Visual Studio 2022: Cross-editions and cross-versions comparison

• Posted on 20 June 2022
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What is Visual Studio 2022?

Microsoft created Visual Studio as an integrated development environment (IDE). It is intended to be used as a basis for developing websites, computer programs, and applications among others. Since this is not a language-bound IDE, more than 30 programming languages are supported by Visual Studio. You can write code in Python, HTML, JavaScript, and C++ among others. Visual Studio comes in three editions – Community, Professional, and Enterprise available for both Windows and macOS. Below you can read more about the versions of Visual Studio and their differences compared to one another. Further in this blog, you can find a comparison between the 2022 and the 2019 editions.

Visual Studio Community

Different from all of the other versions, Visual Studio Community is a free license that can be downloaded from Microsoft’s website. This edition is mainly used by students and independent developers for the creation of applications. Up to 5 users in a non-enterprise organisation can make use of Visual Studio Community. For companies that are classified as enterprise organisations, there are restrictions regarding the number of PCs and annual revenue. According to the manufacturer, enterprise businesses with less than 250 PCs or an annual income of less than 1 Million US dollars can still use the Community edition, however only if the nature of the use is academic research, teaching or the contribution to open source projects.

Visual Studio Professional

Visual Studio 2022 Professional is the more advanced version of the Community edition and as such also intended for commercial use. The Professional version can be tested first via the free trial, however, after it ends, the users would need to purchase the license. Visual Studio Professional is mostly used by smaller teams or individual developers.

Visual Studio Enterprise

Visual Studio Enterprise is the most advanced of the three editions. It provides the users with the ability to set up, build, manage, and design business applications. The license is a good fit for any team size and again, there is a 90 days trial period in which companies can assess the license and its contribution to the workflow.

With the Enterprise Edition, you can access exclusive testing tools such as Text Explorer, IntelliTest, Code coverage and Microsoft Fakes. These tools are only available for Visual Studio Enterprise. With Text Explorer you can develop, manage and execute unit tests. When you use Test Explorer to run your tests, you can also make use of Code coverage. With this tool, you can determine what percentage of your code is in fact being tested. IntelliTest, on the other hand, tests your code’s data by generating unit tests. When running tests, you can use Microsoft Fakes to isolate the tested code by replacing other code parts through stubs and shims. This tool is helpful if parts of the code are not developed or working at that point. Additionally, if the test you run is failed, you can ensure that the bug is in the isolated code and not someplace else.

Visual Studio 2022: Overview of the versions

Visual Studio 2019 vs. 2022 functions comparison

Improved Debugging Capabilities

The core debugger simplifies code decompilation by providing a clear step-by-step display, possible breakpoints and flame diagrams to help programmers find problems with local and remote code.

Enhanced Code-Completion Functionality

Visual Studio 2022 has the feature Intellicode integrated. Inellicode can fill in lines of code for you based on its enhanced code context understanding. This understanding is implemented through recognizing functions, variable names, and code type, all that while you write the code. This way you end up coding more while typing less.

Programming Interface Update

The coding interface of Visual Studio 2022 is now more user-friendly which results in an intuitive coding environment compared to the previous versions. Now you can tailor the IDE and even make it similar to the theme of your Windows.

Improved Windows App Development

If you are a developer, this improvement is just for you. In the Visual Studio 2022 edition, you can now use Hot Reload to edit your code while debugging. This way you do not need to stop or restart the app in order to change your code.