News

Devs Diss Visual Studio's AI

• By David Ramel
• 02/24/2026

As he does, Microsoft's Mads Kristensen took to social media yesterday to garner developer feedback on Visual Studio, for which he is the principal product manager.

"What features or extensions make you jump from Visual Studio to other IDEs and editors to perform certain tasks?" he asked.

One theme in the 100-comment thread (as of this writing) is the IDE's facility with AI, such as GitHub Copilot.

One respondent noted something I've noticed myself, Visual Studio Code is ahead of the game in Copilot and other AI, which is natural considering it's a lightweight extension-driven code editor that acts like a full-fledged IDE, while Visual Studio is a more monolithic real full-fledged IDE that doesn't get new features or functionality as quickly or broadly as does its little cousin (see "Hands On with Copilot Vision: VS Code's Head Start and How the IDE Is Catching Up").

"The Copilot experience in full Visual Studio just isn't as good as it is in VS Code," the dev said. When Kristensen asked for specifics, responses included:

• • 1. The model selection isn't as rich (on the same plan).
  • 2. There's no indication of context usage.
  • 3. It often freezes halfway through a response (see below)
  • 4. It nags me more frequently to approve actions. No “always approve”, but the same can be said about VS Code chat..
• "It's MUCH slower and seems to fail to edit files regularly for me. When it tries to access terminal commands like dotnet build it just stops likes it can't access a command line."
  When Kristensen asked if that comment pertained to VS specifically, the reply was:
  "Yes. Works really well in VSCode but for us is basically unusable in VS. Same experience across 4 devs on multiple machines."
• "New models seem to take longer to show up."

Other comments included:

• "When file editing fails, copilot tries to make edits via the terminal but then fails again since it can't get the PowerShell escaping right. I've never seen this happen with copilot in vscode."
• "If VS could host any VSCode extension I would use VS extensively. I use VSCode basically for an extension host or a lightweight text editor. VS also show slow progress with catching up with the latest GitHub Copilot agent features."
• "I can't stand Copilot in VS. The process of adding files to the context is ridiculous. I use Claude Code now but am considering switching to Copilot CLI if it doesn't bankrupt me.
  I used to switch ides for writing documentation but your Markdown editor + @dotnet_docs solves that for me now."
• "I basically never use VS anymore. I live in VS Code because they are at the tip of the spear constantly around AI. Release cadence around AI for VS feels like the old Microsoft Browser meme. When I do have to dig through code though I pop up 2026 VS. That's about it though. I'd be surprised if VS exists in 2028, not because those teams are not great but who will be reading code?"
• "Copilot is so good in @code"
• "There is no 1st class Claude plugin for Visual Studio so I use VS Code for that. Still use Visual Studio for debugging & publishing."
• "Any copilot stuff (especiakky nowadays with cli that can connect to vsc). Pr reviews. Claude code.
  It's more than I jump to vs. Bigger features with copilot where I think lang service tools will help. Manual code navigation. Debugging."
• "Mainly AI features. I prefer VS Code for Agent delegation and come back to Visual Studio only for quick edits and debugging"
• "Being unable use my own GPT account for Copilot so I switch to Rider + Codex to avoid limits. A shame really because the Copilot integration is so much better."
• "The copilot experience must evolve much faster. Actually it should be ahead of other experiences. I am falling back to vs code just to use copilot in full capacity."
• "For me it's the GH copilot. Copilot in VS is unusable while the one in VS code is really good."
• "Github Copilot.
  Github Copilot seems to work much much better on VSCode compared to Visual Studio"
• "I used to be a really heavy VS user (internal user). My work stream has just shifted to be cli first. CoPilot for VS is probably on too slow of a cadence.
  But I grew up on VS. And I still love it."
• "Tooling is much better in VS code for vue.js development. Also, copilot chat is better in code than VS. I sometimes have to leave VS so it can interact correctly with git or a terminal."
• "Currently Codex, Gemini and Claude extensions. As a C# engineer, I need to keep Visual Studio and VS Code both running."
• "These days Claude Code makes me switch to VS CODE from times to times because no official extension in VS"
• "VS Code Copilot Plan Mode"
• "Codex extention."
• "Claude code"
• "Coding agents integrations"

Other Themes in the Thread
Beyond AI and Copilot, commenters repeatedly pointed to workflow friction outside the core C#/debugging loop. Several said they switch to lighter editors for quick, unsaved note-taking and faster general text editing, including multi-cursor work. Others said Visual Studio navigation and search feel slower or less effective outside C#, especially when they need fast repo-wide search across files not loaded in a solution.

Another recurring topic was file types and languages that pull developers into other tools, including infrastructure and configuration formats like YAML, Terraform, and Bicep, where a file- and repo-first workflow is common. A related theme was extension ecosystem: some developers said they rely on VS Code or other IDEs primarily to access specific extensions and language tooling that either arrives earlier there or is not available in Visual Studio.

Kristensen, known for creating many extensions whose functionality later gets baked into Visual Studio, pointed out ready-made tools to answer several responses to his query, fitting the bill for what the dev wanted.