They are often free and open source (yay!) On the other side, code editors are lightweight, versatile, and used by a larger community of developers. IDEs can be packaged and offered at different pricing plans.īasic offers can even be free, but it will cost a lot if you want all the features! The paywall is hard to break through by a freelance developer who works alone or in a small team. You are likely to use an integrated development environment if you are a software engineer at a large company. In general, IDEs are often proprietary, heavy, resource-demanding, and expensive. Process automation is another important aspect of working with IDEs. An IDE has many components, and a code editor is one of them. That said, it's not just one tool but a set of tools made for a scaled-up development process.Īlso, these tools are integrated within a native environment, hence the name. What's the difference between an IDE and a source code editor On the other hand, Visual Studio Code is a source code editor app, or a text editor, as these are often called.

It stands for integrated development environment. The main difference is that Microsoft Visual Studio is a full-fledged IDE. This is oversimplified, but it works for now. That said, the typical users are program writers. Long story short, both are Microsoft products.Īlso, both are used for software development. What are Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code? Ideally, after reading, you'll know how well these products fit your profile as a developer, your usual project scope, and your current tool stack. We aim to explain what each of these tools does, what purposes they are suited for, and when you should choose one or the other. In this article, we offer an in-depth comparison of the Microsoft Visual Studio vs Visual Studio Code.

To figure it out, you need to do a lot of digging or rely on someone else to give you a hint.

Or one an older or newer version of the other.

You may ask if one is an alternative to the other. It may be even more confusing when the same company offers these products. It is somewhat confusing when different tools have similar names.

Visual studio code on mac