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Microsoft
visualstudio.microsoft.com › vs › compare
Compare Visual Studio Product Offerings
February 10, 2026 - Compare Visual Studio offerings to find the set of tools & resources that's best for you.
Discussions

Which version of Microsoft Visual Studio is best for following an online C course?
They just released 2026 version best time to jump in and learn. Only thing I will say is it can be fat. More on reddit.com
🌐 r/cprogramming
9
4
December 7, 2025
What's the difference between Visual Studio Community and other, paid versions? - Stack Overflow
Check the following: https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/compare/ Visual studio community is free version for students and other academics, individual developers, open-source projects, and small non-enterprise teams (see "Usage" section at bottom of linked page). More on stackoverflow.com
🌐 stackoverflow.com
List of all C#, .Net framework and Visual studio versions (Damn you Microsoft with all your version numbers)

I wonder who is in charge of naming and versioning over there!

Naming is a marketing thing. Versioning is a technical thing. Don't confuse the two.

More on reddit.com
🌐 r/csharp
56
89
July 19, 2015
Comparing versions
The biggest benefit from Enterprise, is the debugger diagnostics tools imo. This has saved us countless hours in discovering memory leaks and finding SQL performance issues. Pro should be good enough if you never use it though. You still get licenses for all Windows versions on Pro if I recall correctly, which becomes super helpful when you test on VMs. Also means developers don't need to pay for seperate Windows licenses. More on reddit.com
🌐 r/VisualStudio
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July 3, 2024
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Microsoft Learn
learn.microsoft.com › en-us › visualstudio › releases › 2026 › servicing-vs
Visual Studio Product Lifecycle and Servicing | Microsoft Learn
January 22, 2026 - Feature updates are indicated by a change in the minor version number, such as 18.3 to 18.4, and servicing updates are indicated by a change in the servicing version number such as 18.4.5 to 18.4.6 or, for the Insiders Channel, to the build number.
integrated development environment
Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software … Wikipedia
Factsheet
Developer Microsoft
Initial release March 19, 1997
Stable release 2026 18.4.0
/ March 10, 2026
Factsheet
Developer Microsoft
Initial release March 19, 1997
Stable release 2026 18.4.0
/ March 10, 2026
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Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Visual_Studio
Visual Studio - Wikipedia
5 days ago - Visual Studio is offered in multiple editions, with the Community edition available free of charge for students, open-source contributors, and individual developers. Microsoft typically releases new major versions every few years.
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Junian
junian.net › dev › visual-studio-downloads
Visual Studio Older Downloads (ISO + Installer): 2022, 2019, 2017, 2015, 2013
2 weeks ago - Download previous versions of Visual Studio Community, Professional, Enterprise, Premium, Express software as web installer or ISO.
Find elsewhere
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Directions on Microsoft
directionsonmicrosoft.com › home › past visual studio versions
Past Visual Studio Versions - Directions on Microsoft
February 13, 2025 - Support for the VB development environment requires a custom support contract, and prices for such contracts will typically rise each year. All other Visual Studio 6.0 components left Mainstream ...
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Visual Studio
visualstudio.microsoft.com › downloads
Visual Studio & VS Code Downloads for Windows, Mac, Linux
January 26, 2026 - Download Visual Studio IDE or VS Code for free. Try out Visual Studio Professional or Enterprise editions on Windows, Mac.
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Ashampoo
digilicense.com › en › blogs › blog › visual-studio-2022-cross-editions-and-cross-versio
Visual Studio 2022: Cross-versions comparison
June 20, 2022 - 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
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Visual Studio
visualstudio.microsoft.com › vs › older-downloads
Visual Studio Older Downloads - 2019, 2017, 2015
December 9, 2025 - Download previous versions of Visual Studio Community, Professional, and Enterprise softwares. Sign into your Visual Studio (MSDN) subscription here.
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Microsoft
visualstudio.microsoft.com
Visual Studio: IDE and Code Editor for Software Development
Visual Studio: IDE and Code Editor for Software Developers and Teams2025-12-30T10:38:39-08:00 · Go deep on real code at Microsoft Build. Learn more · Unleash your potential with the world’s most popular IDE for the professional developer. Get free download · Explore all versions ·
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Navigacloud
nne.navigacloud.com › GN4Help › visual-studio-versions_edition.htm
Visual Studio versions/editions
February 24, 2016 - Visual Studio Community Edition 2015 (freeware) or Visual Studio Express Edition (freeware) with NET 4.6.1 DEV pack ... To be able to compile the version 2.2. add-ins, download and install the Visual Studio Express 2013 (freeware) and the .NET Framework 4.5.2 multi-targetting pack (382Mb).
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/cprogramming › which version of microsoft visual studio is best for following an online c course?
r/cprogramming on Reddit: Which version of Microsoft Visual Studio is best for following an online C course?
December 7, 2025 -

A few online courses that were recommended in other reddit threads here have suggested downloading Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express but that is not supported anymore. The MS website warns that there may by security risks. MS suggests to use 'Visual Studio Community Edition' instead, an IDE which has support for C++ along with other languages.

Has anyone downloaded 'Visual Studio Community Edition' to help in an online course and found it useful?

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Microsoft
visualstudio.microsoft.com › insiders
Visual Studio 2026 Insiders - Faster, smarter IDE
December 5, 2025 - From .NET 10 and modern C++ to cloud and AI services, Visual Studio is ready for whatever you’re building next. Take full advantage of the latest version of .NET with first-class support across web, cloud, desktop, and AI workloads
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InfoWorld
infoworld.com › home › software development › development tools
Microsoft ends support for older Visual Studio versions | InfoWorld
February 11, 2022 - Company has posted end of support timelines and suggested upgrade paths for users of Visual Studio 2012, Visual Studio 2017, and Visual Studio 2019.
Top answer
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There are 2 major differences.

  1. Technical
  2. Licensing

Technical, there are 3 major differences:

First and foremost, Community doesn't have TFS support.
You'll just have to use git (arguable whether this constitutes a disadvantage or whether this actually is a good thing).
Note: This is what MS wrote. Actually, you can check-in&out with TFS as normal, if you have a TFS server in the network. You just cannot use Visual Studio as TFS SERVER.

Second, VS Community is severely limited in its testing capability.
Only unit tests. No Performance tests, no load tests, no performance profiling.

Third, VS Community's ability to create Virtual Environments has been severely cut.

On the other hand, syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, Step-Through debugging, GoTo-Definition, Git-Integration and Build/Publish are really all the features I need, and I guess that applies to a lot of developers.

For all other things, there are tools that do the same job faster, better and cheaper.

If you, like me, anyway use git, do unit testing with NUnit, and use Java-Tools to do Load-Testing on Linux plus TeamCity for CI, VS Community is more than sufficient, technically speaking.

Licensing:

A) If you're an individual developer (no enterprise, no organization), no difference (AFAIK), you can use CommunityEdition like you'd use the paid edition (as long as you don't do subcontracting)
B) You can use CommunityEdition freely for OpenSource (OSI) projects
C) If you're an educational insitution, you can use CommunityEdition freely (for education/classroom use)
D) If you're an enterprise with 250 PCs or users or more than one million US dollars in revenue (including subsidiaries), you are NOT ALLOWED to use CommunityEdition.
E) If you're not an enterprise as defined above, and don't do OSI or education, but are an "enterprise"/organization, with 5 or less concurrent (VS) developers, you can use VS Community freely (but only if you're the owner of the software and sell it, not if you're a subcontractor creating software for a larger enterprise, software which in the end the enterprise will own), otherwise you need a paid edition.

The above does not consitute legal advice.
See also:
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/262916/understanding-visual-studio-community-edition-license

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Check the following: https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/compare/ Visual studio community is free version for students and other academics, individual developers, open-source projects, and small non-enterprise teams (see "Usage" section at bottom of linked page). While VSUltimate is for companies. You also get more things with paid versions!

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Reddit
reddit.com › r/csharp › list of all c#, .net framework and visual studio versions (damn you microsoft with all your version numbers)
r/csharp on Reddit: List of all C#, .Net framework and Visual studio versions (Damn you Microsoft with all your version numbers)
July 19, 2015 -
  • C# 1.0 released with .NET 1.0 and VS2002 (January 2002)

  • C# 1.1 & 1.2 released with .NET 1.1 and VS2003 (April 2003).

  • C# 2.0 released with .NET 2.0 and VS2005 (November 2005).

  • C# 3.0 released with .NET 3.5 and VS2008 & 2010 (November 2007).

  • C# 4.0 released with .NET 4 and VS2010 (April 2010).

  • C# 5.0 released with .NET 4.5 and VS2012 & 2013 (August 2012).

  • C# 6.0 released with .NET 4.6 and VS2015 (July 2015).

  • C# 7.0 Not yet released. (4.6.3? and 2017? )

Now Visual Studio versions:

  • Visual Studio 97 Version 5.0

  • Visual Studio 6.0 Version 6.0

  • Visual Studio .NET 2002 Version 7.0

  • Visual Studio .NET 2003 Version 7.1

  • Visual Studio 2005 Version 8.0

  • Visual Studio 2008 Version 9.0

  • Visual Studio 2010 Version 10.0

  • Visual Studio 2012 Version 11.0

  • Visual Studio 2013 Version 12.0

  • Visual Studio 2015 Version 14.0

  • Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.0

I wonder who is in charge of naming and versioning over there! JK ;)

Edit: Now with CodeNames:

  • Visual Studio 97 CodeName Boston

  • Visual Studio 6.0 CodeName Aspen

  • Visual Studio .NET 2002 CodeName Rainier

  • Visual Studio .NET 2003 CodeName Everett

  • Visual Studio 2005 CodeName Whidbey

  • Visual Studio 2008 CodeName Orcas

  • Visual Studio 2010 CodeName Dev10/Rosario

  • Visual Studio 2012 CodeName Dev11

  • Visual Studio 2013 CodeName Dev12

  • Visual Studio 2015 CodeName Dev14

  • Visual Studio 2017 CodeName Dev15

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Visual Studio Code
code.visualstudio.com › updates › v1_108
Visual Studio Code 1.111
1 week ago - Learn what is new in the Visual Studio Code December 2025 Release (1.108).
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Macrosoft
macrosoft.store › home › worksheets › microsoft visual studio
Microsoft Visual Studio- All versions
All versions of Microsoft Visual Studio. Microsoft Visual Studio (or more commonly Visual Studio) is an integrated development environment (Integrated development environment or IDE) developed by Microsoft. Visual Studio is multilingual and currently supports the creation of projects for various ...
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Microsoft Learn
learn.microsoft.com › en-us › visualstudio › releases › 2026 › release-notes
Visual Studio 2026 Release Notes | Microsoft Learn
1 month ago - GitHub Copilot app modernization ... issues. You can find our user documentation on Microsoft Learn. Install Visual Studio 2026 version 18.3 or later, with any C++ workload selected....