When comparing Microsoft's Visual Studio vs Coda 2, the Slant community recommends Microsoft's Visual Studio for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript IDEs or editors?” Microsoft's Visual Studio is ranked 17th while Coda 2 is ranked 30th. The most important reason people chose Microsoft's Visual Studio is:
Javascript Intellisense allows Visual Studio to provide you with useful hints and auto-completion features while you code.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Javascript Intellisense support
Javascript Intellisense allows Visual Studio to provide you with useful hints and auto-completion features while you code.
Pro Clean UI
Visual Studio has a clean, intuitive user interface.
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.
Pro Product backlog
In agile development teams, one really needs features such as product backlogs where you can assign features to teammates and track their progress on them. VS provides a web-based interface for you to track your team's complete progress on the project.
Pro Very good XML/XSD support
Syntax highlighting, Intellisense, and jump to declaration all work in XML documents.
Pro Real IDE with all the benefits
Coda 2 comprises all you would expect from an IDE: it supports multiple languages (including all the standards); it performs autocomplete of project names, as well as language functions; it supports SVN and GIT; it has good support for plugins (or you can write your own); it has a configurable editor; and it has a built-in preview.
Cons
Con Tons of feature bloat
If you're doing simple web frontend dev, then VS is far too arcane and feature bloated for most of your work.
Con Not cross-platform
Visual Studio is only available on Windows, which causes platform lock-in.
Con Slow
Visual Studio can be quite laggy.
Con Takes up a lot of space
Visual Studio can use about 6 GBs which a lot of space to be taken from your computer.
Con Terribly slow development
Keep dreaming about features already provided by alternative products.
Con Non-native window frame
The IDE main window lacks a standard window frame (titlebar/borders). A custom solution is used where the custom titlebar contains numerous application-specific controls. This results in inconsistent UX and can also be problematic when you're using shell replacements or other various window-management software (such as bbLean).
Con Terrible UI
Con Extensions
Con Defective UI
There are several things in Coda that simply don't work, and never have. For instance, the root directory for your local and remote files is simply not honored. For every project, you can specify the root directory for its files. But when you open the project in Coda, it doesn't go there. The file browser just shows whatever the last directory was that you were using, and will write files to the wrong place. Thus, it defeats the purpose of setting the home directory in the first place.
Also, splitting the editor doesn't work. If you've done any programming, you know how important it is to be able to view two files simultaneously. Coda fails to do this, with a bizarre insistence on making the two panes dependent on each other.
Con Support for Mac and commercial use only
Coda 2 is only available on Mac (even though that does make it a native app, meaning its much faster). Coda 2 costs $99 after the 30 day free trial is up.
Con No XDebug
If you also write PHP, there's no XDebug support available.