So I started my coding journey with Python about 2 years ago. I primarily used IDLE which was super bare bones but was perfect for my needs.

I’m now toying around with Javascript with eventual aspirations to learn C# and maybe something else (Golang maybe, C++ is intimidating). I completed codecademy.com’s course on Javascript, have been running through some algo training on codewars, been playing a little BitBurner, but now I want to actually try to develop my own stuff.

Looks like Visual Studio has an environment that supports Javascript, Python, and C# in one place. How is it? What are some of the positives and negatives of choosing to use Visual Studio moving forward?

  • trynn
    6•2 years ago

    I daily-drive both Visual Studio 2022 and Visual Studio Code in my day job, doing C++ and JavaScript/React development. In general, I find Visual Studio more useful for C++ (especially when debugging) and VS Code more useful for web-based technology like JavaScript. VS is much heavier, and to use it properly you really need to have your solution/projects set up properly. There’s a lot of complexity to the IDE, which is great when you need it but not when you don’t.

    VS Code is much lighter-weight and is better if you just want to open a folder as a workspace and do your debugging using something like Chrome dev-tools. I also find search functionality a bit more straightforward in VS Code than VS. The down-side of VS, specifically when talking about compiled languages like C++ and C#, is it’s not set up to build a project out-of-the-box. You have to configure that yourself. That’s not really an issue for something like JavaScript. Another down-side is that you might need to search for an extension to get some functionality you want (such as various language support extensions, or stuff like GitLens), and using a lot of extensions will slow down VS Code.

    To sum up, VS 2022 is great for stuff like C++ or C#, where you need the complexity. But VS Code is better for stuff like JavaScript where you don’t.

    • Generic-Disposable
      1•2 years ago

      What are the keybindings to move between panes in VS code? I still haven’t figured out how to manage tabs, splits, panes etc using only the keyboard.