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Not to be confused with Visual Studio Code.
Visual Studio 2026 logo

Visual Studio 2026 logo

Visual Studio is a proprietary integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs, including websites, web apps, web services, and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such as Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Microsoft Store, and Microsoft Silverlight. It can produce both native code and managed code.

Visual Studio includes a code editor supporting IntelliSense (the code completion component) as well as code refactoring. The integrated debugger works as both a source-level debugger and a machine-level debugger. Other built-in tools include a code profiler, a designer for building GUI applications, a web designer, a class designer, and a database schema designer. It accepts plug-ins that expand the functionality at almost every level—including adding support for source control systems (like Subversion and Git) and adding new toolsets like editors and visual designers for domain-specific languages or toolsets for other aspects of the software development lifecycle (like the Azure DevOps client: Team Explorer).

Visual Studio supports 36 different programming languages and allows the code editor and debugger to support (to varying degrees) nearly any programming language, provided a language-specific service exists. Built-in languages include C, C++, C++/CLI, Visual Basic .NET, C#, F#, JavaScript, TypeScript, XML, XSLT, HTML and CSS. Support for other languages such as Python, Ruby, Node.js, and M, among others, is available via plug-ins. Java and J# were previously supported.

Visual Studio is offered in multiple editions, with the Community edition available free of charge for students, open-source contributors, and individual developers. Microsoft typically releases new major versions every few years. Visual Studio 2026 is the latest stable, production-ready release. Older versions, including Visual Studio 2017, 2019, and 2022, remain under extended support.

Features

Code editor

Debugger

Designer

Other tools

Testing tools

Extensibility

Editions

Visual Studio is offered in the following editions or SKUs:

Community

The Community edition was announced on November 12, 2014, as a new free version with similar functionality to Visual Studio Professional. Before this, the only free editions of Visual Studio were the feature-limited Express variants. Unlike the Express variants, Visual Studio Community supports multiple languages and provides support for extensions. Individual developers have no restrictions on their use of the Community edition. The following uses also allow unlimited usage: contributing to Open Source projects, academic research, in a classroom learning environment, and for developing and testing device drivers for the Windows operating system. All other use by an organization depends on its classification as an Enterprise (more than 250 employees or more than US$1 million in annual revenue, per Microsoft). Non-enterprises may use up to 5 copies without restriction; users numbered 6 and higher require a commercial license; Enterprise organizations require a commercial license for use outside of the noted exceptions. Visual Studio Community is oriented towards individual developers and small teams.

Professional

As of Visual Studio 2010, the Professional edition is the entry-level commercial edition of Visual Studio. It provides an IDE for all supported development languages. MSDN support is available as MSDN Essentials or the full MSDN library, depending on licensing. It supports XML and XSLT editing, and can create deployment packages that only use ClickOnce and MSI. It also includes tools like Server Explorer and integration with Microsoft SQL Server. Windows Mobile development support was included in Visual Studio 2005 Standard; however, with Visual Studio 2008, it was only available in Professional and higher editions. Windows Phone 7 development support was added to all editions of Visual Studio 2010. Development for Windows Mobile is unsupported starting with Visual Studio 2010, being superseded by Windows Phone 7.

Enterprise

In addition to the features provided by the Professional edition, the Enterprise edition provides a new set of software development, database development, collaboration, metrics, architecture, testing, and reporting tools.

History

[icon] This section requires expansion.
Visual Studio 2019 logo

Visual Studio 2019 logo

See also

External links

Smallwikipedialogo
Wikipedia (article: Visual Studio)
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