. In the beginning there was Visual Studio. For many years, it was essentially the only tool that offered a comprehensive IDE with useful functionality that could be used for enterprise-level.NET development. Other tools existed, of course, but they were generally no match for Visual Studio.
The list of differences is huge. Visual Studio Code is a stripped down version of Visual Studio 2015, with emphasis in just writing the code instead of dealing with debugging, compiling, testing, refactoring, and all the other things that make Visual Studio great. Visual Studio is on the mac and PC with visual studio 2017. The mac version is at the time of writing is in preview and has some xamarin and.net core stuff in it. Visual Studio for the Mac does not have everything the windows version does.
In recent years, this landscape has somewhat changed: we now have, and, more recently,. Not all of these are free or open source, and, in general, this shows up in the quality of the tool or the features it offers. This is not to say that open source does not offer high quality stuff – I have been an advocate of NHibernate for years – but only that companies that can spend money in having full time developers working on something usually benefit from that. In this post, I am going to talk about Rider and how it compares to Visual Studio. You may remember Visual Studio was already covered in. How Rider Compares to Visual Studio Rider from JetBrains only has a paid version, not a free one. This differs from Visual Studio, which also offers a, of course, lacking several features of its.
It’s features are listed on JetBrains site. Rider originates from other JetBrains such as and but now turned into an IDE. It is cross-platform, meaning, it can run on both Windows, Mac and several flavors of Linux, offering the same set of functionality and identical behavior on all of them. Visual Studio also supports Mac and Linux, but not all of these platforms have the same feature set. This is a big advantage for Rider: it just looks and behaves the same everywhere. Rider’s Look and Feel Rider is responsive and customizable, you can pick your color scheme, keyboard bindings and what not. I find it to be fast and responsive too.
You can have multiple windows showing the way you want them, even collapsed, and then save the settings. Rider’s Projects Out of the box, Rider offers several project templates for.NET,.NET Core, Unity and Xamarin projects, which are roughly identical to what you get with Visual Studio: More project templates can be added online (see repository ) or through downloadable templates. Some extensions add other templates too. The solutions and projects that Rider works with are fully compatible with Visual Studio’s, that is, it doesn’t use any proprietary format. You can create projects using the C#, F# or VB languages, but not all of these languages are not available for all project types.
You can target any of the installed.NET Framework versions, but only the latest.NET Core or.NET Standards. For ASP.NET Core projects, you can pick a.NET template that uses Angular, React or React and Redux: When in a project, you have the solution and the structure view, where you can see a structure’s internals. Visual Studio shows the types inside of each file, this is missing from Rider. Rider does offer a structure view, I’ll talk about it in a moment. As one would expect, we can browse installed and available NuGet packages, identifying those that are available offline (from local cache): Source Control When creating a new solution we are prompted to create a new source control repository, Git and Mercurial/Hg seem to be the only supported types, but in other places we can see that Rider works well with Team Foundation Services, CVS and Subversion too. In the case of Git – the one I use the most – it offers many features not available from inside Visual Studio, like stashes and patches. There is a diff viewer that can show two versions of the file side by side or in an integrated view, with some interesting options such as collapsing unchanged blocks.
![Visual Studio For Mac Differences Visual Studio For Mac Differences](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125618319/887335459.png)
It even shows local history, the changes that you made to files in your solution in the current session, and allows you to set labels to mark specific moments in time. Validations Visual Studio has had static code analysis and validation for a long time, and it is incredibly useful.
Rider also includes these rules, so it validates your code as you write it. It does a lot more than just language checks, for example, it can show certain code constructs as errors, like the missing of a named view, for example: Rider shows all solution validation faults as errors in a project tab, and you can apply certain filters to it: As you can see, it can show errors that are specific to a certain library, like.NET Core,.NET Standard or.NET Framework versions. Like Visual Studio, it will underline each solution, project and file that contains errors.
However, I must say that I got at least one false positive: Rider wrongly marked a code reference in a.cshtml file as nonexistent where in fact it did exist. Rider doesn’t validate just.NET code, JavaScript is also checked. If you are using features from a more recent version of JavaScript and your project is set to target an older one, you will be warned about it. If you use a CSS class for which there is no definition, you get a warning too. Code Refactorings Modern versions of Visual Studio already provide a great number of refactor options, but Rider, unsurprisingly, exceeds this. Essentially, Rider is ReSharper, so you can expect anything that was available in ReSharper to be here too. Virtually any line of code can be refactored, even if just for chopping long lines or introduce variables, parameters or fields instead of hardcoded (“magic”) values.
Rider can invert the logic of a conditional block, extract code to a new method, create a derived type, move methods to a different file (partial classes), convert a property to a method, turn an instance member to a static one, remove “this” declarations, etc. Renaming a namespace or a type takes care of all its references (using statements), as one would expect. A useful refactoring uses the base type instead of derived types whenever possible (as per Liskov Substitution principle), another one generates a base type for an existing one, optionally moving some members to it. Another one checks members for their visibility and offers to restrict it, if it can be done without breaking anything. Good to know that all of these can be undone. The provided refactorings are one of the strongest aspects of Rider – it can even suggest improvements that are specific to Unity.
It’s not without its flaws, though: it offered to make the Startup class abstract as it’s not being referenced anywhere, but it should know about the role it plays in.NET Core. Something to improve! Code cleanup is not a refactoring, but does exactly what it says: removes redundant code (eg, redundant “this” keywords, unnecessary imports, etc). Unit Tests Common unit test frameworks (xUnit, MS Test, NUnit) are supported, in both.NET “full” and.NET Core. There is a test explorer not unlike that of Visual Studio, and you can create sessions and add tests to them.
An interesting feature is to run tests repeatedly until failure. All in all, pretty similar to the VS experience.
Extensions Rider extensions are called plugins. There is a wide range of them available for free (961 at the time this article was written), and you can see the list for yourself. It is possible to see this list from inside Rider, of course, and here you can search for what you’re interested, even in other repositories or even from the local file system. Like in VS, you can also disable a particular plugin. These plugins are either contributed by the community or provided by JetBrains, and they are all made available for free.
Some features of Rider come from features, for example, F# or CoffeeScript support. Execution We can have multiple execution configurations.
On each we can specify environment variables to be set prior to execution, the target framework to use, program arguments, the browser to launch (in the case of a web application) and whether to debug it. It is also possible to specify multiple build steps, which actually get translated to MSBuild tasks. This is actually quite nice, as it’s easier to work with than MSBuild XML. Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be a way to run web apps through IIS or IIS Express without significant configuration – creating a new configuration, setting IISExpress.exe as the executable, setting parameters, etc.
Code Navigation Code highlighting and completion works pretty well across all supported file types, and jump to definition also works well. Rider will automatically find TODO and BUG comments on your code and show them on a dedicated tool window.
If you want, you can specify additional patterns as regular expressions. Pretty similar to Visual Studio. Another option is to add bookmarks to lines of code. Bookmarks can have a description and a mnemonic consisting of a short number of letters and number and you can jump directly to them. Again, VS offers a similar feature, although you don’t have a centralized spot where you can see all your bookmarks. Conclusion I must say that Rider is pretty impressive. Not only does it offer most features of Visual Studio, even of quite expensive editions, but it even has more.
I’d say all of the features that we can expect from an enterprise-level tool are present. Visual Studio still defines what should be in a.NET tool, but Rider follows this quite closely. Some more advanced features will still be in Visual Studio only (WPF editor, for example), but if you go with Rider, you probably won’t regret it. About Ricardo PeresRicardo Peres is a Portuguese developer, blogger, and occasionally e-book author.
He has more than 17 years of experience in software development, using technologies such as C/C, Java, JavaScript, and.NET. His interests include distributed systems, architectures, design patterns, and general.NET development.He graduated in Informatics Engineering from the University of Coimbra and currently works for London-based Simplifydigital as a Technical Evangelist. Ricardo was first awarded as Microsoft MVP in 2015.Ricardo maintains blog Development With A Dot, where he regularly writes about technical issues. You can read it at authored ebooks NHibernate Succinctly, Entity Framework Code First Succinctly, Unity Succinctly, ASP.NET Multitenant Applications Succinctly and Entity Framework Core Succinctly for the Succinctly series of Syncfusion.Ricardo also wrote Entity Framework Core Cookbook - Second Edition, was the technical reviewer for Learning NHibernate 4 and is currently writing Mastering ASP.NET Core for Packt Publishing.You can catch up with him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rjperes75.
Update to Jenny's post: The Community editions actually started since VS 2013. (2013 is great free platform for producing get-in-and-out-quick project releases, as unlike 2015 it's stable itself.) Express editions still exist even in 2015, but 'express' editions are now aimed as light platforms for individual targets (i.e. Choose one of Web or Desktop or W10) rather than the Express 2008/2010 single language (i.e. Choose one of c, c#, vb.) style.
Even then the official Express download site suggests people really should consider Community - why wouldn't you? – Oct 29 '16 at 4:08. Visual Studio (full version) is a 'full-featured' and 'convenient' development environment. Visual Studio (free 'Express' versions - only until 2017) are feature-centered and simplified versions of the full version.
Feature-centered meaning that there are different versions (Visual Studio Web Developer, Visual Studio C#, etc.) depending on your goal. Visual Studio (free Community edition - since 2015) is a simplified version of the full version and replaces the separated express editions used before 2015. Visual Studio Code (VSCode) is a cross-platform (Linux, Mac OS, Windows) editor that can be extended with plugins to your needs. For example if you want to you need to perform several steps on your own to setup the project. There is a separate tutorial for each OS. I will provide a detailed differences between Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code below.
If you really look at it the most obvious difference is that.NET has been split into two:.NET Core (Mac/Linux/Windows).NET Framework (Windows only) All native user interface technologies (Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Forms, etc) are part of the framework, not the core. The 'Visual' in Visual Studio (from Visual Basic) was largely synonymous with visual UI (drag & drop WYSIWYG) design, so in that sense, VS Code is Visual Studio without the Visual! The second most obvious difference is that Visual Studio tends to be oriented around Projects & Solutions.
VS Code:. It's a lightweight Source Code Editor which can be used to view, edit, run and debug source code for applications. Simply it is Visual Studio without the Visual UI, majorly a superman’s text-editor.
It is mainly oriented around files not projects. It does not have any scaffolding support. It is a competitor of Sublime or Atom on Electron. It is based on Electron framework, which is used to build cross platform desktop application using web technologies. It does not have support for Microsoft's version control system; Team Foundation Server. It has limited IntelliSense for Microsoft file types and similar features. It is mainly used by developers on a Mac who deal with client-side technologies (HTML/JS/CSS).
Visual Studio:. As the name indicates, it is an IDE, it contains all the features required for project development.
Like Code Auto Completion, Debugger, Database Integration, Server Setup and Configurations and so on. It is a complete solution mostly used by and for.NET related developers.
It includes everything from source control to bug tracker to deployment tools, etc. It has everything required to develop. It is widely used on.NET related projects (though you can use it for other things). Community version is free but if you want to make most of it then it is not free. Visual Studio is aimed to be the world’s best IDE (Integrated Development Environment), which provide full stack develop toolsets including a powerful code completion component called IntelliSense, a debugger which can debug both source code and machine code, everything about ASP.NET development and something about SQL development. In the latest version of Visual Studio, you can develop cross platform application without leaving IDE.
And Visual Studio takes more than 8GB disk space (according to the components you select). In brief, Visual Studio is an ultimate development environment, and it’s quite heavy. @YinCognyto - Yes, Community is quite capable of handling substantial development, including multiple projects and deploying to a variety of target platforms. Unless you need the high-end design/team tools that are only in Enterprise (or work in a company that meets MS criteria for being an Enterprise), you can do everything you need in Community. Unless you are targetting mobile via Xamarin: the Xamarin Profiler requires Enterprise license, so you'll have to pay, or do without.
– Nov 27 at 13:30. @ToolmakerSteve I want to develop for desktop (and mobile if needed), but tools like Profiler (and others) are bloatware for me (I can avoid memory leaks through proper coding and identify them at runtime), so I can live without it. VS is huge enough as it is (40+ GB only the package) - it would have been nice if there was a guide to point out the things you can skip from installing without affecting critical tasks, targeted platforms or dependencies.
So far I went with the (sadly, dead) SharpDevelop and Android Studio - hopefully it will be enough for my needs - correct me if I'm wrong. – Nov 27 at 23:24. Visual Studio.
![X code X code](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125618319/373607067.jpg)
IDE. Except for Free Editions, it is a paid IDE. It is quite heavy on CPU and lags on lower end PC. Mostly used for Windows Software Development including DirectX Programs, Windows API etc.
Advanced Intellisense. (Best one ever; VS Code's Intellisense Extension takes second place).
It features built in Debuggers, Easy to configure Project Settings (though developers tend to not use the GUI ones). MS Support (more than VS Code).
Mostly Used for C/C (Win),.NET and C# Projects along with SQL Server & Database etc. Extreme large Download Size, Space Utilization and the slows down over time. The only con that forces me to use VS Code for smaller projects. Includes tools to generate Dependency Graphs. Refactoring Tools have great support for Visual Studio.
Has a VYSIWYG editor for VB.NET/C.NET/C#. (Easy enough for first time users instead of getting through windows.h) Visual Studio Code. Free Open Source Text Editor. Has Intellisense (but doesn't work out of box if VS is not installed, need to configure to point to MinGW etc.).
Smaller Download Size and RAM Requirements. With Intellisense it requires around 300 MB Ram. Works on lower end PC. (still slow to start up especially if Powershell is used instead of CMD). Lower Support. (Open Source, so you can modify yourself).
Build Tasks are project specific. Even if you want to build it in vanilla configuration. Mostly used for Web Developments.
(this applies to all free text editors) They tend to show off Javascript / HTML Support over C/C. Visual Studio shows off VB/C over other languages.
Lack of Good Extensions. (its still new though).
Gives you a hard time to reconfigure your project/workspace settings. I prefer the GUI way. Cross Platform. Has integrated terminal. (powershell too slow at startup though).
Best for Smaller Projects, and test codes. (you know if you are bored and want to print Hello World, it does not make sense to wait 3-5 minutes while VS loads up, and then another minute or 2 at project creation and then finally getting it to print 'Hello World').