Visual Studio - The Only End to End Development Environment You'll Need
Updated June 18, 2021
Visual Studio - The Only End to End Development Environment You'll Need
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Enterprise
Overall Satisfaction with Visual Studio IDE
Visual Studio is our everyday workhorse. If we're not using Microsoft Office or SQL Server Management Studio then we're in Visual Studio. We use Visual Studio to develop Web Forms, Web Services, back-end Service libraries, and now we use it for all our client-side JavaScript, AngularJS, and Angular development. Instead of using one tool for the front-end and an different tool for the back-end, Visual Studio provides us with a broad scope of features so that it's the only real development tool we need.
- Debugging client-side JavaScript is so easy in Visual Studio. Other IDEs such as Jet Brains WebStorm provide some form of debugging, but noting is easier than Visual Studio. In particular, its the only tool that lets me put a break point in client-side script and walk the HTTP request into a Web API and back.
- With other lighter-weight tools, even Visual Studio Code, you have to dig around to find the right way to include 3rd party libraries or frameworks into your code. With Visual Studio NuGet is always handy since its built-in to the IDE. The other nice feature is after you add a package through NuGet, it searches your code and alerts you to other packages that might need upgrading.
- Our company uses Team Foundation Server for source control and using the Visual Studio IDE makes it completely transparent. Its so simple to bring down a fresh copy of your code, check-in a file or compare versions of a file.
- While we use the Enterprise edition, it's great that Microsoft offers a slimmed-down community edition for others. This makes it easier for college students to get familiar with the Visual Studio IDE for free and then later makes it easier to transition over to the Professional or Enterprise Editions when they enter the business world.
- Because AngularJS and Angular have taken the development world nearly overnight, it would be great if Microsoft updated Visual Studio to provide better support for debugging Angular and AngularJS code. Years ago, a free third-party plug-in existed called Batarang which helped developers see the contents of Angular object. Unfortunately, as Google moved forward in development this tool was ultimately broken. Visual Studio lacks real support for providing debugging tools for Google's popular front-end framework.
- Software developers are either C# or Visual Basic developers...though its rare to find a VB person anymore. Unfortunately, the Visual Studio IDE never lets you choose which of the two language to install. As a C# developer it really would be great if I could tell the installation module to not install VB or its project libraries.
- The code snippet feature in Visual Studio needs upgrading and wizards so it becomes a first class citizen in the IDE. Visual Studio would become so much more useful if I could right-click snippets of code and with a single click tell the IDE to add them to my snippets library. This would kick off a wizard that could help me edit the snippet to make it more reusable. Today if you want to use the Snippet Editor you really have to dig around the web to figure out how to make it work for you.
- Without Visual Studio, we'd be juggling a multitude of third-party IDEs and tools. The convenience of having all the tools we need wrapped up in a single IDE makes for an efficient development environment.
- If you're a Microsoft development shop, and your back-end is SQL Server, Visual Studio lets you install a free package called SQL Server Development Tools. This Microsoft add-in gives you the ability to walk-through debugging stored procedures. The process could certainly be better documented or made seamless, but debugging stored procedures can take a lot of time and using the add-ins such as this one can save your team time and frustration.
- The only negative point with Visual Studio is that we need administrative rights to change our installation of features. At our firm admin rights are removed from our machines so whenever wee need to upgrade or change Visual Studio we always have to contact our support staff to temporary elevate our rights to add or remove features in Visual Studio.
With Visual Studio I just code on the front-end and click the VCR-like play icon in the toolbar to launch the code in a browser. WebStorm doesn't give me any such convenience. With WebStorm I have to launch my code in IIS and use WebStorm to simply edit the files. I also have to debug by setting breakpoints in the browser. With Visual studio, setting breakpoints and launching code is all in one IDE. So I find no real value in WebStorm compared to Visual Studio.