Visual Studio

In short: Visual Studio is Microsoft’s big development environment (IDE), mainly for C#, C++ and .NET.

In more detail: It bundles editor, compiler, debugger (debugging), project management, Git integration and designers in one place. Visual Studio Code, in contrast, is a lightweight, free editor that becomes a development environment for many languages with extensions. The two are different products.

In Depth

• Licence: there is a free Community edition (for individuals, learners, open source and small teams). Professional and Enterprise are paid. It is important to observe the licence terms, especially in companies.
• Setting up the environment: choose a workload (e.g. “.NET desktop development”), create a project, connect a Git repository, install extensions sparingly.
• Strengths: powerful debugger, IntelliSense (code suggestions), test explorer, profiler.
• Alternatives: JetBrains Rider, Visual Studio Code, Eclipse, IntelliJ.

See also: high-level languages, Git