VS flavors
Since version 2012, VS has had three flavors that cover all developers' preferences and needs. Just one of these three alternatives is completely free for the community.
In the following sections, you will see the differences between each version and learn about the features supported by each version, which are the following:
- Visual Studio Community
- Visual Studio Professional
- Visual Studio Enterprise
So, let's understand the main aspects of each version.
Visual Studio Community
Visual Studio Community is a free version that incorporates all the basic tools to create, build, debug, and deploy .NET applications and all the collaboration instruments integrated into VS.
Visual Studio Community has a limit of five users and is restricted to non-enterprise organizations.
The main tools in Visual Studio Community are the following:
- Basic debugging tools (tools for inspecting code during debugging)
- A performance and diagnostics hub (tools to analyze application performance and memory use)
- Refactoring tools (tools to clean and style code following best practices)
- Unit testing (a feature to navigate, run, and collect results from unit tests)
- Peek definition (a functionality to navigate to the definition of a method or function)
- VS Live Share (a tool for real-time collaboration development)
This version is suitable for students, independent developers, freelancers, and small companies. Even though this version includes all the main tools that you will use on a daily basis, in some scenarios associated with unit testing, memory, or inspection, these tools aren't enough.
Visual Studio Professional
Visual Studio Professional is a licensed version of VS offered by subscription; this version is recommended for enterprise applications and teams with more than five developers. VS Professional includes the same tools as Visual Studio Community but with some additions, such as CodeLens (a VS feature to find references, changes, and unit testing in code).
At the time of writing, the cost of VS professional subscription is $45 per month for an individual user.
The professional subscription includes $50 in Azure credit, training, support, and Azure DevOps (basic plan).
Visual Studio Enterprise
Visual Studio Enterprise is the top-level subscription version of VS (with Visual Studio Professional) that includes all of VS Community's features, Visual Professional's improvements, and some additional tools.
Some features to highlight are as follows:
- Live unit testing (a feature wherein unit testing is rerun every time a change is made)
- The Snapshot Debugger (a tool for saving snapshots during debugging when an error occurs)
- Performance analysis tools for mobile applications
- Architectural layer diagrams (to visualize the logical architecture of your app)
Enterprise subscription has a $250 fee per month, but it includes $150 in Azure credit, Power BI Pro, Azure DevOps with test plans, and all the features available for VS.
To see a comparison of the different flavors and prices, you can go to https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/pricing/.
Important Note
For this book, we are going to use Visual Studio Community. Since this is a free version, you don't have to pay any subscription, and all the topics are covered with this version.