Visual Studio
Microsoft's full-featured integrated development environment for Windows, focused on .NET and C++.
HN commenters like Visual Studio for debugging1 and for reading and navigating large codebases with IntelliSense,23 and they value it for C++ and .NET work that runs out of the box.45 The most common complaint is that it is slow and bloated, especially on weaker hardware,678 and some report that new versions break older installs and projects.9
Why people recommend it
Code navigation · 3
Commenters find it good for reading and navigating large codebases with IntelliSense.
“I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.”
“Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code”
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“A lot of this functionality is built into Visual Studio for me.”
Productivity · 3
Long-time users say they are most productive in it and use its shortcuts without thinking.
“I'm not nearly as productive as on multimonitor PC with TotalCommander and Visual Studio where I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.”
“visual studio definitly is the one and just feels like a good pair of jeans”
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“I mostly live in Visual Studio and Outlook/Teams.”
Out-of-box C++ · 2
C++ development works without setup, compared with a less polished VSCode experience.
“compared to e.g. programming C++ with Visual Studio, which works out of the box”
“Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code”
Debugging · 1
Commenters single out its debugger as a reason to keep using it.
“I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.”
Speed improvements · 1
One user says it has been fast since going multi-core, with ReSharper the main slowdown.
“Since they went multi core, it’s usually very fast and it’s mostly R# slowing it down”
Caveats and dissent
Slow and heavy · 3
Users describe it as slow and bloated, with long project loads and crashes on some machines.
“Visual Studio was not a good experience”
“Why do I even use that slow bloated thing of VS?”
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“if I try to use VS my computer will crash”
Install breakage · 1
Installing new versions side by side has repeatedly broken older installs and projects.
“every time, the new version of VS has a bug in the install somewhere that changes something that breaks old projects.”
Ligature bug · 1
The JetBrains Mono >> ligature breaks bracket highlighting.
“the >> ligature breaks bracket highlighting in visual studio”
Windows dependence · 2
Some users say needing Visual Studio is what keeps them on Windows.
“I also use it at work, and I need to run Visual Studio.”
“visual studio definitly is the one and just feels like a good pair of jeans”
Often compared with
3 moved from Visual Studio to Visual Studio Code
2 moved from Visual Studio to JetBrains Rider
1 moved from Visual Studio to Claude Code
1 moved from Visual Studio to ZedVim2 comments mention both
1 moved from Visual Studio to Vim
1 moved from Visual Studio to Emacs
1 moved from Cursor to Visual Studio
1 moved from Visual Studio to GCC
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- I Fixed Windows Native Development 2 mentions
- Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux 2 mentions
- Iosevka is an open-source, sans-serif and slab-serif monospace font 1 mention
- Calculus with Julia 1 mention
- JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025 1 mention
- I am the only one who still uses sublime text daily? 1 mention
Data: visual-studio.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 22
“the >> ligature breaks bracket highlighting in visual studio”
“compared to e.g. programming C++ with Visual Studio, which works out of the box”
“Since they went multi core, it’s usually very fast and it’s mostly R# slowing it down”
“I still love full Visual Studio for debugging, and perusing large code bases with Intellisense.”
“do not miss Visual Studio, not even one bit of it”
“Visual Studio, which is nice for reading and navigating code”
“I also use it at work, and I need to run Visual Studio.”
“Visual Studio was not a good experience”
“I use five different ones in my day job (Visual Studio, the antique Borland Builder, Embarcadero, and two proprietary ones)”
“I'm not nearly as productive as on multimonitor PC with TotalCommander and Visual Studio where I use all the shortcuts subconsciously.”
“We manage Visual Studio on our CI machines using Ansible.”
“every time, the new version of VS has a bug in the install somewhere that changes something that breaks old projects.”
“Why do I even use that slow bloated thing of VS?”
“I used it in the mid-90's and yes, it was eye opening.”
“I’m pretty much done with visual studio development”
“visual studio definitly is the one and just feels like a good pair of jeans”
“I use Rider and VS”
“if I try to use VS my computer will crash”
“I happily paid $500 for a perpetual VS2026 license just a few days ago”
“I mostly live in Visual Studio and Outlook/Teams.”
“I have been using emacs for practically all languages except for C# with Visual Studio (IDE).”
“A lot of this functionality is built into Visual Studio for me.”