Notepad++ vs Visual Studio

Notepad++ has built-in support for syntax highlighting for a wide selection of programming languages.

Notepad++ is a very light program that starts almost instantly. This makes it a great text editor for users that want something that will start the second they open it.

A list of hundreds of plugins is maintained.

You can get a portable version of N++ and put it on a flash drive or your dropbox account and have your editor, configured the way you like, at any computer that you are on.

Notepad++ is licensed under GPL, which means it is free/open source software that you can use freely.

In Notepad++, the user can utilise regular expressions to quickly modify text across multiple files.

If you close Notepad++ (npp), your documents remain even if you haven't saved.

You can define your own custom syntax highlighting rules (or add support for others) .

Very easy to use and personalize.

While it is disabled by default, when enabled, it is possible to edit more than one line at a time. This is helpful in many situations.

The user can open and edit files in multiple screens within the editor window.

If you have the Plugin Manager installed you can search for MarkdownViewer++ and install it via that plugin.

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 technologies like UWP or WPF, you have no choice really.

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

Supports many types of C, and java, as well as ruby and python.

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.

Visual Studio runs on Windows and macOS, so even if you develop on a Mac you can still develop with Visual Studio.

You can use too many programming lang. And you can select them! Like "I want to do this, not this".

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.

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

Fast-paced development iteration from the Microsoft team, with new versions and fixes almost every week.

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.