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What are the best C# IDEs?

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The Best 2 of 7 OptionsWhy?

7 Options ConsideredPriceAuto CompleteMulti Language Support
90
Visual Studio
FREEyesyes
90
Project Rider
FREE––
87
Visual Studio Code
FREEYesYes
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MonoDevelop
-––
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Code::Blocks
-Yes–
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90
Excellent

Visual Studio

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Athari
Top Pro

Official IDE developed by Microsoft

•••
If a project type or a platform is available for C#, it's available in Visual Studio. Some IDEs and code editors may cover some project types, but Microsoft always starts with VS. If you work with a cross-platform technology like ASP.NET MVC, it matters less. If you work with Windows-only techn...
Athari
Top Pro

Free Community edition

•••
Community edition is almost Pro edition, with just a few exceptions. Unlike old Express editions, it supports plugins.
Kristaps
OpinionatedAstraea
Top Pro

Excellent and broad range of plugins

•••
The plugin development ecosystem is very mature and covers a lot of use cases. For example, it is often easy to find a plugin which allows you to have the keybindings of your preferred editor.
Athari
Top Pro

Supported by ReSharper and other plugins

•••
Code productivity tools improve code editing experience greatly, provide static code analysis, refactorings, navigation etc. They are considered by many developers as essential.
Ray
Chris Bordeman
Top Pro

Supports every kind of .NET development, every project type

•••
Laura Kyle
Top Pro

Cloud storage

•••
Your Visual Studio Online account gives you a place to store your code, backlog, and other project data with no servers to deploy, configure, or manage.
Laura Kyle
Top Pro

Product backlog

•••
In agile development teams one really needs features such as product backlogs where you can assign features to team mates and track their progress on them. VS provides a web based interface for you to track your team's complete progress on the project.
Ryan
UpbeatAlLat
Top Con

Visual Studio 2017 CE account sign in fails behind a corporate proxy

•••
After the trial period it expires.
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90
Excellent

Project Rider

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Tom Diethe
Top Pro

New C# IDE based on ReSharper and the IntelliJ platform

•••
ReSharper is a popular Visual Studio Extension for .NET Developers. IntelliJ IDEA is a popular and fully featured JAVA IDE.
k1859828
Endi Sukaj
Tom Diethe
Top Pro

Supports all the development lifecycle

•••
Project Rider can build MSBuild and XBuild solutions as well as DNX/.NET CLI projects, and allows debugging .NET and Mono applications. DNX/.NET CLI debugging and CoreCLR support are coming.
Belle
Angus McLean
Top Pro

Superior "quality of life" features

•••
Extremely good at filling in all the mindless boilerplate type code while you stay productive.
Tom Diethe
Top Pro

Multiple runtime support

•••
Project Rider supports the .NET Framework and Mono, with CoreCLR support in the works. It also includes templates for creating new projects, and when you create an empty project, it's literally empty
k1859828
Endi Sukaj
Tom Diethe
Top Pro

Cross-platform

•••
As well as running and debugging multiple runtimes, Project Rider itself runs on multiple platforms. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Matthew Johnson
Top Pro

Version control integration

•••
Intellij plugins for Git, Mercurial and TFS plus Local History of files
AwareShulmanu
Top Pro

Decompile code for any .net library

•••
Endi Sukaj
Tom Diethe
Top Con

Relatively young project

•••
Some bugs are to be expected since it's still a relatively young project.
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5 Other Options Considered

87

Visual Studio Code

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Kristaps
Nurettin Arslankaya
Top Pro

Cross platform

•••
Runs on mac, ubuntu, and windows, but not on android now.
Kristaps
Nurettin Arslankaya
Top Pro

Free

•••
It's open source and free.
Kristaps
Nurettin Arslankaya
Top Pro

Lightweight

•••
It has several addons you can add as you need.
Kristaps
Nurettin Arslankaya
Top Con

Weak .net project and .net IntelliSense support

•••
It's best for web applications but not for .net desktop apps.
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MonoDevelop

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Code::Blocks

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Adrián Fernández
Top Pro

Lets you choose the compiler

•••
Code:Blocks lets the developer choose which compiler to use, giving you a higher level of control for on your development workflow.
SipherHex1984
Top Pro

Free/Libre/Open Source

•••
Know any negative aspects of this option?
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Eclipse

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Paolo
Top Pro

Large selection of plugins

•••
Eclipse has a large and active community, which has resulted in a wide variety of plugins.
Paolo
Top Pro

Fast compiler

•••
Eclipse uses a custom compiler (which can also be used outside of Eclipse), which is often faster than the normal Java Compiler, especially for incremental compilation.
Paolo
Top Pro

Highly customizable

•••
Thanks to the large variety of plugins and various configuration options, Eclipse is very customizable.
Paolo
Top Pro

Free and open source

•••
Eclipse is an open source project and free to use.
Paolo
Top Pro

Multiple languages - one IDE

•••
Paolo
Top Pro

Good font rendering

•••
Because Eclipse is based on SWT, it uses the native font rendering and thus looks better than other IDEs on some Linux systems, where the Java font rendering is not optimal.
Paolo
Top Pro

Good refactoring tools

•••
Paolo
Top Pro

Great debugger

•••
Shows threads, concurrency locks, and conditional breakpoints.
Paolo
Top Pro

Gives good perspectives on your project

•••
The concept of perspectives is outstanding. It puts right tools at your fingertips, keeping the tools you currently don't need out from the workbench. For example, in VCS perspective it's all about versions and branches. In debug perspective it's all about state. In java ee project it...
Paolo
Top Con

UI can be confusing

•••
There's an overly abundant presence of menus, this forces you to constantly click around the different menu structures; foreign ideas, like Views and Perspectives; strange menu choices, like configure settings located in Windows menu->Preferences.
Paolo
Top Con

Plugins can be unstable

•••
Though there are plenty of plugins to choose from, they aren't always reliable. Some aren't maintained, bug fixes can be slow, and you may need to download plugins from multiple sources.
Paolo
Top Con

Poor language support via plugins

•••
Eclipse supports other languages with a huge amount of plugins. Many languages have their own distribution, but multi-language is hard to exist in one project. Like Scala, there is no official support from Eclipse for this language. If Eclipse gets an update, languages such as these will not.
Paolo
Top Con

Tends to be slow and lags a lot

•••
Paolo
Top Con

Lack of plugins with good user interfaces

•••
Many Eclipse plugins are extremely confusing, with UIs that are even less consistent than Eclipse itself.
Paolo
Top Con

Some old bugs don't get fixed

•••
E.g. change a parameter name to the same as a field - the field will not be prefixed with "this." like in IDEA.
Paolo
Top Con

Newer versions are getting less stable

•••
Eclipse 4 Neon randomly hangs. For example, during installing new software. https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=513218
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scriptcs + any text editor

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166 Community Recommendations

Belhassen Lourimi
Matthew Johnson
Tom Diethe
Juan David Barreto
Onze
Jean-Sébastien Bélanger Ricard
Chipester
Aubrey
Izem Lavrenti
Ryan
Lysander
+122
Request recommendations from the community
Chris Bordeman
Chris
Contributor for 10 days
1
Total 
Recs.
80
Total 
Karma
Visual Studio
Recommended 10 days ago
I don't understand how anyone could possibly not rate VS #1 for C#. It supports every possible kind of C# development, every project type and target. It's Windows only. of course, but on the platform for which it's built, it's clearly the winner.
Pro
 Supported by ReSharper and other plugins
Pro
 Free Community edition
Pro
 Excellent and broad range of plugins
Pro
 Supports every kind of .NET development, every project type
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ModestTumatauenga
ModestTumatauenga
Contributor for 3 days
2
Total 
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0
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Project Rider
3 days ago
?? je suis perplexe 30 qui sont ok contre 8 qui sont pas ok...et vous le trouvez excellent? ... qui vous paie pour dire ces conneries?
Con
 Relatively young project
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ModestTumatauenga
ModestTumatauenga
Contributor for 3 days
2
Total 
Recs.
0
Total 
Karma
Eclipse
Recommended 3 days ago
je le connait...pas pour les débutants, même si "gratuit"
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