio Code as Visual Studio, but that is likely just a trade-off of the lightweight nature of the product.
For our firm, a lot of what we do can be accomplished using Visual Studio Code. For more complex solutions and projects, Visual Studio is still the preferred solution because it is better at managing those complexities. But, Visual Studio Code is very easy to use which makes it an ideal tool for us for testing a small, stand-alone function or feature. For us, Visual Studio is a tool for building large-scale applications. Visual Studio Code is ideally suited for small projects. It's a bit like the tools required for building a skyscraper versus a single-family home.
Taylor Morgan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our professional services web development team uses Visual Studio Code to develop custom websites and web applications. It has become a go-to solution for quick and stable coding without too much extra fluff but with a great deal of extensions and compatibility with other pieces of our development workflow. It handles projects ranging from simple page demonstrations to fully-featured web applications based on multiple modern frameworks.
  • Integrates tabbed console into editor
  • Numerous extensions and language support packs
  • Flexible workspace system for project directories, settings, etc.
  • Default workspace settings are not customizable (have to copy and paste from/to settings file)
  • New users may find the left panel UI and workspace system non-intuitive (even though it is eventually quite good)
Visual Studio Code is perfect for web development for those who do a bit more than junior-level work. It seamlessly integrates consoles for task runners, code compilation, etc. and supports numerous extensions for framework support (i.e. parsing .vue files, debugging Symfony with xdebug, etc.). The workspace system is helpful for agency environments or anyone working on many projects concurrently. You are able to add multiple directories to a single project, customize settings (even colors) for just that workspace, and it remembers your tab setup—even how you had them split and arranged.
Joel Tanzi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Visual Studio Code throughout the engineering team at our company. Our engineers are given the choice to use whatever code editor they prefer but Visual Studio Code is the overwhelmingly popular choice. It is not difficult to see why they prefer it over its alternatives. Outside of being as easy to use as any quality text editor, it features powerful keyboard shortcuts that can greatly speed your productivity. VS Code has gone out of its way to be kind to developers transitioning from other editors such as Vim or Sublime, and allows you to install keyboard shortcuts from these popular tools. It comes with everything a great text editor requires on its own, but builds on that with excellent support for a wide range of plug-ins that add fantastic features like Git integration, spell checking, autocompletion, package management, task management, support for specific languages and frameworks, linters, code snippets, and much, much more. For example, my own workflow includes Git and Angular, and so I have a number of Angular support plug-ins to make my component development must faster, and GitLens to help me see, inline, whom made changes to the code and when. <br><br><br><br>
  • Increases productivity of your software engineers through a set of well-considered and flexible keyboard and navigation shortcuts, along with code writing assistance such as snippets and code completion.
  • An excellent community of plug-in developers provides a plug-in solution to whatever features you might need or want.
  • Integrates with your versioning and collaboration tools such as Git.
  • Constantly improved and open-source.
  • Searching for keywords across larger projects could be optimized for improved time to results.
  • A bit slim in features out of the box.
  • The built-in terminal is somewhat limited and a bit cumbersome.
As a code editor, Microsoft Visual Studio Code is ideal for software developers who need integration with collaboration tools and language/framework support. This would include web developers, back-end engineers, mobile application developers, and most anyone writing code of any kind. It is not as well-suited if what you need is a full-featured word processor for professional looking documents such as those offered by Microsoft Word. It might be a good tool for a blogger using a framework such as Gatsby or Jekyll to generate their blog site statically.
Aaron Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Visual Studio Code for a lot of things today. We not only use it for all of our PowerShell scripting, but we also now use it heavily in our web development. It's much more lightweight and TypeScript and JavaScript IntelliSense work much better than when using Visual Studio Enterprise (which we also use).
  • JavaScript/TypeScript IntelliSense.
  • Large number of plugins to extend functionality.
  • Cross-platform.
  • C# Solution/Project management could be brought up to the same standards as the full Visual Studio versions.
  • The setup of the in IDE JavaScript debugging could be easier to manage.
  • Language-specific IntelliSense is up to plugin developers, which could leave your favorite language feeling dated.
Visual Studio Code is well suited for NodeJS, JavaScript/TypeScript, and web development. It offers best in class IntelliSense and formatting, and just works well. It feels smooth and doesn't have some of the same lag or delays that the full Visual Studio experience can sometimes give you. However, if you have very large web projects in C# with many solution files and projects, you may want to stick with the full Visual Studio experience because VS Code just doesn't have the same feature set there.
Filip Witkowski | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's the main code editor used for all non-ASP.Net applications. Some of our applications are ASP.Net MVC (4 or 5); for these we use full Visual Studio. For the rest of them, which are mostly Single Page Applications using AngularJS or Angular, we use Visual Studio Code. It is used for all product department (or most of its developers). It's light, fast and customizable. Works well for editing html, JavaScript and SASS.
  • It has very good code coloring and availability to customize this.
  • The left navigation, with project files structure is well designed. It's clear.
  • It makes it easy to navigate between code, with search functionality and go to definition (F12).
  • It has build in debugging tools, good for working with JavaScript.
  • When searching in file there is popup on the top of the screen, which block first line(s) of code. You can scroll to the top to see first line of code, but this should be automatic. There should be option to have this as full line so you see the code all the time.
  • There should be more intelligent tools for editing JavaScript (for example AngularJS) to use the display properties available in object while typing.
  • There should be some recommended (officially) plugins for different types of applications (SPA with AngularJS...) and they should load for the application that you are about to work on (customize by theme).
It's well suited for any front-end type applications. When you have given folder structure and you don't have to build your app or connect to database. It is perfect tool for Single Page Applications. It is useless for working on BE code. For this you need to use IDE like Visual Studio or Eclipse.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This product is utilized by the development team for web development utilizing PHP, HTML, CSS and Javascript in a Mac environment. The development team is very small at my company and we needed a tool that was low-cost and free with better development features than using a text editor that worked on MacOS.
  • Visually presents your code beautifully allowing you to organize your workspace to your preferences.
  • Integrates with your Git repository to allow easy updating of code.
  • Great intelligence features to allow quick typing of script/code steps to make coding more quickly
  • Best yet - it's free!
  • The explorer can be hard-to use when you get many files in your workspace, better search is needed to find files.
  • Easier setup for debugging (this depends on language choice).
It's hard to find a reason not to recommend this tool unless the user is using Java. It's very simple, lightweight, has a clean interface and costs nothing unlike most IDE's. Another great reason is that if the team has both Mac and Windows machines, this tool is the same on both as compared with "Visual Studio" which has differences depending on the platform.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Visual Studio Code myself in my roles as sysadmins/database admin, primarily for Powershell development. It doesn't have full feature parity with the Powershell IDE, but I much prefer the interface and extensible nature of Visual Studio Code.
  • Extensible: supports many different languages out of the box, and has extensions for even more
  • Customizable: you can make it look however you prefer
  • Feature-rich: many of the features you'd want from a complex development IDE in a lightweight platform-agnostic package
  • Specific to Powershell, some functionality in live execution is missing (progress bars)
I think Visual Studio Code should be on all IT workstations. Whenever I need to edit anything that is text-based this is what I use. Even for plain text log files it highlights things helpfully.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Visual Studio Code is used by our team of developers for writing code. It solved the need of a well-rounded, well supported coding text editor. It has many plugins to support all the programming languages we need to develop in.
  • Well supported, with a large library of plugins to support extra functionality like code IntelliSense, integrate JSLint, and even its on console built in.
  • Can customize the layout/ color schemes to your liking.
  • Can be used for most common programming languages
  • Can be a little heavy after running for a long time. This can be caused if you have a lot of plugins installed.
Almost perfect code text editor. Lightweight with the power of heavy IDEs. The only use is for programming. Do not use for writing plain text or looking at delimited files.
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