Welcome to the Visual Studio IDE | Visual Basic

An integrated development environment (IDE) is a feature-rich program that supports many aspects of software development. The Visual Studio IDE is a creative launching pad that you can use to edit, debug, and build code, and then publish an app. Over and above the standard editor and debugger that most IDEs provide, Visual Studio includes compilers, code completion tools, graphical designers, and many more features to enhance the software development process.

The preceding image shows Visual Studio with an open Visual Basic project that shows key windows and their functionality:

In Solution Explorer, at upper right, you can view, navigate, and manage your code files. Solution Explorer can help organize your code by grouping the files into solutions and projects.
The central editor window, where you'll probably spend most of your time, displays file contents. In the editor window, you can edit code or design a user interface such as a window with buttons and text boxes.

Editions

Visual Studio is available for Windows.

There are three editions of Visual Studio: Community, Professional, and Enterprise. See Compare Visual Studio editions to learn about which features each edition supports.

Popular productivity features

Some popular features in Visual Studio that improve your productivity when developing software include:

Squiggles and Quick Actions

Squiggles are wavy underlines that alert you to errors or potential problems in your code as you type. These visual clues help you fix problems immediately, without waiting to discover errors during build or runtime. If you hover over a squiggle, you see more information about the error. A light bulb might also appear in the left margin showing Quick Actions you can take to fix the error.
Refactoring

Refactoring includes operations such as intelligent renaming of variables, extracting one or more lines of code into a new method, and changing the order of method parameters.
IntelliSense

IntelliSense is a set of features that display information about your code directly in the editor and, in some cases, write small bits of code for you. It's like having basic documentation inline in the editor, so you don't have to look up type information elsewhere.

The following illustration shows how IntelliSense displays a member list for a type:

IntelliSense features vary by language. For more information, see C# IntelliSense, Visual C++ IntelliSense, JavaScript IntelliSense, and Visual Basic IntelliSense.
Visual Studio search

Visual Studio menus, options, and properties can seem overwhelming at times. Visual Studio search, or Ctrl+Q, is a great way to rapidly find IDE features and code in one place.

When you start typing the name of something you're looking for, Visual Studio lists results that take you where you need to go. If you need to add functionality, for example another programming language, you can open the Visual Studio Installer from the search box results to install the workload or component.
Live Share

Collaboratively edit and debug with others in real time, regardless of your app type or programming language. You can instantly and securely share your project. You can also share debugging sessions, terminal instances, localhost web apps, voice calls, and more.
Call Hierarchy

The Call Hierarchy window shows the methods that call a selected method. This information can be useful when you're thinking about changing or removing the method, or when you're trying to track down a bug.
CodeLens

CodeLens helps you find code references, code changes, linked bugs, work items, code reviews, and unit tests, without leaving the editor.
Go To Definition

The Go To Definition feature takes you directly to the location of a function or type definition.
Peek Definition

The Peek Definition window shows a method or type definition without opening a separate file.

Install Visual Studio

In this section, you create a simple project to try out some of the things you can do with Visual Studio. You learn how to change the color theme, use IntelliSense as a coding aid, and debug an app to see a variable value during app execution.

When you open Visual Studio for the first time, you can sign in by using your Microsoft account or your work or school account.

Customize Visual Studio

You can personalize the Visual Studio user interface, including changing the default color theme.

Change the color theme

To change the color theme:

Select environment settings

You can configure Visual Studio to use environment settings tailored to Visual Basic developers.

On the menu bar, choose Tools > Import and Export Settings.
In the Import and Export Settings Wizard, select Reset all settings, and then select Next.
On the Save Current Settings page, select whether to save your current settings before resetting. If you haven't customized any settings, select No, just reset settings, overwriting my current settings. Then select Next.
On the Choose a Default Collection of Settings page, choose Visual Basic, and then select Finish.
On the Reset Complete page, select Close.

To learn about other ways you can personalize the IDE, see Personalize Visual Studio.

Create a program

Dive in and create a simple program.

Use refactoring and IntelliSense

Let's look at a couple of the ways that refactoring and IntelliSense can help you code more efficiently.

First, rename the name variable:

Double-click the name variable, and type the new name for the variable, username.

A box appears around the variable, and a light bulb appears in the margin.
Select the light bulb icon to show the available Quick Actions. Select Rename 'name' to 'username'.

The variable renames across the project, which in this case is only two places.

Now take a look at IntelliSense.

Below the line that says Console.WriteLine("Hello " + username + "!"), type the following code:
```
Dim now = Date.
```
A box displays the members of the DateTime class. The description of the currently selected member also displays in a separate box.
Choose the member named Now, which is a property of the class. Either double-click on Now, or select it and press Tab.
Below that line, enter the following lines of code:
```
Dim dayOfYear = now.DayOfYear
Console.Write("Day of year: ")
Console.WriteLine(dayOfYear)
```
Tip

Console.Write is different from Console.WriteLine in that it doesn't add a line terminator after it prints. That means that the next piece of text that's sent to the output will print on the same line. You can hover over each of these methods in your code to see their descriptions.

Next, use refactoring again to make the code a little more concise.

Debug code

When you write code, you should run it and test it for bugs. Visual Studio's debugging system lets you step through code one statement at a time and inspect variables as you go. You can set breakpoints that stop execution of the code at a particular line, and observe how the variable value changes as the code runs.

Set a breakpoint to see the value of the username variable while the program is running.

Set a breakpoint on the line of code that says Console.WriteLine("Hello " + username + "!") by clicking in the far-left margin, or gutter, next to the line. You can also select the line of code and then press F9.

A red circle appears in the gutter, and the line is highlighted.
Start debugging by selecting Debug > Start Debugging or pressing F5.
When the console window appears and asks for your name, enter your name.

The focus returns to the Visual Studio code editor, and the line of code with the breakpoint is highlighted in yellow. The yellow highlight means that this line of code executes next. The breakpoint makes the app pause execution at this line.
Hover your mouse over the username variable to see its value. You can also right-click on username and select Add Watch to add the variable to the Watch window, where you can also see its value.
Press F5 again to finish running the app.

For more information about debugging in Visual Studio, see the Debugger feature tour.

Last updated on 2025-11-07

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