Hi there,
what are the benefits of VisualStudio over VisualStudio Code when using Unity?
I mean is there a good reason why Unity still comes with VisualStudio instead of VS Code, which is much faster and more lightweight?
Maybe someone can help me to understand it 
Thank you ^_^/
Visual Studio is the one to use if you are on Windows, the others are for Mac and Linux and they suck.
Iām on a Mac and Unity comes with VisualStudio for Mac (formerly MonoDevelop) :-p
If I want to use VS Code Iāve to install it manually. Thatās why Iām asking why Unit still comes with VS instead of VS Code. So maybe there are some benefits to use VS over VS Code with Unity ^^ā
Have used Visual Studio Code for years - itās totally suitable if all you are doing is coding C# and C++, VD is fully featured out of the box, VSC can be extended using add-ons.
So you would say the only difference is that VS come with everything build in, what makes it slow and VS Code is lightweight but need add-ons to get the functions you need/want?
the names here are going to get confusing and your OS makes a big difference here
Visual Studio (Windows) - a full IDE (integrated development environment) with robust enterprise level bells and whistles. There are many features built into Visual Studio that VS Code does not have (either you have to set them up piece meal, or they donāt exist period). Thing is most of the features the VS Code doesnāt have arenāt really necessary in Unity.
Visual Studio for Mac (Mac) - a full IDE based on the old MonoDevelop. It too is a full IDE with robust enterprise level bells and whistles. It is also glitchy as all hell. I am not a fanā¦ but its purpose is very similar to Visual Studio on Windows.
Visual Studio Code - A lightweight, cross-platform, ācode editorā. The key word here being the ālightweightā aspect. This makes it speedier to run, but at the expense of a smaller feature set. You can add many, but not all, of the features from more robust IDEs like Visual Studio through the extensions. But this requires setting them up and also adds more bloat to the application bringing its lightweight performance down.
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Any one personās preference for each is just thatā¦ itās a preference.
I wonāt poo poo VSCode or Visual Studioā¦ wellā¦ Iāll poo poo Visual Studio for Mac because come on guysā¦ itās buggy as all hell.
But regardlessā¦ thatās just opinion. And any of our opinions donāt actually matter into the āwhyā Unity makes decisions internally.
Note that OPās question really only applies to Mac and not Windows since Visual Studio Community Edition (free version of VS for windows) is what is included in the Windows install. I honestly donāt know what the linux version comes with.
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So why does Unity include Visual Studio for Mac in the Mac version of Unity?
We can mostly only guess!
I can think of a few reasons off the top of my head:
The big one - there is a no redistribution clause in the Visual Studio Code licenseā¦ so right there, they canāt legally do it. Technically Unity could take the open-source code of Visual Studio Code and build it itself and distribute that (since the source code is under MIT license), but the actual binaries from Microsoft are not.
Itās a support nuisance for Unity - note that building VSCode themselves would mean theyād have to support that directly since itās their build. Or lets say VSCode was distributable (they are partnered with MS so getting an exception wouldnāt be super difficult), but VSCode doesnāt work out of the box with Unity, it requires multiple extensions installed to work as well. There is a lengthy guide for setting it up: Visual Studio Code and Unity
Unity wants something that installs and goes. So theyād have to write up a special installer that did all of this for youā¦ which again comes with support/dev costs/issues. Andā¦ I have no idea what licensing issues that could intersect with since each extension has their own license too.
Legacy - itās just the way itās been since before VSCode was as viable an option it is today. Unity has used MonoDevelop since the beginningā¦ they only dropped it on Windows after parterning with MS. And MonoDevelop on mac turned into VS for Mac because MS also took over that, so really my including VS for Mac youāre really just using the latest version of MonoDevelop. Why fix what aināt broke?
Microsoft? - who knowsā¦ maybe MS in an effort to support their Visual Studio for Mac branding prefers that Unity uses that one and wonāt make an exception in the VSCode license.
Sunk cost - maybe Unity has tools developed in VS for Mac (internally or not). Maybe they have a hard time justifying the cost to some board of directors if they were to drop it.
Some guy on the board at Unity just really really likes VS for Mac. We donāt knowā¦ we donāt work there.
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What is it?
The only people that know are the people who make those decisions at Unity. And I suspect IF they even bothered to grace us with that information it would be heavily filtered through PR that it likely isnāt the actual real answer as to why.
Thing isā¦ at the end of the day. Unity is a company with private details internally.
People often come here hoping to get an answer as to why Unity does this or that. And a lot of the timeā¦ itās because thatās how they do it. Thatās it. We donāt get more information than that for some of these types of things.
And thatās how most companies are.
Iāve worked for various enterprise companies over the years and the reasons we do things certain ways are ābecauseā. Hell half the people in the company donāt even knowā¦ they just do it that way because thatās the way you do it.
For example there is almost always this āguyā, I call them āproducersā because in some companies thatās what their title will be, but in other companies they may have a completely different role like āhead of salesā or something. But thereās always this āguyā who says he knows what the customers wantā¦ but doesnāt. But he has clout because who knows whyā¦ married to the ownerās daughter, been their since the beginning, biggest earner in sales, makes up numbers/statistics and puts them in pretty graphs to show the execsā¦ whatever it isā¦ he has it.
And this guy is the bane of my existence.
I see them coming every time I start a new job. Sitting in a dev planning meeting, this guy walks in. He has his little black moleskine, heās older, wears leather shoes despite the casual atmosphere of the office. And even though weāre 1 week from a version release he demands some new bizarre feature to be added to the list or we aināt shipping.
Which clearly weāre not shipping since any new feature comes with more than a week of testing.
The worst part with these guysā¦ and why theyāre the bane of my existence. I end up being the one to write said feature, he complains that itās not to his liking since heās since changed the design spec from what Iāve given, so I rewrite itā¦ then when itās done and released and no one likes it or the thing doesnāt actually work the way people expect to (itās not buggy, itās just not designed correctly)ā¦ whose fault is it?
Mine.
Cause Iām the engineer who wrote it! I should have known that the spec wasnāt correct and fought this guy with tenure on it risking my job. Damned if you do, damned if you donāt.
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Every company has these people. Usually several of them.
They even have customers like this. My current company I work at has one of these. They just gave us millions of dollars so that we can hire on 5 new devs that will work exclusively on features for them over the next few years. These features will be in the product despite the fact that no other customer asked for them.
And if you asked us publicly why this feature was addedā¦ we sure as hell aināt going to tell you that this multi-national conglomerate paid us to. But instead say something like āthrough market testing we have determined these feature sets would make for a more productive experience with our core productā.
Not saying Unity is egregious in this respect. Who knows they may have a far less toxic work environment.
But i guarantee you thereās some of it there. Thereās some people/customer/whomever who gets their way because raisins. Because every company does. Some are overt and terrible (looks at Blizzard), some are mild and annoying (looks at my own company), and some are timid in it. But Iāve never in my life seen a company devoid of it completely.
Thank you for your detailed opinion 
Ok, so VisualStudio Windows isnāt comparable with VisualStudio for Mac because only the name is the same, but thatās all and the Mac version is really buggy.
That would mean a Mac user would have a much better life with VisualStudio Code or something like Script Inspector 3 / Super Editor Pro (both Assets which are script-editors inside of Unity) or Rider instead of the buggy VisualStudio for Mac aka MonoDevelop or would there something I will be missing (maybe some important feature which Iāll only get with VS for Mac / MonoDevelop because of itās integration with Unity)?
And I think itās nr. 4 - Microsoft 
Better off is subjective. I called it buggy because thatās my opinion. Other people might not think of it as buggy as I do. I mean itās not like any of the tools I prefer havenāt crashed either.
Use the tool that works best for you.
I donāt necessarily know what tools VS for Mac has that you may need that VSCode doesnāt have. I can think of tools that I need that VSCode doesnāt haveā¦ but I do a lot more than general Unity development.
I have both Visual Studio and VSCode (I use Visual Studio in windows, and I use VSCode in linux). I will say I find VSCode very fast, but I also find its configuration a nuisance. It relies heavily on me knowing the magic path to this file or that to configure this project versus that project. Which is mostly fine if all my projects are identical in context (like all websites, or all unity projects). But I canāt remember how to setup a project in VSCode for every type of project I doā¦ instead I have to either a) look it up or b) use some extension that does the magic for meā¦ and I hate magic.
Mind youā¦ in time I get more and more familiar with it as does anyone with any piece of software they use.
But I would argue getting Visual Studio up and running with Unity is IMHO easierā¦
but thatās my opinionā¦ itās subjective.
So would someone be better off with say Rider or Script Inspector 3? Sureā¦ maybeā¦ if they prefer those tools. I donāt know how well they integrate with Unity as I never used them, but if they come with the bells and whistles that make life easy for them, then sure.
But thatās subjective.
Yesā¦ because MS is always the bad guyā¦
Sorryā¦ M$
Is it the 90s still where MS monopolized the market? Cause last time I checked Apple is the most valuable company in the world who is embroiled in lawsuits for monopolizing their markets.
Yes, use Rider. (sorry)
Haha, why sorry and what are the benefits of Rider over the rest (on macOS)?
Iām lazy. It gives me everything under my fingertips. It forces me to adhere to my own rules (configurable code styling and even logic). Itās not that slow like the VS, itās not that fragmented like VSC (and typing in Rider isnāt like Iām typing on a website like in VSC). The overall thinking behind almost every feature (donāt get me wrong, I have open tickets on the Rider bug-system) just gives a comfortable environment, so you need think only about your code, not the menu system where you can find stuff and where you should click.
In exchange it is not free. And it may be a problem for some. But you can try it for free and if it doesnāt worth it to you, thatās okay. I tried it for free, after a week I was a subscriber (it was several years ago).
That sounds very cool. I think Iāve to give Rider a try
What do you mean by āfeels like typing ob a websiteā?
VSC has a typing delay. I havenāt measured how much, but I noticed and it bothers me. It feels like you are typing in a textbox on a website with heavy JS presence. Itās annoyingly delayed.
Yep, can attest to that very slight delay.
Itās like trying to play old school arcade style games on a cheap HDMI tv. The input delay between pressing a button and it occurring on screen due to the analog to digital to display conversions.
Just in the case of websites/VSC is due to like @ saidā¦ a heavy JS presence. Because the Javascript is reading and mutating those strings as you type. Which makes sense since VSCode is written in typescript.
Not a huge deal when Iām typing here in the browser for forum posts. But when Iām writing code itā¦ over time it starts to feel floaty. Since when Iām writing code Iām typing a lot more at a higher typing speedā¦ where as in the browser Iām typing shorter and slower because itās just English.
I just tried Rider on my Mac mini M1 with 16GB in Apple Silicon native code (=without Rosetta) and damn is it slow It takes up to 25 seconds after clicking on a script in Unity to open everything. Thatās truly no fun. I think Rider isnāt my solution.
Iāll give ScriptInspector and Super Editor Pro a try
I noticed the same delay in Rider which seems also written in some Multiplatform framework instead of something native -.-
You wonāt be happy with any IDEs if thatās slow for you. Try Notepad++ or some script editor, not IDE. You open IDE once and leave it open for the entire session.
Iām a Windows user, on Windows, it is not present in Rider but it is in VSC. Your mileage may vary I guess.
Maybe I should give Rider another try to see the benefits of it while coding.
What would you say is/are the biggest benefits for you using Rider instead of a editor with Unity?
This, all this.
The topic of āspeedā of opening an IDE has always confused me.
Visual Studio isā¦ just open for me. Itās always open. I launch Unity, I launch Visual Studio, and theyāre there until I restart my computer.
Thatās my windows machine at any time (I run both linux and windows side by sideā¦ windows is for Unity dev and gaming, linux is my daily driver). The number of VS instances open depends on how many different projects Iām working at that moment.
