In Visual Studio, you can build an app, game, or extension using any language of your choice. The following features will boost your productivity, improve code quality, and add agility to the team.
Modular Installation
In Visual Studio, a modular installer enables you to choose and install workloads.
- Workloads are groups of features needed for the programming language or platform you prefer.
- It helps the developer to keep the Visual Studio installation smaller, which means it installs and updates faster too.
Debugging
Visual Studio provides rich and cross-language, debugging for all your code. You can quickly view information about your variables in the editor while debugging.
- Use Data tips to see the name and current value of a variable, to expand an object and see its elements, and to edit the value of a variable.
- Visual Studio can debug it from launching a local Windows app on the desktop or in the Android emulator, to attaching a remote Azure instance, iOS device, or gaming console, or to any web browser.
- You can debug issues offline in your production environment using capabilities such as IntelliTrace and deep analysis of dump files.
- Use breakpoints to pause your running program where you suspect there is a bug.
- Inspect each line of code in detail, looking at the values of variables, memory behavior, or whether a branch of code is running.
Testing
In Visual Studio, you can write high-quality code with comprehensive testing tools. It also allows you to write, execute, and debug unit tests in the language and test framework of your choice.
- The rich set of built-in project templates, and test frameworks support multiple platforms and make it easy to get started.
- The IntelliTest dramatically reduces the effort to create and maintain unit tests for new or existing code. It generates interesting input-output values for your methods, and save them as a small test suite with high code coverage.
- The Live Unit Testing automatically runs any impacted unit tests in the background and shows your code coverage live in Visual Studio. As you modify your code, Live Unit Testing lets you know if your code changes are covered by existing tests or if you need to write new tests. It also gently reminds you to write new tests as you type.
- The CodeLens inline display of test results for your code. It inspects, runs, debugs your tests, and navigate to the tests right from the code editor.
Collaboratation
In Visual Studio, you can manage your source code and collaborate with others in the Git repository hosted by any provider, including GitHub, or use Azure DevOps Services to manage code alongside bugs and work items for your whole project.
- You can quickly clone your code from an online repo on GitHub, Azure DevOps, or elsewhere.
- You can also create repositories and manage Git through changes and committed code in the IDE.
Extend Visual Studio
If Visual Studio doesn't have the exact functionality you need, you can add it by installing an extension. Extensions are add-ons that allow you to customize and enhance your experience in Visual Studio by adding new features or integrating existing tools.
- You can browse through thousands of extensions available in the Marketplace to find the tools you need.
- You can personalize the IDE based on your workflow and style, add support for external tools not yet integrated with Visual Studio, and modify existing functionality to increase your productivity.
- You can also publish your own extensions to the Marketplace.
You can find existing extensions for Visual Studio created by Microsoft developers as well as our development community here.
What's new in Visual Studio 2019
Visual Studio is constantly changing to meet the demands of developers. With Visual Studio 2019, you'll get best-in-class tools and services for any developer, any app, and any platform.
You can check the newly added features here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/whats-new-visual-studio-2019?view=vs-2019
