Visual Studio is one of the best IDEs out there, but there are top alternatives to explore in 2022. Read to learn some of these alternatives.
In a software development organization, the choice of integrated project development environment is determined by several factors, such as speed, cost, debugging capabilities, programming language support, and ease of use. Visual Studio is one of the IDEs that has gained wide acceptance as it offers almost all of the above capabilities.
Visual Studio is Microsoft’s IDE that provides developers with a modern environment to build cross-platform applications and innovative tools for sharing coding sessions across teams, cloning repositories, and setting up workflows for cloud deployment.
While Visual Studio may be one of the best IDEs for developers, there are other quality alternatives to Visual Studio that can support your company’s development as well.
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However, before we get into the available alternatives to Visual Studio, below are some of the Visual Studio features that you should consider when looking for an alternative.
Features of Visual Studio
Intellicode
Visual Studio offers a fascinating AI-powered code addition in their latest release. Nearly every developer prays for a powerful ability to augment code in an IDE. With this feature, software developers don’t have to sweat filling lines of code. The AI-powered completion identifies your code context and helps you handle things like variable names and functions based on the type of code you’re writing.
Hot Reload
Visual Studio also allows you to quickly rebuild and deploy any change to the code base. This reload feature makes it easy for developers to quickly create and deploy apps. Aside from your lines of code, the hot reload feature also works for changes to your CSS files.
Quick search
Many files for different projects can sometimes be stored on your computer, which makes manual file searches tedious. Reducing the amount of time you spend searching for these files is every developer’s dream. Visual Studio has a feature that allows you to quickly access your files for any project.
.NET 6 support
The .Net 6 is currently one of the most sought after frameworks within IDEs. It is a complete framework with multidimensional functionalities. The framework supports client, web and mobile applications in Mac and Windows operating systems.
64-bit IDE
As a 64-bit IDE, developers can now take advantage of faster time loading and running projects in the latest version of Visual Studio. This feature makes this tool ideal for business projects with a lot of complexity.
Debugging in multiple languages
Visual Studio also has a debugging capability to support a clean code base. You can easily view the debug information in the editor and use the tips in the IDE to manage values and variable names.
Version control
Visual Studio also offers flexible and extensible versioning that supports team collaboration. A built-in GitHub extension and Azure DevOps integration support your remote operations on the IDE. There is also an option to add other version control providers by installing their extensions.
Top Visual Studio Alternatives
Xcode
Xcode is Apple’s free software development IDE. It is integrated with the Cocoa Touch and Cocoa frameworks, giving developers a productivity edge.
Xcode includes a built-in Assistant Editor that provides useful side-pane codes to speed up your task. In addition, the Xcode IDE has the right tools to connect to Apple’s developer website. This means that software developers can enable Apple services for the apps they create, publish them to the Apple Store once they’re ready, and then use them.
NetBeans
Apache NetBeans is a free and popular IDE that can be a perfect alternative to Visual Studio. NetBeans works seamlessly on most operating systems and offers some great features that you may want to try.
For example, NetBeans offers fast and smart editing and other intelligent features such as name and parameter suggestions, code folding, custom keyboard shortcuts, and smart code completion. In addition, Apache NetBeans allows users to view, add or update code templates in the IDE.
firebase
Firebase from Google is a paid IDE that accelerates app development with a powerful toolset that helps developers build, improve, and scale their applications. The code-enhancing features in Firebase make it easy for developers to focus more on the user experience. Developers can access integrated features such as analytics, databases, authentication, push notifications, and other powerful configurations. Because the services are hosted in the cloud, you can easily scale your application to meet other needs as you see fit.
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Developers can also rely on Firebase extensions to automate certain development tasks. Some of these extensions include streaming collections to BigQuery and making payments with Stripe.
OutSystems
OutSystems is a paid Visual Studio alternative that provides almost everything a developer needs to perform a development task with ease. Widely regarded as a low code IDE, OutSystems helps software companies to create, deploy and manage business applications faster without having to write a lot of code.
OutSystems also offers many capabilities, such as real-time monitoring and reporting of app usage and performance, application scalability via APIs, and full DevOps automation.
Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition
synchronization‘s Essential Studio Enterprise Edition provides developers with a platform for developing web, mobile and desktop applications. This tool has a powerful user interface that makes your coding flexible and optimized for quality performance. With Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise, you have a framework that can help you easily create a functional user interface.
