Before the launch of Dotnet Core, Visual Studio has been one of the most used IDEs for .Net Development. It might be the reason that It was the only powerful IDE available for developing Web, Mobile, Desktop & Cloud-based Applications. For some developers with limited system resources (e.g RAM, CPU, Hard Drive), working on Visual Studio was quite difficult. Also, If you want to develop .Net Applications, you must be a Microsoft Windows user.

.Net Core is a

Cross-platform, lightweight & again a powerful version of .Net by Microsoft. It solved all the reasons for .Net being not liked by some developers. Now, we can develop .Net Applications using .Net Core on your favourite Operating System.

So, In this article, I’m going to list down some of the best .Net Core IDEs for Windows, Mac & Linux.

Visual Studio Code

VS Code is a most light-weight cross-platform Editor with thousands of Plugins available that make VS Code a powerful IDE for developing .Net Core Applications. It’s open-source & available for Windows, macOS, Linux & works great even on systems with low resources(CPU, RAM & Hard Drive).

C# plugin is also available for Editing, IntelliSense & debugging .Net Core Applications.

VS Code offers many features that help developers in rapid application development. Here’s the list of some Features.

• Syntax Highlighting
• Auto Complete
• Debugging
• Light-weight
• Built-in Git Support
• Extensible by thousand of Plugins
• Customizable Look & Feel

Rider

Rider is another Fast & Powerful Cross-Platform .Net Core IDE by JetBrains based on IntelliJ platform and ReSharper. It has the power of ReSharper for refactoring & built-in decompiler for exploring libraries source code. It also supports version controlling using Git, Mercurial, Subversion, TFVC and Perforce.

It has many Built-in features & can also be extended using many useful Plugins available for Rider.

Here’s the list of Features Rider Offers:

• Code analysis
• Code editing
• Refactorings
• Decompiling
• Unit Testing
• Debugging
• Extensible with 1500+ plugins
• Supports Unity & Xamarin Development
• WinForms designer

Visual Studio

Visual Studio is considered as one of the most powerful IDE available for developing powerful Desktop, Mobile, Web & Desktop Applications. Now It’s also available for macOS users as well. The only reason that most of the developers moved on the VS Code is that Visual Studio is not so friendly for low resources systems.

It also has built-in Git support & many other great features.

Here’s the List of some Visual Studio Features:

• Great IntelliSense
• Easy Debugging
• Refactoring
• Unit Testing
• Live Share Screen to work together in real-time
• About 9000+ Plugins

Comparison Table

Here’s a quick comparison for the Above listed IDEs

Features	VS Code	JetBrains Rider	Visual Studio
IntelliSense	✔	✔	✔
Debugging	✔	✔	✔
Built-in Unit-Testing	✘	✔	✔
Refactoring	✔	✔	✔
Decompiling	✘	✔	✘
Open Source	✔	✘	✘
Light-weight	✔	✘	✘
Extensions	12000+	1500+	9000+
Platforms	Windows, MacOS, Linux	Windows, MacOS, Linux	Windows, MacOS

I hope this article will help you to choose the IDE for your Dotnet Core Developments.

Let me know your reviews & suggestions in the Comment Section below.

Related Articles:

–

A Complete Guide to Secure your ASP.NET Web Application & API

– Top Open Source ASP.NET Content Management System (CMS)