What is Visual Studio? All You Need to Know

When developers collaborate on coding projects and debugging, they typically do so through an integrated development environment (IDE). Microsoft’s Visual Studio is one of the most popular IDEs and has been around for 25 years.

If you’re wondering, “What is Visual Studio?” We’ll walk you through everything you need to know in this post, from how you can use the product to how it works.

How Does Visual Studio Work?

Visual Studio IDE allows programmers to create and edit their code collaboratively. It has extensions and includes tools to assist in building code. This lets you see in real-time what your teammates are working on so you can reduce redundancies.

It has code completion with syntax highlighting, an AI coding model to assist with programming, and an analysis tool to help you with debugging. 

How to Download Visual Studio

Go to Microsoft’s Visual Studio website and select the correct version for your computer. The free ‘community’ option is likely the best for you if you are a student or an independent programmer. If you are a small business, consider investing in the ‘professional’ option. If you are a large business, consider the ‘enterprise’ option.

Here is a comparison of the three options in case you still aren’t sure which is right for you.

This helpful video walks you through the entire installation process of Visual Studio for Windows 10.

Advantages of Using Visual Studio

Visual Studio has been around for over 25 years, so there are plenty of resources to make your life easier using this software. 

Hundreds of extensions are available to help you do anything from integrating GitHub to serving as a powerful productivity tool to make your job easier. It is also the most popular IDE for C++ and has a free version. 

There are dedicated communities where you can connect with and even arrange to meet up with other developers. With such a robust support system, you can rest assured that any questions you have will be answered.

Getting Started

If you’re a business owner, student, or just someone interested in learning more about programming, now is the best time to get started. Download Visual Studio the way we showed you above, and get started. You can also get involved in community blogs to connect with developers and learn about Visual Studio quickly.