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In very concrete terms, what are examples of things that I could do in Visual Studio that I can't do with Visual Studio Code?

Background: I've used vim for all my code editing for decades, but recently started using Visual Studio Code and I'm very thoroughly enjoying it. Given that history, I considered Visual Studio Code to be an IDE.

Curious about the difference between Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code, I've found several explanations pointing out that VSCode is a code editor while Visual Studio is an IDE. I'm so confused by this. VSCode certainly feels like an IDE to me, so I really wonder what I'm missing out on.

I'm on Linux, so it's entirely hypothetical, but now that I'm leveling up my development environment, I can't help but be curious what might be in store for me at the next level(s) and looking at the documentation, I'm struggling to find anything that stands out.

Soren L. Hansen
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  • Most of the diffs are mentioned here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30527522/what-are-the-differences-between-visual-studio-code-and-visual-studio – tHeSiD Jun 23 '20 at 10:14
  • I've seen that one. It's actually one of the ones I was referring to when I said that most sources just call one an IDE and the other an editor. That doesn't really answer anything. The one answer on that question that goes into most details lists a number of features as unique to Visual Studio, but as far as I can tell I have all those features in VSCode, too, so either the answer is out-of-date or I'm missing something. Hence this question. – Soren L. Hansen Jun 23 '20 at 14:40
  • Think of it this way, to develop any .net application, you just install Visual Studio and you have all the tools you need to code, collaborate, build and publish the applications. However in VSCode, you need to get your extensions in order, set them all up to work together and then you have some functionality of an IDE – tHeSiD Jun 23 '20 at 14:44
  • Hm, ok. So it's more that the out-of-the-box experience is different? I guess that makes sense. – Soren L. Hansen Jun 24 '20 at 10:28

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There some Microsoft features integrated into Visual Studio, which you can't do in Code like the Windows Forms Apps.

Another key difference is, that in Visual Studio there are a lot of features already baked in, while Code is more modular. For example, you can individually install debuggers and syntax highlighting for different languages. By saying is VSCode is a code editor, people refer to it as missing some features in the vanilla configuration. But I do agree Code feels very much like an IDE.

42ndBadger
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