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My main use case for Microsoft Visual Studio is writing code, specifically infrastructure as code to build resources in cloud platforms such as AWS EC2 instances, Google IAM resources, and networks within Azure.

A specific example of a project where I used Microsoft Visual Studio for infrastructure as code is creating Google Cloud projects. The project can be defined using Terraform, and I can write those scripts within Microsoft Visual Studio and execute them from there as well, using the built-in terminal.

I have also briefly used Microsoft Visual Studio for connecting to databases because there is an add-on for PostgreSQL, which allows me to see my code in one section and then connect to a database using my code in another section. That functionality is quite useful.

Microsoft Visual Studio impacts my organization positively because it is used across the organization to write, commit code, and execute code. It works as an environment for many engineers. The fact that everyone is on the same platform is very useful because it is very easy to teach colleagues how to use it.

Some of the best features Microsoft Visual Studio offers include a user-friendly UI element where you can download different themes, which is great because it allows you to read the code much clearer. There are many add-ons within Microsoft Visual Studio because I believe it is probably the most popular IDE out there, which leads to many useful add-ons. Additionally, I appreciate the fact that the terminal is built in, so you can execute your code in the same window rather than having to open a separate terminal and execute from that.

The built-in terminal is what I find myself relying on the most day-to-day because I use that every time I use Microsoft Visual Studio. It allows me to commit my code very quickly and also run shell scripts via the terminal that I might be editing as well. I use it heavily; I know some people do not use it as much and prefer a separate terminal, but I find that I am able to work much quicker and more efficiently using the built-in terminal.

The feature that makes Microsoft Visual Studio really stand out compared to other IDEs is the number of add-ons that it has, because with it being probably the most popular IDE, it has a lot of support. There really is not any other IDE you would want to use rather than Microsoft Visual Studio. The fact that it is free as well is pretty impressive.

I think Microsoft Visual Studio is a very good tool and I do not have many improvements to suggest. The only thing I can think of is that I quite regularly get notifications that interrupt my workflow, telling me that Microsoft Visual Studio could be updated. I would appreciate a feature where it can auto-update during times when I am not working so that it can update in the background because sometimes I am writing a script mid-concentration, or maybe I am using the built-in terminal and I am about to execute a command, and then a pop-up appears, derailing my train of thought.

I have been using Microsoft Visual Studio for around five years.

Microsoft Visual Studio is stable.

Microsoft Visual Studio is highly scalable; you can have thousands of engineers using it at the same time and because it is deployed locally on their machine, there would not be any scalability issues. The scalability is immense.

I have never had to reach out for customer support, but because it falls under Microsoft, I presume organizations with a Microsoft support agreement would be able to reach out. I have interacted with Microsoft support in the past when using Azure, and they have always been very helpful, so I would imagine the support would be great.

I have only ever used Microsoft Visual Studio in terms of IDEs in an enterprise environment. The only other IDE I have used is Replit, but that is for my own development. It is a very lightweight, web-based IDE, but there is no need to use a different IDE rather than Microsoft Visual Studio. It has everything you would want in an editor, which is why it is so prevalent in the industry.

From a cost savings perspective, I have definitely noticed improvements because there are some IDEs where you have to pay for a subscription to use it. I understand that the cost can really accumulate, especially if you have a huge engineering team using it. Whereas Microsoft Visual Studio, being free, completely eliminates the costs associated with using a different IDE. Teams can very easily see cost savings of 100 percent because you are going from something which did cost before to something which is free.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Microsoft Visual Studio is that the pricing is free, which is perfect.

Before choosing Microsoft Visual Studio, I did not evaluate other options because it was always the option due to it being free and because it is the market leader.

I would advise others looking into using Microsoft Visual Studio to use it because it is free, it is the market leader, and it has a ton of add-ons. There is really no reason not to use it. I gave this product a rating of ten out of ten.

On-premises

I am mainly developing backend solutions, microservices, and monolithic web backends with ASP.NET.

I tried Angular and Blazor; I worked with Angular a long time ago, but I worked with a small project using Blazor and .NET MVC quite a while ago. I think Blazor has a strong future with WebAssembly and related technologies, but I am not primarily a front-end developer.

ASP.NET has become an old term; now it is called .NET simply with the .NET 9 and .NET 10 versions.

I have been developing ASP.NET for years, and I have also been developing with Java for years.

The ability to customize ASP.NET is valuable, with a great community and the way the framework is built around customizable components, configurations, dependency injection, security, and excellent documentation. Entity Framework is a really good ORM compared to other ORMs such as Hibernate in Java or Liquibase, and it stands at a higher level as a very good ORM.

The data flow in ASP.NET MVC was easy to understand; we had the views, the views use models, and models get fetched from the controllers. It was straightforward for everyone on the project to work with, and we had standards in place; we followed the same flow, which really helped us maintain structure and organization in the codebase.

I would rate this ten out of ten. I work with Spring Framework, and comparing the three of them, I think .NET is ten out of ten with excellent support for web services.

With the Aspire project, the community is working well on third-party tools for integration, but as a framework, it is solid for almost all normal use cases. For some advanced use cases, I do not see an inconvenience or something that really needs to be improved; I think overall, it is complete and a well-rounded framework.

Regarding minor improvements for ASP.NET, the cache they have been working on in the latest version is noteworthy; the hybrid cache extensions demonstrate good work around cache, distributed cache, and memory. The ORM is solid, and the support for REST services is also solid for what we use quite often every day and even in some edge cases. I do not have in mind something that really bothered me while using .NET. The CLI support for running migrations and creating projects is good.

.NET is free and open source. One last thing that needs to be improved is the Azure developer experience, the AZD commands, and how to deploy Aspire applications using different methods, especially on Kubernetes.

Scalability depends on the developers who write code. If they write well and the framework provides the tools, I think scalability depends on your code and how you structure things. A framework may be a really good tool, but in the end, what scales is your code and how you structure things.

I did not have a chance to or a situation where I needed to talk to Microsoft technical support directly.

I have been developing applications, and at my previous job, we tried SonarQube. After reading many articles about the false positives that SonarQube generates, I am considering DeepSource for my current position at my new job.

I did not use it previously, but I had some experience with it at my previous work experience. We are establishing a new solution for a static code analysis tool, and I think we are going to pick DeepSource.

Setup is straightforward. You install the SDK and create your project depending on your project structure, whether it is monolithic or microservices. We almost always have the main solution, then the src and test folders. We have cross-service integration tests, unit tests, architecture tests, and similar components. We structure the tests and put tests next to the microservice if we are dealing with microservice architecture, so it really depends on what your application architecture overall is.

I would have to switch the framework. I do not have loyalty to a certain organization and framework; I just want a reliable tool because the framework is not a business, just a tool to build solutions for customers and earn money in the end. I just need a tool that I can rely on, and if .NET was not the right tool to do so, I would switch it off.

I have experience developing Java applications and .NET applications. I tried Azure and AWS, so I have quite a bit of experience.

I am mainly a .NET developer. I work as a consultant and also as a freelancer, but I am primarily a .NET developer.

The official documentation from Microsoft is very good.

Blazor was very easy to get started with. Since I am not a front-end developer, using Blazor I was able to deploy a beautiful UI to the customer in a small project with good components. I used another tool called MudBlazor, which is a framework built on top of Blazor components. MudBlazor is very good and easy to use, and I deployed multiple screens in a few days with a really good UI, so Blazor was a great framework to use.

I have used the ASP.NET MVC architecture.

ASP.NET is solid overall. I rate this review nine out of ten.

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure