Although we can program in any type of text editor, it never hurts to have a complete programming IDE to help us in the task of writing code. These programs often include features such as syntax highlighting, function auto-completion, and wizards that make the task of shaping our programs easier and more comfortable. There are many programming IDEs, and code editors with advanced functions to shape these programs. But, of course, one of the most complete that we can find to program in Windows and macOS is Visual Studio.
What is Visual Studio
Visual Studio is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) developed by Microsoft for Windows and macOS. This IDE is designed to allow us to program in a large number of programming languages, including:
- C, C ++
- C #
- Visual Basic .NET
- F#
- Java
- Python
- Ruby
- PHP
- ASP.NET MVC
- Django
But, in addition to being compatible with all these languages, it is also specialized in taking advantage of all the capabilities of Microsoft, both in Windows (being prepared to take advantage of all the APIs and all the operating system libraries) and to exploit all the possibilities of the Azure cloud. It also allows us to create websites and web applications, as well as all kinds of services within the .NET platform.
The main features that we can highlight of this programming IDE are:
- Syntax highlighting : highlights the functions and all elements of the code to make it easier to read and understand how they work.
- Underlined – Automatically detect and flag any potential code problems or errors. And, thanks to your quick actions , you give us recommendations to fix these errors.
- Code cleaning : with one click we can format the code and apply all kinds of corrections suggested by the IDE.
- Refactoring : this function allows us to automate the task of intelligent change of variables, extraction of lines of code and more.
- IntelliSense : allows us to see real-time information about our code and, in addition, fill in functions and small code snippets.
- Search : makes it easy to find what we want in the properties, options and menus.
- Live Share : edit and debug code with other colleagues in real time regardless of the type of application or the language used.
- Call Hierarchy – Shows the methods that call a selected method.
- CodeLens – Helps find code references, code changes, and linked errors.
- Go to definition : allows us to go directly to the location where a function or type is defined
- View definition : browse definitions.
Differences between versions
Visual Studio has three different editions, so that we can choose the one that best suits our needs. The first one is the Community edition. This edition is completely free for all users, with the limitation that it can only be used on a personal level, for educational purposes and in non-business organizations. It also lacks some functions like live dependency validation, architectural layer diagrams, architecture validation, code clone, and some functions, like CodeLens, are biased. It also lacks IntelliTrace, Code Map Debugger Integration, .NET Memory Dump Analysis, Dynamic Unit Testing, IntelliTest, Microsoft Fakes, Code Coverage, Inline Assemblies, Xamarin Inspector, and Xamarin Profiler.
Second, we have the Professional edition . This edition has a cost of 45 dollars per month and has, in addition to Azure DevOps (basic plan), licensed for business use, and the same limitations as the Community edition. It is suitable for small to medium-sized organizations with about 5 users.
Lastly, we have the Enterprise edition. This is the most complete of all, it has all the unlocked functions that we cannot find in the Community and Professional editions, and it has the Azure DevOps (basic plan + Trial plan). Its price, yes, is 250 dollars a month. Recommended for large companies with more than 500 employees.
The “Visual Studio” brand has always been synonymous with something professional, paid and very, very closed. But the mindset at Microsoft is changing. And, in addition to the previous editions, we can also find a similar program, known as Visual Studio Code, which allows us to use an OpenSource code editor, with some advanced IDE functions, so that we can edit and debug code on any operating system .
Download and install
As we have explained, the Community edition is completely free for all users. To download it, we simply have to access this link and, in the “Visual Studio” section, choose the edition we want to download.
We will download from the Microsoft website a file that will occupy little more than 1 MB . This file does not include the IDE, but will be in charge of downloading the latest version available from the company’s servers. We execute the file and we can see a first step of the wizard, where it will indicate that we have to accept the license terms and choose some of the installation options.
The program will take care of downloading and installing the installer (forgive the redundancy).
When it’s over, we can see the wizard. In it we will be able to choose the components that we want to install, the language and the path of the hard disk where we are going to place the IDE.
The base space of Visual Studio is about 800 MB , although this can increase depending on the additional components that we install. We must select at least one workload in order to take advantage of the potential of this Visual Studio. As we can see, after a couple of workloads that we mark, the space has increased from 800 MB to more than 18 GB .
We click on “Install” and the download of all the necessary components and their corresponding installation will begin. We must wait for the process to finish before we can start using the IDE.
Install additional workloads and dependencies
It may be that, as time goes by, we need to make use of other workloads or some libraries or dependencies that, in their day, we did not install by default. Luckily, it is not necessary to download and install the complete IDE again, but within the program we can find the installer itself that will allow us to add (or remove, if we no longer need it) everything we want.
We can get to it from the “create a project” section. Under all the options that we have installed we can find the option to ” Install more tools and features “.
By clicking on this button we can see the installer again, from where we can select all the elements that we want to install or uninstall.
After doing so, we only have to click on the “Modify” button (the one that was previously installed) and that’s it. When it’s done, the new workloads are ready to go.