Visual Studio Code: A swiss army knife for developers.
December 19, 2018

Visual Studio Code: A swiss army knife for developers.

Aaron Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Visual Studio Code

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).

Pros

  • JavaScript/TypeScript IntelliSense.
  • Large number of plugins to extend functionality.
  • Cross-platform.

Cons

  • 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.
  • No licensing costs means we can slot in new developers very cheaply without having to pay subscription fees for a full Visual Studio enterprise version.
  • Having fewer features and less tie in with debugging than the full Visual Studio experience means more time trying to find and fix problems.
Visual Studio Code offers a better one-stop-shopping experience if you are multi-lingual. There are plugins for just about every language imaginable making it great if you want one experience in every language you write code in. You don't get that with WebStorm or even with the full Visual Studio package. Both Visual Studio and WebStorm offer some good experiences with debugging and IntelliSense, however Visual Studio Code has a wider array of options.
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.

Comments

More Reviews of Microsoft Visual Studio Code

  1. Home
  2. Text Editors
  3. Microsoft Visual Studio Code Reviews
  4. User Review of Microsoft Visual Studio Code