- best in class IDE
- best in class debugger
- excellent cross platform support
- very fast compilers
- a robust library ecosystem
- no arguments over how to publish or import those libraries
- a build system that just works
- and all without having to install tons of third-party, fly-by-night projects.
I've worked in lots of different environments. .NET is the only one I've been able to leave, come back to after some time, and get back running in minutes. JavaScript, Python, and Ruby were all rickety houses of cards in comparison. C++ is just inscrutable. And Java might get the closest, but it still feels like being perpetually 5 years behind .NET.
As a developer mainly in the .Net ecosystem for about 20 years now, I frequently see "best in class IDE" as a headline feature. I've spent the past year with Rider as my main IDE, and surprisingly there have been very few things that I miss from Visual Studio (mostly related to profiling tools). On the other hand, there are several irritations in VS that make it feel decidedly not best in class, for me at least (extreme slowness on startup, but also on a variety of frequent tasks such as switching between files, compiler getting out of sync with reality and listing errors that have been fixed minutes ago, the WinForms editor refusing to open a screen for whatever reason, etc). While it's a decent IDE for sure, I'm not sure I'd rate it all that high, and would argue that at least the JetBrains family are on par in most cases.
So an honest question: what exactly do people see in VS as being so outstanding, that other IDEs lack?
- Mixed mode debugging between .NET and C++ (on Java world only Eclipse and Netbeans support this, on Android Google created their own plugins for Studio)
- The architecture modeling tools.
- The GPGPU debuggers
- Data structures visualization
- REPL and immediate window
- Graphical visualization for tasks, processes and their dependencies
- being able to visualize binary libraries in a way similar to .NET ones
- the GUI designers, with live changes support and introspection
- being from the same company that actually produces the OS and dev tools.
Interesting, thanks for the info. I guess our use cases differ enough that the experience is quite different, but I can easily see how if you needed strong C++ support alongside .Net, it'd be a good choice. In my own case, most of the really unique ones on your list are not present or needed, and some of the others (REPL, immediate window, graphical visualisation of tasks, etc) have equivalents which I feel are similar.
I suppose it's always going to come down on each developer's specific use cases and needs, and the average rating of the IDE will be a mix. I've just been consistently surprised with the positivity towards VS in _some_ areas, where my experience was a polar opposite. As an example, working with any sort of "relatively up to date" client side web UI tech (Angular, React) between 2014 and 2018 in VS was an exercise in pure frustration, whereas e.g. VS Code was not. At that time I would not have put VS in the top 3 for that environment, and I frequently wonder whether people just loved it out of seeing the world with MS glasses on, or what.
