
CHAPTER 1 ■ INTRODUCTION TO VISUAL STUDIO 2015
2
Visual Studio 2015 has substantial debugging capabilities with features like IntelliTrace . IntelliTrace is
a historical debugger for managed code that records events during execution within the debugger such as
method calls, method parameters, exceptions, timings, memory usage, etc. This allows you to rewind code
in the debugger should more information need be analyzed when a particular breakpoint is hit.
This book isn’t specifically about working with an IDE. This information is provided to inform readers
about the features of an IDE so that we can compare Visual Studio 2015 features.
Visual Studio 2015 Editions
Visual Studio 2015 continues the Editions idea of Visual Studio, providing multiple editions geared toward
different segments of the market or toward different roles within organizations.
Difference from Version 2013
If you’re familiar with Visual Studio 2013 , it will be useful to look at what has changed in the Editions
landscape. One of the biggest differences in 2015 from 2013 is the new Community Edition and the
sunsetting of the Express Editions.
Prior to Visual Studio 2015 ( Visual Studio 2013 ), Visual Studio had Express Editions. This wasn’t merely
one edition, it was really four—Visual Studio Express for Desktop, Visual Studio Express for Web, and Visual
Studio Express for Windows. There was also a Team Foundation Server 2015 Express Edition.
Visual Studio Express for Desktop is an edition of Visual Studio 2013 that uses the familiar Visual Studio
2013 IDE that focuses on and facilitates development of desktop applications for Windows. This edition
supports all the typical “native” platforms for windows: Windows Presentation Framework (WPF), Windows
Forms, and Win32. Each platform generally has its own supported programming languages, but the Visual
Studio Express for Desktop Edition supports C#, Visual Basic, and C++. While this edition allows you to
create applications for Windows 7 and beyond, it isn’t supported under Windows 10.
Visual Studio Express for Web is an edition of Visual Studio 2013 that uses the familiar Visual Studio
2013 IDE that facilitates development of web sites, web APIs, or ASP.NET. Visual Studio Express for Desktop
edition supports C# and Visual Basic for ASP.NET and web APIs, and the typical web stack for web sites:
JavaScript, HTML, CSS, etc. This edition also isn’t supported under Windows 10.
Visual Studio Express for Windows is an edition of Visual Studio 2013 that uses the familiar Visual Studio
2013 IDE that facilitates development of Windows Store applications for Windows Phone and Windows 8.1+.
Windows Store applications can be written in C#, Visual Basic, HTML5/JavaScript, and C++. While this edition
allows you to create applications for Windows 8.1 and beyond, it isn’t supported under Windows 10.
Express editions typically didn’t support extensions (some versions supported Microsoft-only
extensions). This changed with the 2013 Community Edition that allowed extensions. Using the Community
Edition meant the ability to create application/web sites/etc. with Visual Studio for free but still use
extensions (like TestDriven.NET, NUnit, etc.)
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2015 Express is an edition of Visual Studio for non-programmers
and non-testers. These are team members who need to work with work items, bugs, tasks, etc. (Otherwise,
for team members who need to work with developers and testers but didn’t need to use any of the IDE
features of Visual Studio, but just access TFS.) This edition became less and less important, as a web-based
UI to TFS was created and has feature parity with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2015 Express (and
in some cases, it’s much more feature-rich).
In Visual Studio 2013 all the Express Editions and the Community Edition are replaced by the one
Community Edition. Users download the plugins, extensions, packs, packages, etc. and then can develop for
the platform or platforms of their choice.
The Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate and Premium Editions have not been carried forward to Visual Studio
2015. Instead there is an Enterprise Edition, which effectively has the features of the Visual Studio 2013
Premium and Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate Editions.