{"slug": "visual-studio", "name": "Visual Studio", "category": "editors", "category_name": "Editors and IDEs", "description": "Microsoft's full-featured integrated development environment for Windows, focused on .NET and C++.", "recommenders": 6, "commenters": 22, "warners": 5, "score": 3.721, "rising": -0.64, "first": "2025-11-11", "latest": "2026-10-14", "why": "HN commenters like Visual Studio for debugging and for reading and navigating large codebases with IntelliSense, and they value it for C++ and .NET work that runs out of the box.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 10, "compare": 1, "warn": 5}, "spark": [0, 0, 2, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Code navigation", "Productivity"], "caveat": "Slow and heavy", "short_quote": "I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/", "pricing": "freemium", "aliases": ["Visual Studio"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like Visual Studio for debugging", "cites": [{"id": 797707107, "item_id": 49856694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49856694", "by": "tyfighter", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.", "excerpt": "I use it daily as well. I know enough vim to get around, but not quickly. I never learned emacs. The Javascript/full browser engine editors (VSCode, Atom, et al.) seemed so wasteful, and Sublime did everything I needed otherwise. Except...I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.", "context": "", "use_case": "debugging, browsing large codebases", "switched_from": "", "story": "I am the only one who still uses sublime text daily?"}]}, {"text": " and for reading and navigating large codebases with IntelliSense,", "cites": [{"id": 797707107, "item_id": 49856694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49856694", "by": "tyfighter", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.", "excerpt": "I use it daily as well. I know enough vim to get around, but not quickly. I never learned emacs. The Javascript/full browser engine editors (VSCode, Atom, et al.) seemed so wasteful, and Sublime did everything I needed otherwise. Except...I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.", "context": "", "use_case": "debugging, browsing large codebases", "switched_from": "", "story": "I am the only one who still uses sublime text daily?"}, {"id": 776942434, "item_id": 48558902, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48558902", "by": "redox99", "date": "2026-06-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code", "excerpt": "I also work with C++, and I use Codex (desktop) which writes 99.99% of my code, plus Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code. For webdev I do VSCode + Codex. I started with Cursor back in the day, but switched to Claude Code and then Codex when Cursor got too expensive. If price wasn't an issue, maybe I'd prefer Cursor only because I can easily switch between models. But that's it. I always disli", "context": "works with C++", "use_case": "reading C++ code", "switched_from": "", "story": "SpaceX to buy Cursor AI coding agent operator Anysphere for $60B"}]}, {"text": " and they value it for C++ and .NET work that runs out of the box.", "cites": [{"id": 800889217, "item_id": 50055576, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50055576", "by": "mark_something", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "compare", "quote": "compared to e.g. programming C++ with Visual Studio, which works out of the box", "excerpt": "I used it for a few hobby projects in VSCode. It's not 100% smooth, e.g. I couldn't compile and run my code with a single shortcut. It's supposed to be possible to show graphs in VSCode but I couldn't make that work. Debugging worked quite good. I didn't look for static analysis. But I find programming in any language in VSCode less polished, compared to e.g. programming C++ with Visual Studio, which works out of the", "context": "", "use_case": "C++ development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Calculus with Julia"}, {"id": 748750016, "item_id": 46796876, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796876", "by": "bwg2000", "date": "2026-01-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "visual studio definitly is the one and just feels like a good pair of jeans", "excerpt": "Every time an article like this pops up I think, damn I really must make the switch, fuck Microsoft! But then I reflect, and honestly I don\u2019t exactly find windows bad? I use a local account, and guess I\u2019ve disabled most of the ads, because I definitely don\u2019t get all the ad crap everyone says as the first reason for why they moved. My start key opens fine! I use it mostly for .net development and browsing the web. I\u2019m", "context": ".NET developer on Windows", "use_case": ".NET development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is that it is slow and bloated, especially on weaker hardware,", "cites": [{"id": 770977362, "item_id": 48186085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48186085", "by": "kjuulh", "date": "2026-05-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Visual Studio was not a good experience", "excerpt": "When I started my professional work, Visual Studio was the recommended editor where I was, it was terrible, the Laptops we had were incredibly shit. My phone scored better on benchmarks than it, as such Visual Studio was not a good experience, I convinced my boss to let us try Rider, it was incredible, I no longer had to sit for 10s of minutes for a project to load, it was relatively snappy. My next job I started usi", "context": "", "use_case": "development", "switched_from": "", "story": "No More JetBrains Products for Me"}, {"id": 752075698, "item_id": 47004731, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47004731", "by": "KingOfCoders", "date": "2026-02-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Why do I even use that slow bloated thing of VS?", "excerpt": "Switched from Intellij (various) to Cursor because of AI integration, only using Claude Code CLI, switched to VS because Cursor became so annoying every release, pushing their agents down my throat, activating what I did deactivate every release, recently thought \"Why do I even use that slow bloated thing of VS?\" and switched to Zed. Very happy camper. So much faster. So much snappier. Would love Claude Code CLI inte", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "Cursor", "story": "Zed editor switching graphics lib from blade to wgpu"}, {"id": 745171664, "item_id": 46573229, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46573229", "by": "spydr", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "if I try to use VS my computer will crash", "excerpt": "The computers they give us at work are pretty powerful. Mine has 64 gigs of ram. When I power it on the fans instantly go into full blast mode because the computer is heating up. why? I have no idea I just run Edge and Teams, if I try to use VS my computer will crash. At home I use Mac and Linux (kububtu) and will never have windows on my devices again", "context": "work computer with 64GB RAM", "use_case": "development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11"}]}, {"text": " and some report that new versions break older installs and projects.", "cites": [{"id": 752377552, "item_id": 47023597, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47023597", "by": "jasode", "date": "2026-02-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "every time, the new version of VS has a bug in the install somewhere that changes something that breaks old projects.", "excerpt": ">It starts by not looking into Windows through UNIX developer glasses. People don't need any UNIX biases to just want multiple versions of MSVS to work the way Microsoft advertises. For example, with every new version of Visual Studio, Microsoft always says you can install it side-by-side with an older version. But every time, the new version of VS has a bug in the install somewhere that changes something that breaks", "context": "", "use_case": "side-by-side installs", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Fixed Windows Native Development"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Code navigation", "summary": "Commenters find it good for reading and navigating large codebases with IntelliSense.", "quotes": [{"id": 797707107, "item_id": 49856694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49856694", "by": "tyfighter", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.", "excerpt": "I use it daily as well. I know enough vim to get around, but not quickly. I never learned emacs. The Javascript/full browser engine editors (VSCode, Atom, et al.) seemed so wasteful, and Sublime did everything I needed otherwise. Except...I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.", "context": "", "use_case": "debugging, browsing large codebases", "switched_from": "", "story": "I am the only one who still uses sublime text daily?"}, {"id": 776942434, "item_id": 48558902, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48558902", "by": "redox99", "date": "2026-06-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code", "excerpt": "I also work with C++, and I use Codex (desktop) which writes 99.99% of my code, plus Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code. For webdev I do VSCode + Codex. I started with Cursor back in the day, but switched to Claude Code and then Codex when Cursor got too expensive. If price wasn't an issue, maybe I'd prefer Cursor only because I can easily switch between models. But that's it. I always disli", "context": "works with C++", "use_case": "reading C++ code", "switched_from": "", "story": "SpaceX to buy Cursor AI coding agent operator Anysphere for $60B"}, {"id": 734221441, "item_id": 45888840, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45888840", "by": "gwbas1c", "date": "2025-11-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "A lot of this functionality is built into Visual Studio for me.", "excerpt": "I just took lazygit for a spin: In general, the tool looks cool. It also looks like it takes time to learn; but if you find it useful, it's probably worth it taking the time to learn. There were two blockers for me: 1: I can't free-form select text with a mouse like a can in a terminal. (I honestly haven't used a TUI since the 1990s.) I frequently copy bits of branch names from the terminal, so this was a big deal fo", "context": "", "use_case": "Git operations", "switched_from": "", "story": "The lazy Git UI you didn't know you need"}]}, {"label": "Productivity", "summary": "Long-time users say they are most productive in it and use its shortcuts without thinking.", "quotes": [{"id": 760706001, "item_id": 47544125, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544125", "by": "grujicd", "date": "2026-03-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm not nearly as productive as on multimonitor PC with TotalCommander and Visual Studio where I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.", "excerpt": "This \"make Windows better\" push is far more political than technological. It's a fight with other divisions about using Windows as a marketing and sales channel for other products and services. It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how ", "context": "Windows power user", "use_case": "development", "switched_from": "", "story": "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"}, {"id": 748750016, "item_id": 46796876, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796876", "by": "bwg2000", "date": "2026-01-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "visual studio definitly is the one and just feels like a good pair of jeans", "excerpt": "Every time an article like this pops up I think, damn I really must make the switch, fuck Microsoft! But then I reflect, and honestly I don\u2019t exactly find windows bad? I use a local account, and guess I\u2019ve disabled most of the ads, because I definitely don\u2019t get all the ad crap everyone says as the first reason for why they moved. My start key opens fine! I use it mostly for .net development and browsing the web. I\u2019m", "context": ".NET developer on Windows", "use_case": ".NET development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"}, {"id": 736825744, "item_id": 46051609, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46051609", "by": "andyjohnson0", "date": "2025-11-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I mostly live in Visual Studio and Outlook/Teams.", "excerpt": "Single AOC 27\" UHD monitor on my desktop Windows system at home. I use multiple desktops for context switching. No gaming, just a bit of dev and photo stuff. At work, a couple of Dell 27\" UHD monitors attached to my Windows laptop via DP ports on a dock. Single desktop as I have plenty of screen space. I mostly live in Visual Studio and Outlook/Teams. No complaints about either - all works pretty well.", "context": "", "use_case": "development at work", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What is your monitor setup?"}]}, {"label": "Out-of-box C++", "summary": "C++ development works without setup, compared with a less polished VSCode experience.", "quotes": [{"id": 800889217, "item_id": 50055576, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50055576", "by": "mark_something", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "compare", "quote": "compared to e.g. programming C++ with Visual Studio, which works out of the box", "excerpt": "I used it for a few hobby projects in VSCode. It's not 100% smooth, e.g. I couldn't compile and run my code with a single shortcut. It's supposed to be possible to show graphs in VSCode but I couldn't make that work. Debugging worked quite good. I didn't look for static analysis. But I find programming in any language in VSCode less polished, compared to e.g. programming C++ with Visual Studio, which works out of the", "context": "", "use_case": "C++ development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Calculus with Julia"}, {"id": 776942434, "item_id": 48558902, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48558902", "by": "redox99", "date": "2026-06-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code", "excerpt": "I also work with C++, and I use Codex (desktop) which writes 99.99% of my code, plus Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code. For webdev I do VSCode + Codex. I started with Cursor back in the day, but switched to Claude Code and then Codex when Cursor got too expensive. If price wasn't an issue, maybe I'd prefer Cursor only because I can easily switch between models. But that's it. I always disli", "context": "works with C++", "use_case": "reading C++ code", "switched_from": "", "story": "SpaceX to buy Cursor AI coding agent operator Anysphere for $60B"}]}, {"label": "Debugging", "summary": "Commenters single out its debugger as a reason to keep using it.", "quotes": [{"id": 797707107, "item_id": 49856694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49856694", "by": "tyfighter", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.", "excerpt": "I use it daily as well. I know enough vim to get around, but not quickly. I never learned emacs. The Javascript/full browser engine editors (VSCode, Atom, et al.) seemed so wasteful, and Sublime did everything I needed otherwise. Except...I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.", "context": "", "use_case": "debugging, browsing large codebases", "switched_from": "", "story": "I am the only one who still uses sublime text daily?"}]}, {"label": "Speed improvements", "summary": "One user says it has been fast since going multi-core, with ReSharper the main slowdown.", "quotes": [{"id": 799656017, "item_id": 49978501, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49978501", "by": "Semaphor", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Since they went multi core, it\u2019s usually very fast and it\u2019s mostly R# slowing it down", "excerpt": "When have you tried VS last? Since they went multi core, it\u2019s usually very fast and it\u2019s mostly R# slowing it down (though I read that improved, dunno). I use Rider but need VS for some things.", "context": "", "use_case": ".NET development", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Slow and heavy", "summary": "Users describe it as slow and bloated, with long project loads and crashes on some machines.", "quotes": [{"id": 770977362, "item_id": 48186085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48186085", "by": "kjuulh", "date": "2026-05-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Visual Studio was not a good experience", "excerpt": "When I started my professional work, Visual Studio was the recommended editor where I was, it was terrible, the Laptops we had were incredibly shit. My phone scored better on benchmarks than it, as such Visual Studio was not a good experience, I convinced my boss to let us try Rider, it was incredible, I no longer had to sit for 10s of minutes for a project to load, it was relatively snappy. My next job I started usi", "context": "", "use_case": "development", "switched_from": "", "story": "No More JetBrains Products for Me"}, {"id": 752075698, "item_id": 47004731, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47004731", "by": "KingOfCoders", "date": "2026-02-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Why do I even use that slow bloated thing of VS?", "excerpt": "Switched from Intellij (various) to Cursor because of AI integration, only using Claude Code CLI, switched to VS because Cursor became so annoying every release, pushing their agents down my throat, activating what I did deactivate every release, recently thought \"Why do I even use that slow bloated thing of VS?\" and switched to Zed. Very happy camper. So much faster. So much snappier. Would love Claude Code CLI inte", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "Cursor", "story": "Zed editor switching graphics lib from blade to wgpu"}, {"id": 745171664, "item_id": 46573229, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46573229", "by": "spydr", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "if I try to use VS my computer will crash", "excerpt": "The computers they give us at work are pretty powerful. Mine has 64 gigs of ram. When I power it on the fans instantly go into full blast mode because the computer is heating up. why? I have no idea I just run Edge and Teams, if I try to use VS my computer will crash. At home I use Mac and Linux (kububtu) and will never have windows on my devices again", "context": "work computer with 64GB RAM", "use_case": "development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11"}]}, {"label": "Install breakage", "summary": "Installing new versions side by side has repeatedly broken older installs and projects.", "quotes": [{"id": 752377552, "item_id": 47023597, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47023597", "by": "jasode", "date": "2026-02-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "every time, the new version of VS has a bug in the install somewhere that changes something that breaks old projects.", "excerpt": ">It starts by not looking into Windows through UNIX developer glasses. People don't need any UNIX biases to just want multiple versions of MSVS to work the way Microsoft advertises. For example, with every new version of Visual Studio, Microsoft always says you can install it side-by-side with an older version. But every time, the new version of VS has a bug in the install somewhere that changes something that breaks", "context": "", "use_case": "side-by-side installs", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Fixed Windows Native Development"}]}, {"label": "Ligature bug", "summary": "The JetBrains Mono >> ligature breaks bracket highlighting.", "quotes": [{"id": 801372961, "item_id": 50085810, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50085810", "by": "voidUpdate", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "the >> ligature breaks bracket highlighting in visual studio", "excerpt": "I wish editors had the option to disable certain ligatures. I use jetbrains mono, and the >> ligature breaks bracket highlighting in visual studio, making them both the same colour", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Iosevka is an open-source, sans-serif and slab-serif monospace font"}]}, {"label": "Windows dependence", "summary": "Some users say needing Visual Studio is what keeps them on Windows.", "quotes": [{"id": 776609153, "item_id": 48538072, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48538072", "by": "zubspace", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I also use it at work, and I need to run Visual Studio.", "excerpt": "Just last week I installed Windows 11 by downloading the ISO from Microsoft and creating a bootable USB stick with Rufus [1]. Rufus has options to make the Windows installer skip the Microsoft account login. Worked great! There are reasons to install Windows. For one, I had to install it for my wife, and making her switch to another OS she isn\u2019t used to would be quite a hassle. I also use it at work, and I need to ru", "context": "", "use_case": "work development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything"}, {"id": 748750016, "item_id": 46796876, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796876", "by": "bwg2000", "date": "2026-01-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "visual studio definitly is the one and just feels like a good pair of jeans", "excerpt": "Every time an article like this pops up I think, damn I really must make the switch, fuck Microsoft! But then I reflect, and honestly I don\u2019t exactly find windows bad? I use a local account, and guess I\u2019ve disabled most of the ads, because I definitely don\u2019t get all the ad crap everyone says as the first reason for why they moved. My start key opens fine! I use it mostly for .net development and browsing the web. I\u2019m", "context": ".NET developer on Windows", "use_case": ".NET development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"}]}], "who": [{"by": "redox99", "context": "works with C++", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48558902", "date": "2026-06-16"}, {"by": "grujicd", "context": "Windows power user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544125", "date": "2026-03-27"}, {"by": "jeffrallen", "context": "former Emacs user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46937996", "date": "2026-02-08"}, {"by": "bwg2000", "context": ".NET developer on Windows", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796876", "date": "2026-01-28"}, {"by": "bob1029", "context": "Windows developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473543", "date": "2026-01-02"}], "tags": ["for C++ developers", "for .NET/C# developers", "for Windows users", "for large codebases"], "use_cases": ["development", "code editing", ".net development", "c++ development", "debugging, browsing large codebases", "code editing and compiling"], "compared": [{"slug": "visual-studio-code", "name": "Visual Studio Code", "co": 13, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 3}, {"slug": "jetbrains-rider", "name": "JetBrains Rider", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "claude-code", "name": "Claude Code", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "zed", "name": "Zed", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "vim", "name": "Vim", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "emacs", "name": "Emacs", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "cursor", "name": "Cursor", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "gcc", "name": "GCC", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47022891", "title": "I Fixed Windows Native Development", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46795864", "title": "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50084240", "title": "Iosevka is an open-source, sans-serif and slab-serif monospace font", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50034206", "title": "Calculus with Julia", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49977072", "title": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49854804", "title": "I am the only one who still uses sublime text daily?", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 3}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 2, "warn": 1, "neutral": 2}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1, "warn": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"warn": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {"warn": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 2, "compare": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 801372961, "item_id": 50085810, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50085810", "by": "voidUpdate", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "the >> ligature breaks bracket highlighting in visual studio", "excerpt": "I wish editors had the option to disable certain ligatures. I use jetbrains mono, and the >> ligature breaks bracket highlighting in visual studio, making them both the same colour", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Iosevka is an open-source, sans-serif and slab-serif monospace font"}, {"id": 800889217, "item_id": 50055576, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50055576", "by": "mark_something", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "compare", "quote": "compared to e.g. programming C++ with Visual Studio, which works out of the box", "excerpt": "I used it for a few hobby projects in VSCode. It's not 100% smooth, e.g. I couldn't compile and run my code with a single shortcut. It's supposed to be possible to show graphs in VSCode but I couldn't make that work. Debugging worked quite good. I didn't look for static analysis. But I find programming in any language in VSCode less polished, compared to e.g. programming C++ with Visual Studio, which works out of the", "context": "", "use_case": "C++ development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Calculus with Julia"}, {"id": 799656017, "item_id": 49978501, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49978501", "by": "Semaphor", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Since they went multi core, it\u2019s usually very fast and it\u2019s mostly R# slowing it down", "excerpt": "When have you tried VS last? Since they went multi core, it\u2019s usually very fast and it\u2019s mostly R# slowing it down (though I read that improved, dunno). I use Rider but need VS for some things.", "context": "", "use_case": ".NET development", "switched_from": "", "story": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025"}, {"id": 797707107, "item_id": 49856694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49856694", "by": "tyfighter", "date": "2026-09-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.", "excerpt": "I use it daily as well. I know enough vim to get around, but not quickly. I never learned emacs. The Javascript/full browser engine editors (VSCode, Atom, et al.) seemed so wasteful, and Sublime did everything I needed otherwise. Except...I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.", "context": "", "use_case": "debugging, browsing large codebases", "switched_from": "", "story": "I am the only one who still uses sublime text daily?"}, {"id": 784455120, "item_id": 49028445, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49028445", "by": "wozniakpawel", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "do not miss Visual Studio, not even one bit of it", "excerpt": "Ha! I've worked with all of those and can't even tell you how much I agree. I think I'd also add Visual Studio to the list; recently I switched to command line compilation and editing code in VSCode and do not miss Visual Studio, not even one bit of it.", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing and compiling", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Write, simulate and synthesize VHDL/Verilog in the browser"}, {"id": 776942434, "item_id": 48558902, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48558902", "by": "redox99", "date": "2026-06-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code", "excerpt": "I also work with C++, and I use Codex (desktop) which writes 99.99% of my code, plus Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code. For webdev I do VSCode + Codex. I started with Cursor back in the day, but switched to Claude Code and then Codex when Cursor got too expensive. If price wasn't an issue, maybe I'd prefer Cursor only because I can easily switch between models. But that's it. I always disli", "context": "works with C++", "use_case": "reading C++ code", "switched_from": "", "story": "SpaceX to buy Cursor AI coding agent operator Anysphere for $60B"}, {"id": 776609153, "item_id": 48538072, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48538072", "by": "zubspace", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I also use it at work, and I need to run Visual Studio.", "excerpt": "Just last week I installed Windows 11 by downloading the ISO from Microsoft and creating a bootable USB stick with Rufus [1]. Rufus has options to make the Windows installer skip the Microsoft account login. Worked great! There are reasons to install Windows. For one, I had to install it for my wife, and making her switch to another OS she isn\u2019t used to would be quite a hassle. I also use it at work, and I need to ru", "context": "", "use_case": "work development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything"}, {"id": 770977362, "item_id": 48186085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48186085", "by": "kjuulh", "date": "2026-05-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Visual Studio was not a good experience", "excerpt": "When I started my professional work, Visual Studio was the recommended editor where I was, it was terrible, the Laptops we had were incredibly shit. My phone scored better on benchmarks than it, as such Visual Studio was not a good experience, I convinced my boss to let us try Rider, it was incredible, I no longer had to sit for 10s of minutes for a project to load, it was relatively snappy. My next job I started usi", "context": "", "use_case": "development", "switched_from": "", "story": "No More JetBrains Products for Me"}, {"id": 765355776, "item_id": 47834736, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834736", "by": "JohnFen", "date": "2026-04-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use five different ones in my day job (Visual Studio, the antique Borland Builder, Embarcadero, and two proprietary ones)", "excerpt": "It depends on the project. I use five different ones in my day job (Visual Studio, the antique Borland Builder, Embarcadero, and two proprietary ones). I also use no IDE at all for some projects. In my home programming, I don't use an IDE.", "context": "", "use_case": "day job development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Which IDE are you using?"}, {"id": 760706001, "item_id": 47544125, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544125", "by": "grujicd", "date": "2026-03-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm not nearly as productive as on multimonitor PC with TotalCommander and Visual Studio where I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.", "excerpt": "This \"make Windows better\" push is far more political than technological. It's a fight with other divisions about using Windows as a marketing and sales channel for other products and services. It has to be a decision from the very top. I hope they realize that Windows is in significant danger, the majority market share for Desktop OS is not guaranteed anymore. It's not just 10% of revenue, it's a foundation for how ", "context": "Windows power user", "use_case": "development", "switched_from": "", "story": "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"}, {"id": 752472002, "item_id": 47029500, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47029500", "by": "mathstuf", "date": "2026-02-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We manage Visual Studio on our CI machines using Ansible.", "excerpt": "We manage Visual Studio on our CI machines using Ansible. Chocolatey installs the full Visual Studio and then we use the APIs provided to manage components via Ansible. See our action here: https://galaxy.ansible.com/ui/repo/published/kitware/visualstudio/", "context": "", "use_case": "CI builds", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Fixed Windows Native Development"}, {"id": 752377552, "item_id": 47023597, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47023597", "by": "jasode", "date": "2026-02-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "every time, the new version of VS has a bug in the install somewhere that changes something that breaks old projects.", "excerpt": ">It starts by not looking into Windows through UNIX developer glasses. People don't need any UNIX biases to just want multiple versions of MSVS to work the way Microsoft advertises. For example, with every new version of Visual Studio, Microsoft always says you can install it side-by-side with an older version. But every time, the new version of VS has a bug in the install somewhere that changes something that breaks", "context": "", "use_case": "side-by-side installs", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Fixed Windows Native Development"}, {"id": 752075698, "item_id": 47004731, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47004731", "by": "KingOfCoders", "date": "2026-02-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Why do I even use that slow bloated thing of VS?", "excerpt": "Switched from Intellij (various) to Cursor because of AI integration, only using Claude Code CLI, switched to VS because Cursor became so annoying every release, pushing their agents down my throat, activating what I did deactivate every release, recently thought \"Why do I even use that slow bloated thing of VS?\" and switched to Zed. Very happy camper. So much faster. So much snappier. Would love Claude Code CLI inte", "context": "", "use_case": "code editing", "switched_from": "Cursor", "story": "Zed editor switching graphics lib from blade to wgpu"}, {"id": 751007936, "item_id": 46937996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46937996", "by": "jeffrallen", "date": "2026-02-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used it in the mid-90's and yes, it was eye opening.", "excerpt": "> (Visual Studio 6) I never used it but it must have felt like a dream at the time. I used it in the mid-90's and yes, it was eye opening. On the other hand, I was an Emacs user in uni, and by studying a bit the history of Emacs (especially Lucid Emacs) I came to understand that the concepts in Visual Studio were nothing new. On the third hand, I hated customizing Emacs, which did not have \"batteries included\" for th", "context": "former Emacs user", "use_case": "Windows development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Let's compile Quake like it's 1997"}, {"id": 748780289, "item_id": 46798768, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46798768", "by": "ChicagoDave", "date": "2026-01-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I\u2019m pretty much done with visual studio development", "excerpt": "I\u2019m getting closer and closer to making the same decision. I have a Surface Laptop 5 that won\u2019t enable the AI cruft so I got somewhat lucky there. But the copilot business is AAF. And now that I use Claude Code in WSL or my Ubuntu server, I\u2019m pretty much done with visual studio development. Not sure what\u2019s left. Satya Nadala will have single-handedly destroyed the Windows ecosystem.", "context": "", "use_case": "development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"}, {"id": 748750016, "item_id": 46796876, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796876", "by": "bwg2000", "date": "2026-01-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "visual studio definitly is the one and just feels like a good pair of jeans", "excerpt": "Every time an article like this pops up I think, damn I really must make the switch, fuck Microsoft! But then I reflect, and honestly I don\u2019t exactly find windows bad? I use a local account, and guess I\u2019ve disabled most of the ads, because I definitely don\u2019t get all the ad crap everyone says as the first reason for why they moved. My start key opens fine! I use it mostly for .net development and browsing the web. I\u2019m", "context": ".NET developer on Windows", "use_case": ".NET development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"}, {"id": 747249459, "item_id": 46703091, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46703091", "by": "alkonaut", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Rider and VS", "excerpt": "All of this might as well be greek to me. I use ChatGPT and copy paste code snippets. Which was bleeding edge a year or two ago, and now it feels like banging rocks together when reading these types of articles. I never had any luck integrating agents, MCP, using tools etc. Like if I'm not ready to jump on some AI-spiced up special IDE, am I then going to just be left banging rocks together? It feels like some of the", "context": "", "use_case": "IDE", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Agentic AI Handbook: Production-Ready Patterns"}, {"id": 745171664, "item_id": 46573229, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46573229", "by": "spydr", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "if I try to use VS my computer will crash", "excerpt": "The computers they give us at work are pretty powerful. Mine has 64 gigs of ram. When I power it on the fans instantly go into full blast mode because the computer is heating up. why? I have no idea I just run Edge and Teams, if I try to use VS my computer will crash. At home I use Mac and Linux (kububtu) and will never have windows on my devices again", "context": "work computer with 64GB RAM", "use_case": "development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11"}, {"id": 743576688, "item_id": 46473543, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473543", "by": "bob1029", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I happily paid $500 for a perpetual VS2026 license just a few days ago", "excerpt": "Windows activation has been a game of CTF for me since the early 2000s. I've got more than enough resources to pay for a Win11 license many times over. But I refuse to. Part is something approximating \"I've already paid the windows tax 30+ times\" but it's more than this. The UX regression from the XP era is shocking when you put things side by side. I happily paid $500 for a perpetual VS2026 license just a few days a", "context": "Windows developer", "use_case": "development", "switched_from": "", "story": "Microsoft kills official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet"}, {"id": 736825744, "item_id": 46051609, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46051609", "by": "andyjohnson0", "date": "2025-11-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I mostly live in Visual Studio and Outlook/Teams.", "excerpt": "Single AOC 27\" UHD monitor on my desktop Windows system at home. I use multiple desktops for context switching. No gaming, just a bit of dev and photo stuff. At work, a couple of Dell 27\" UHD monitors attached to my Windows laptop via DP ports on a dock. Single desktop as I have plenty of screen space. I mostly live in Visual Studio and Outlook/Teams. No complaints about either - all works pretty well.", "context": "", "use_case": "development at work", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What is your monitor setup?"}, {"id": 735241076, "item_id": 45952567, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45952567", "by": "masfoobar", "date": "2025-11-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have been using emacs for practically all languages except for C# with Visual Studio (IDE).", "excerpt": "This is an interesting project and the picture can certainly fool you for a moment. I do wonder who the target audience is. Sure, this is a nice tryout if you are a VSCoder and want to try emacs. This essentially comes down to new users of emacs and trying to replicate it like another editor. Sounds you are skipping the basics of emacs training. Perhaps I am wrong, here? At the end of the day - it's just an .emacs fi", "context": "", "use_case": "C# development", "switched_from": "", "story": "IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs"}, {"id": 734221441, "item_id": 45888840, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45888840", "by": "gwbas1c", "date": "2025-11-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "A lot of this functionality is built into Visual Studio for me.", "excerpt": "I just took lazygit for a spin: In general, the tool looks cool. It also looks like it takes time to learn; but if you find it useful, it's probably worth it taking the time to learn. There were two blockers for me: 1: I can't free-form select text with a mouse like a can in a terminal. (I honestly haven't used a TUI since the 1990s.) I frequently copy bits of branch names from the terminal, so this was a big deal fo", "context": "", "use_case": "Git operations", "switched_from": "", "story": "The lazy Git UI you didn't know you need"}]}