New release of Visual Studio 2022

The new version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 has become one of the high-profile software releases in 2021. Many people fell in love with this great tool designed for developers. Today we can say that modern Visual Studio (we will use VS) is perhaps the best IDE. Microsoft pays a lot of attention to this product and is constantly improving it.

Let's take a look at improvements in this version:

1. The bit depth of the studio is now 64x

As you remember, earlier your Visual Studio was installed in the Program Files (x86) folder by default, meaning that it was a 32-bit program. Now VS has become 64-bit. This enables to upload "heavy" projects and work with them without the memory limit of 4 gigabytes. This is a big problem for large projects.

2. One of my favorite features in Visual Studio - AI IntelliCode

This subsystem is responsible for code hints based on the intelligent analysis of your code. A typical example of how IntelliCode works is instantiating an object when the target type is automatically substituted after the new operator. After that, you will be offered a complete instantiation construct with a more or less suitable name.

This subsystem has been significantly finished in the new version of VS - the work of artificial intelligence has been improved. Now the tips are more useful and accurate.

When IntelliCode is properly used, the coding speed increases significantly, but what's more, it becomes more and more fun. Intelligent assistants now surround us not only in everyday life but also at work.

3. Working with memory

One of the serious problems of VS2019 - high memory usage on heavy projects - has been solved. This pressing problem gave many developers a hard time.  

4. Visual Studio for Mac

This interesting phenomenon has been around since VS2017. Who ever thought that people would code for Windows sitting at a MacBook? It’s really possible. But in fairness, this has rarely been done in practice. In general, VS is used to develop cross-platform .NET Core applications for MacOS. The release of version 22 brought a number of innovations:

• improved the speed and stability of the IDE;
• a new window for working with the Git repository, integration with GitHub;
• support for .NET 6 and C #10.

5. A small blitz of important changes

• Everyone's favorite search in all files Ctrl+Shift+F is now fast. It worked very quickly before, but now it is several times faster.
• Support for .NET 6 - this is the main reason why everyone will use studio 22. VS2022 itself is considered by the community to be a nice addition to the new version of the framework. Undoubtedly, its release attracted the main attention.
• Hot Reload for Razor pages and CSS, plus a big update to the Blazor and Razor page editors.
• Support for multiple Git repositories for one solution. For example, you have a large solution with many connected projects. These projects are located in different repositories. So now, you won’t have to think about how to make changes to all the necessary repositories.

6. UI Updated 

It has become a little more concise and convenient. However, VS2019 with the latest updates is very convenient. The most notable improvements:

• Icons have changed. Nothing new – they have been refreshed.
• Developers have worked with colors – contrast is more striking, there are new shades. The dark theme looks very nice.
• Responsive theme, which adjusts to the theme in Windows.
• New fonts in the editor.

Let's compare the visually dark theme for 2022:

And in 2019 versions:

The first looks much more contrasting and it is easier and more pleasant to read information.

7. Customization

There are many new options for people who like to customize everything.

• One of them was mentioned above - this is the adaptation of the theme to the Windows theme;
• Synchronization of IDE settings on all PCs where you work under your Microsoft profile - we have already seen this many times. The same Windows 11 offers device synchronization;
• Many opportunities for moving windows, setting and tracking tabs. In general, we all had this, but now it has become even better.

Bottom line

There are no big changes compared to VS2019. But they are not needed either. This IDE is spot on perfect. At least for today. Improvement of such seemingly non-primary functions as the search or hints, play into how you see a product – it’s something new, although there are no big changes. Is this a marketing ploy or user care? When you first work with VS2022, you take note of all these improvements, but then you realize that this is still the same 2019. It is clear that the new release of the .NET 6 framework required a new studio for a greater effect. And we had it.