Bye-Bye Visual Studio: Why VS Code is my new daily driver for C#

Why I switched

For years, Visual Studio with ReSharper was my go-to IDE for all .NET development. I tried the other ones in the past (notably Rider and VS Code) trying to target performance bottleneck in my work, but never stuck to any of them.

But 2026 feels different. Like many developers, I started using GitHub Copilot more and more to do the job.

As a full-stack developer using VS Code for React development, I started to notice a growing gap between GitHub Copilot experience between Visual Studio Professional 2026 and Visual Studio Code. VS Code copilot experience is clearly first-class citizen, and takes a lot of space in release notes every week now. It’s also highly reliable, fast and has growing ability to debug cost and behavior of underlying LLM agents.

Evaluating the decision

A month or two after this move, I’m highly satisfied about taking the time to configure VS Code workspace for my .NET project. I think it’s a huge productivity gain given how much the development is founded on LLM chats these days.

I still fall back to Visual Studio Pro on rare occasions, like when I want to update NuGet packages using familiar GUI, but it’s rare. If you use C# and vibe code a lot, certainly a step worth considering in 2026!

What made the switch easier

I found the switch to be relatively painless thanks to:

• Configuring the same keybindings for my most frequently used actions (like “Build project”, “Launch project”, “Rebuild project”)
• Installing proper extensions (like C# Dev Kit) to allow debugging C# code with breakpoints and all
• Rearranging sidebars to what I was used to (e.g. moving Solution Explorer on the right)
• Ensuring my settings are synced on all machines I use (work and home) so I don’t have unnecessary friction, like different keyboard shortcuts or behaviors
• And as a small accent, using Studio Icons addon (bringing familiar file icons from VS Professional to VS Code), and choosing a similar color theme 😊

I think such small investments pay back over time.