TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Visual Studio

Score8.8 out of 10

863 Reviews and Ratings

What is Visual Studio?

Visual Studio (now in the 2022 edition) is a 64-bit IDE that makes it easier to work with bigger projects and complex workloads, boasting a fluid and responsive experience for users. The IDE features IntelliCode, its automatic code completion tools that understand code context and that can complete up to a whole line at once to drive accurate and confident coding.

Read more details.

Categories & Use Cases

Videos

Who Buys & Uses Microsoft Visual Studio

Visual Studio Reviews

What users are saying about Visual Studio.
View all Visual Studio reviews

Pros

  • Robust and comprehensive IDE features for various development types
  • Highly efficient debugging capabilities across projects
  • IntelliSense for accurate code completion and developer productivity

Cons

  • High system resource consumption (CPU, memory) affecting performance
  • Slower startup and build times, particularly for larger solutions
  • Inconsistent JavaScript support and code autocompletion accuracy

A great and reliable piece of software.

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We needed a good and reliable IDE to program our multiple programs with. It needed to be easy to manage licensing, easy for developers to use, and include strong debugging tools. VS met all of those requirements for us, plus our team was already familiar with it, which made it a no-brainer to go with.

Pros

  • Debugging
  • Git
  • Building

Cons

  • Some of the theming options could use work. Upgrading to a new version may cause some themes to break.

Return on Investment

  • It's made a unified coding base a lot easier compared to our last piece of software.

Usability

Other Software Used

RealVNC Connect, GitLab

Microsoft Visual Studio Key to our growth as a software startup

Incentivized
Andrew UssherView profile
Business Owner in Information Technology at Focused On Data Limited (1-10 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Microsoft Visual Studio is at the heart of our work at Focused On Data, as we produce desktop and web solutions for clients, built on C# language.

As an IDE it is ideal for new developers allowing us to progress employees through a process of training and learning that permits them to provide valuable input in our software development projects.

Integration with GitHub is one of the major advantages, since it allows us to maintain source code in a secure repository, with the ability to have multiple developers working on the same project in a safe and coordinated way.

Pros

  • Integration with third party solutions like GitHub
  • Provides an ideal platform for Avalonia development
  • Is intuitive for new developers

Cons

  • We could do with a better way of working with JavaScript
  • Sometimes an error in the code can cause errors that are difficult to resolve unless the user has some knowledge of how projects come together

Return on Investment

  • As a startup we have been able to take advantage of the Microsoft for Startups programme and other programmes that have reduced or investment costs.
  • Without Microsoft Visual Studio we would be taking a massive step back with regards to development.
  • Bringing in new employees to something other than Microsoft Visual Studio would make recruitment a lot harder.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Delphi

Other Software Used

Microsoft Power BI, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), SAP Crystal

Visual Studio a great IDE.

Incentivized
Nicholas Branfield
Senior Software Engineer in Information Technology at Synerics (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Used extensively from building windows services to web apps and everything in between. The IDE's debugging and testing tools are quite good. IDE is responsive and easy to use and navigate. Lately, most things needed are built into the default IDE, but if not, there is a good extension library too.

Pros

  • Single interface for everything from coding to debugging to testing.
  • Fast debugging.
  • Intellisense is great.

Cons

  • Would be great if there was a better way to save and restore open tabs.
  • The built-in test runner can be improved, for example, by adding the ability to save a set of commonly run tests, etc.
  • Better integration for Microsoft SQL server would be great.

Return on Investment

  • Increased efficiency.
  • Cost reduction vs many individual tools.
  • Code quality improvements due to ease of test and debugging.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Visual Studio Code and Eclipse

Other Software Used

ChatGPT, Postman, Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Visual Studio for Software developers

Incentivized
Naga Dinesh Reddy KonetiView profile
Python Developer in Quality Assurance at Applied Materials (10,001+ employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am using Microsoft Visual Studio for developing applications using python, I am using Microsoft Visual Studio developing desktop application using python tkinter, pyqt. And I am using it for scheduling tasks using python.
The AI assistant with GitHub copilot extention is very helpful to write the code and develop the better codes. The easy way of adding extensions helps a lot to get the work simple and quick complete to meet the deadlines. Easy way of handling database, js, c++ makes good. The connection with Git helps for version control so I can track the work status and updates.

Pros

  • Develop application using Microsoft Visual Studio.
  • Version control helps to get update and collaboration with my teams.
  • Microsoft Visual Studio helps to do debug code finding error easily.
  • The extension helps to add any programming languages we can use and run.

Cons

  • There are some other programming languages they don't support if they include them that will help a lot
  • The structure they can make better.
  • The consumption of cpu and memory was high while using the Microsoft Visual Studio.

Return on Investment

  • It has a positive impact on my company helps for completing projects

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Postman and PyCharm

Other Software Used

Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Postman, PyCharm

Super popular for good reason.

Incentivized
Craig WheatleyView profile
Lead web developer in Engineering at Candyspace (51-200 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

This is our IDE of choice for Optimizely projects. It's fast, accurate and easily handles the complex C# projects we throw at it. We use Microsoft Visual Studio for development across teams, creating custom extensions to be shared and reused across teams. The intelligent type safety system ensures our teams are accurate and can learn at the same time.

Pros

  • Very fast, even with a c# project with 500k lines
  • IntelliSense
  • Custom extensions
  • Dependency management

Cons

  • Simple guides for first time users
  • Better compatibility with Linux

Return on Investment

  • Developer efficiency is great with shared extensions
  • Projects compile quickly avoiding slow build times
  • Our Linux team has had to adopt alternative tools

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Visual Studio Code and JetBrains Rider

Other Software Used

Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Slack, Adobe PhotoShop, Docker