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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

(849)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our whole Web Development team uses Microsoft Visual Studio Code. It is the best open-source code editor out there. It allows us to cheaply replace an IDE with open source software, and an AppStore like suite of add-ons for enabling some pretty impressive features, all for free. You can even share code snippets across your team as a JSON file. We find this super useful. It helps our small team collaborate easier and get our Web Development work done. We use it for PHP, JS, JSON primarily, and love the extensions that help you read code easier or work faster with autocompletion of just about any coding language.
  • It's free. There are tons of IDEs out there, and many of them very useful. For a small team at a small company, you may not need to pay a dime.
  • Add-ons/extensions. There is a Microsoft Visual Studio Code Marketplace (free), where people create free extensions and add-ons with the Microsoft Visual Studio Code community. This is by far the best part about Microsoft Visual Studio Code. Our team uses extensions for autocompletion, highlighting colors in CSS/SCSS. I can't imagine coding without it now.
  • Flexibility. It is highly customizable. Our whole team uses Microsoft Visual Studio Code, but each person has put their own personal touch on the look/feel extensions they use.
  • Built-in dev tools. Native Git tools, terminal access built-in for MAC users, code linting and "prettifying" etc. Your senior dev can set the formatting for specific file types, and when saving the files, it will correct from someone who uses 2 spaces v 4 spaces v tabs based on rules that you set.
  • Needs some work to set up like a true IDE, but for free, it's worth a few mins of grabbing extensions and customizing.
  • For new coders/developers, they can go overboard with un-needed extensions, slowing down the code editor. Simple coaching can help with this.
For more advanced developers, you may find an actual IDE to be useful still, but I'll bet you can do 95% of what your IDE does with Microsoft Visual Studio Code for free. For small, scrappy (translation: cost-conscious) teams, you really can't beat Microsoft Visual Studio Code. Most of the features of a real IDE with minimal setup, and all for free. Your team may have specific needs that make an IDE necessary. However, I think for most development teams, Mircosoft Visual Studio Code will get the job done, and for free. Microsoft Visual Studio Code beats Atom in our book too because features like emmet, terminal integration, and git tools are built right into Microsoft Visual Studio Code. You need extensions for these in Atom. Microsoft Visual Studio Code tends to run more smoothly for our PC users than Atom as well.
  • There is a small-time investment for setup, or for users switching from other code editors/IDEs, but zero monetary investment. You're going to pay with time or money, but for a small team, the time investment has produced tremendous returns.
  • I'd say outside of the time cost of the initial setup, it has absolutely been net-positive ROI for our company. Our team loves this product, and after initial setup, you get to reap the rewards!
  • We think of getting this set up as another "Onboarding" task for our new developers, which we already plan for a ramp-up anyway. The benefits far outweigh the small time investment.
For our software dev teams, they still use the products from JetBrains (PhpStorm, RubyMine, etc) when they are laser-focused on one technology. For our less experienced, less code specific web dev team, Microsoft Visual Studio Code knocks it out of the park. I'd recommend starting with Microsoft Visual Studio Code if you're on a limited budget or a new team. I'd venture to guess you can do most of what your team needs with that. If not, you can always switch to a true IDE later.

We found that our web dev team could make Microsoft Visual Studio Code do everything we needed it to, without the need to pay for PHP Storm.

Compared to Atom, we had fewer complaints (if any) about speed and sluggishness, and really like how the built-in features of Microsoft Visual Studio Code stack up against Atom.

We've never actually had to use Microsoft Visual Studio Code's support, which in and of itself, is saying something. If we've ever had questions, the open-source community usually has had an answer for whatever question/problem we've had. 90% of the time, it is which extension is best for XXX use case, or XXX coding language. The Marketplace has a rating system, which makes these evaluations simple and easy.
Yes
Our small team of web developers were split between using Brackets and Atom (other free code editors). We were all able to agree on Microsoft Visual Studio Code after trying it for just a short amount of time.

The Marketplace alone is worth its weight in gold. Brackets was almost solely front-end focused, which will take it out of consideration for some teams. Microsoft Visual Studio Code can just as easily be set up for backend, PHP, Python etc. It is more flexible than Brackets for our team.

Atom is much more of an "apples to apples" comparison, but the winner was hands down Microsoft Visual Studio Code. We wanted to have one code editor that our whole team could use, and even our mac users have grown to love it. We have been blown away by the flexibility and customization options.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Third-party Reviews
We wanted a free, open-source editor for our small team in a small org. This fit the bill to a "t." We also wanted one code-editor for our whole team, but before Microsoft Visual Studio Code, there wasn't an editor that our entire team would get behind and support.

The open-source nature means that anyone can think of, and develop the next great extension or add-on for Microsoft Visual Studio Code. We're excited to see where this goes!
I don't think we could have. When we first started, Microsoft Visual Studio Code simply didn't exist. We had several team members try JetBrains free trials and compared that to Atom and Brackets. Purely based on cost, we were originally split on Atom and Brackets until Microsoft Visual Code came out. As someone who helps to make the purchasing decisions, we always try free tools first to see if they can fit the bill. If not, we start our evaluation of paid products and try to use demos and free trials before making a major purchasing decision.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Microsoft Visual Studio Code as our default editor on Windows 10, MacOS and Linux. It has replaced all other text/programming editors such as Notepad++, gedit, BBEdit, or TextWrangler. We are cross-platform and use multiple programming languages. The wealth of extensions available and tight Git integration make this our top choice for literally every editing task that doesn't require a word processor. We now have one environment for JavaScript, PHP, Python, general control file editing and shell scripting. It works across all our platforms. That means we save a lot of time with mental context switching.
  • Integrated Git support allows us to manipulate source control without leaving the editor. We use VS Code as our primary Git interface now.
  • Integrated debugging and command shell reduces the amount of alt-tabbing we do every day.
  • Extensions available for every language we use optimizes our editing.
  • Color themes to suit any user. I prefer dark themes, some of my team prefer light.
  • Multiple keymaps to emulate your previous favorite editor means you can start right away with your old muscle-memory.
  • Multi-caret selection for powerful search/replace and refactoring.
  • There are so many extensions available, maybe a better way to review and evaluate them.
  • We'd like to synchronize our themes and setting between machines. Maybe link this to our Microsoft account?
  • We'd like to do remote pair-coding in real-time and sync our changes, similar to Word Online or Google Docs. (Update: A developer pointed out Visual Studio Live Share, an extension that does it! )
  • It lacks macro recording and playback. There are times when refactoring or processing large text files for import/export this would be very helpful.
Anytime you are working on a machine locally, it's a great choice. It's not well suited to using inside an SSH terminal session or if you are doing XWindows remote sessions. It works the same (99%) across Windows, Mac or Linux.
  • We don't need to buy BBEdit licenses for our Mac users anymore. This is immediate cost savings.
  • The extensive keymaps make our employees more productive right away.
  • The extensive color themes may be a slight negative - some of our junior programmers spend too much time playing with multiple color themes.
  • BBEdit
  • gedit
  • Notepad++
  • UltraEdit
The best competitor to Visual Studio Code is probably BBEdit on Mac and UltraEdit on Windows. Visual Studio Code beats both of them on features, other than the lack of macro-recording/playback. As a bonus, it's free and open source. It's also being updated on a faster schedule than any of the other competitors.
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Yes
We replaced Notepad++, BBEdit, UltraEdit, and gedit. We were using multiple editors across multiple platforms. Visual Studio Code gave us a unified experience and cut our licensing costs. In addition, Notepad++ had a dated user interface, we wanted a more modern look. UltraEdit was becoming increasingly opinionated and quirky. gedit is too basic. BBEdit is expensive.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Vendor Reputation
The cross-platform support was the most important factor. We use the right OS for the job, but don't want the mental overhead of switching our editor every time we switch machines. Using Visual Studio Code allows us to stay in a uniform editor across many machines with different OS. The reduced mental context switching makes our team more productive.
Truthfully, and I'm not pandering here - I should have started by reading reviews at TrustRadius. Our typical approach is to download and test everything and not read many reviews. We might have narrowed the field down sooner if we had spent a little more time in research instead of installing and uninstalling software.
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