

You might have to step out of a text editor to run your code or download plugins to help it do the running for you. A text editor only lets you write and edit your code. Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) and Visual Studio Code is a rich text editor like Sublime Text and Atom.īut the difference between the tools is more than just IDE and text editor.Īn IDE is a robust tool for writing, editing, debugging, and running your code. “Visual Studio” and “Visual Studio Code” are not the same thing. I don’t know why Microsoft decided to confuse everyone with the names of those two development tools. The above does not consitute legal advise.The first time I heard about “Visual Studio”, I thought it was the same as “Visual Studio Code”. If you, like me, anyway use git, do unit testing with NUnit, and use Java-Tools to do Load-Testing on Linux plus TeamCity for CI, VS Community is more than sufficient, technically speaking.Ī) If you're an individual developer (no enterprise, no organization), no difference (AFAIK), you can use CommunityEdition like you'd use the paid edition (as long as you don't do subcontracting)ī) You can use CommunityEdition freely for OpenSource (OSI) projectsĬ) If you're an educational insitution, you can use CommunityEdition freely (for education/classroom use)ĭ) If you're an enterprise with 250 PCs or users or more than one million US dollars in revenue (including subsidiaries), you are NOT ALLOWED to use CommunityEdition.Į) If you're not an enterprise as defined above, and don't do OSI or education, but are an "enterprise"/organization, with 5 or less concurrent (VS) developers, you can use VS Community freely (but only if you're the owner of the software and sell it, not if you're a subcontractor creating software for a larger enterprise, software which in the end the enterprise will own), otherwise you need a paid edition. On the other hand, syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, Step-Through debugging, GoTo-Definition, Git-Integration and Build/Publish are really all the features I need, and I guess that applies to a lot of developers.įor all other things, there are tools that do the same job faster, better and cheaper. Third, VS Community's ability to create Virtual Environments has been severely cut. No Performance tests, no load tests, no performance profiling.

Second, VS Community is severely limited in its testing capability. You just cannot use Visual Studio as TFS SERVER. Actually, you can check-in&out with TFS as normal, if you have a TFS server in the network. You'll just have to use git (arguable whether this constitutes a disadvantage or whether this actually is a good thing). Technical, there are 3 major differences:įirst and foremost, Community doesn't have TFS support.
