Products · Product
Visual Studio
Raised as a usability problem by 515 people on Hacker News over 20 years (2007–2026), in 466 threads.
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- 4Projects take tens of minutes to loadUnreviewed
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- 4Projects take tens of minutes to loadUnreviewed
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- 6All-caps menu labels are hard to readUnreviewed
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- 29Find all references misses resultsUnreviewed
Every issue, all time, most people first
IDE lags noticeably during every interactionUnreviewed
20072026- IDE is slow and laggy to render, so the user runs separate tools2025-10-06
- The IDE is horrid to use, with no specific problem named2025-07-30
- IDE feels slow and bloated compared to the older VB6 and VC++ 6.0 environments2024-11-17
Debugger watched values update too slowly while steppingUnreviewed
20072026- Debugger is glacially slow and blocks native debugging features like data breakpoints2026-04-06
- Debugger's view list takes over 10 seconds to show a simple table of text2026-02-12
- Debugger is slow, limited, and watched values update too slowly while stepping2025-12-18
Projects take tens of minutes to loadUnreviewed
20072026- Sits for tens of minutes waiting for projects to load, making it sluggish2026-05-18
- Long waits on startup, solution opening, and code editing, so the user is always waiting2023-12-12
- Feels unbearably slow to interact with even on tiny projects2023-06-22
Editor lags behind typing, making it hard to useUnreviewed
20072026- Editor lags badly from a metadata file that grows and must be deleted manually2023-09-24
- Editor lags while typing and touchpad scrolling in code window is poor2021-12-12
- Each typed character takes half a second to appear, making typing frustrating2020-11-10
Old projects are very hard to compile years laterUnreviewed
20072026- Installing the old IDE on modern Windows is annoying and needs many manual workarounds2022-08-13
- Old IDE projects are very hard to compile years later2022-07-17
- Must restart IDE and run cleanup script many times daily after project file changes2022-01-01
Updating IntelliSense hangs the editor for a whileUnreviewed
20072026- IntelliSense updating hangs the editor for a while2020-11-01
- IntelliSense hangs repeatedly during background rescans on large C++ codebases2020-02-07
- Editor and IntelliSense become laggy and unresponsive as memory nears 2GB on large solutions2019-10-15
Autocomplete pops up on every keystroke, interrupting coding flowUnreviewed
20072026- Autocomplete changes typed code to something else and ranks the wanted variable far down the list2026-01-22
- Normal IntelliSense suggestions rarely appear, and Copilot autocompletes made-up methods2025-12-25
- Autocomplete pops up on every keystroke, interrupting coding flow and slowing interaction2020-02-07
Ctrl+, file search takes so long to show files it's uselessUnreviewed
20072026- File search lags several seconds and misses files not imported into the workspace2026-01-22
- Search takes seconds and mixes file-name results with file-content results2025-05-31
- Find in All Files takes about two seconds to open2018-06-15
Debugger can't inspect processes deeply beyond point-and-clickUnreviewed
20072026- Debugging SQL in Visual Studio was awful years ago2023-02-01
- Entering complex debugger instructions is frustrating and difficult in Visual Studio2019-01-04
- The debug button is small and hard to hit with the mouse2017-06-13
Requires heavy mouse use, slower than typing commandsUnreviewed
20072026- Requires memorising many GUI locations and constantly taking hands off keyboard2021-09-03
- Many Visual Studio features require mouse use, interrupting keyboard-driven workflow2017-03-12
- Requires heavy mouse and GUI use, slower than typing commands2015-02-11
Scrolling is forced line-based rather than smoothUnreviewed
20072026- Editor scrolling was forced line-based and the IDE freezes and crashes2023-03-21
- UI freezes while the IDE computes contents of a popup window2014-01-13
- IDE background indexing freezes the editor at the worst times, with no way to turn it off2012-06-13
Monochrome icons make items hard to tell apart quicklyUnreviewed
20072026- Monochrome icons made items impossible to quickly tell apart2023-01-02
- Monochrome icons made them impossible to tell apart, forcing slow hunt-and-peck searching2023-01-02
- Icons lost their colors, so users must guess them from outlines alone2019-01-20
Can't use tabs for indentation with spaces for alignmentUnreviewed
20072026- Can't make it use tabs for indentation and spaces for alignment2023-01-03
- Tab, space and enter keys behave unpredictably, with auto-formatting and hard-to-find settings2021-04-20
- Enter key adds nothing, Tab doesn't indent; editing F# feels painful and unintuitive2017-08-16
Behavior changes unpredictably, breaking learned muscle memoryUnreviewed
20072026- Muscle memory for Windows shortcuts fails; command line tasks feel unintuitive versus clicking menus2023-11-04
- Lacks user control and changes behavior unpredictably, breaking muscle memory2022-09-22
- Editor keystrokes fight against the user's Emacs muscle memory despite emulation2022-01-01
Solution files full of GUIDs make merge conflicts hard to resolveUnreviewed
20072026- Manually editing solution files can break them in a way that is very hard to debug2020-09-29
- Hard to tell which files are in the virtual solution; solution files forced on existing code2015-03-26
- Solution files are a bag of GUIDs, so merge conflicts are very hard for humans to resolve2015-03-19
Licence sign-in step is annoying and hard to useUnreviewed
20072026- Logging in to license Visual Studio is an annoying, hard-to-use step2022-07-21
- Forced to log in and enroll in a Microsoft program just to download a dependency2021-12-31
- Setup is painful, requiring license keys, account login, and choosing among many installer features2019-10-15
Project creation buries important choices under dialogs and click stepsUnreviewed
20072026- Hard to find basic actions like creating a project or running code2025-10-31
- Creating projects involves lots of dialogs, popups and click-click steps that hide the important parts2019-05-29
- Beginners are confused by huge options menu, projects, builds, and debugger controls2015-08-24
Very limited UI customization and highlighting optionsUnreviewed
20072026- Editor is clunky, with very limited UI customization and highlighting options2021-05-06
- Non-obvious where to start when changing simple editor behavior2016-12-14
- Later versions clutter the screen with panels and property sheets, crowding out the editor2013-07-06
Designer becomes slow and buggy with non-trivial UIsUnreviewed
20072026- Designer becomes slow and buggy once the UI is non-trivial2019-11-28
- Visual Studio is slow, which the commenter blames on the XAML designer2012-03-07
- GUI tangles with every project aspect, so tweaking settings is awkward and slow2008-04-25
Settings and features are hard to find, wasting time searchingUnreviewed
20072026- Hard to find settings and features; spends more time searching than coding2025-01-12
- Too many features make functions hard to discover and learn2017-08-20
- Features are hard to discover through a giant tree of menus and dialogs2013-02-11
Window layout is unintuitive compared to IntelliJUnreviewed
20072026- Tab management is a nightmare compared to IntelliJ out of the box2023-06-24
- Feels slow and bloated to use compared to IntelliJ on Windows2020-11-18
- IDE window layout is un-intuitive compared to IntelliJ2015-04-23
No Linux IDE matches Visual Studio's quick form buildingUnreviewed
20072026- C++/CLI's Windows Forms integration is clunky, so building GUIs is hard2025-08-23
- No Linux IDE matches Visual Studio's quick form-building, so the author avoids GUIs2015-07-21
- No Intellisense support makes Windows Forms development very hard to use2011-12-11
Unintuitive enough that users switch to VS CodeUnreviewed
20072026- Finds Visual Studio so unintuitive that the user switches to VS Code2025-06-06
- Author got frustrated with the Visual Studio UI after a few hours and switched tools2024-02-21
- Finds Visual Studio confusing after working in a Linux development environment2008-11-17
Find all references misses resultsUnreviewed
20072026- Find references misses some controller usages, so unused controllers appear and refactoring is unreliable2017-06-29
- Find all references is unreliable, missing results2017-01-23
- Find all references is unreliable because it is just text-based search2017-01-23
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Constantly grinds to a halt on the same hardware2026-10-06
- Server Explorer freezes for 30 seconds each time it is opened2026-07-29
- Once a payment attempt fails with a location mismatch, the account can never pay again and gets stuck in a loop2026-06-23
- Go to definition sometimes fails for no obvious reason, and the cause is impossible to figure out2026-05-29
- Sits for tens of minutes waiting for projects to load, making it sluggish2026-05-18
- Later versions made docs harder to use and the UI overloaded2026-04-06
- Debugger is glacially slow and blocks native debugging features like data breakpoints2026-04-06
- Invasive and bloated, making it hard to use for compiling from source2026-02-15
- Too many install checkboxes; setting up Windows native development is annoying compared to Linux2026-02-15
- Debugger's view list takes over 10 seconds to show a simple table of text2026-02-12
- Many settings open a dialog from the older version because the new UI isn't finished2026-02-04
- Jump to file feature was so poorly implemented it was useless2026-01-22
- File search lags several seconds and misses files not imported into the workspace2026-01-22
- Autocomplete changes typed code to something else and ranks the wanted variable far down the list2026-01-22
- Normal IntelliSense suggestions rarely appear, and Copilot autocompletes made-up methods2025-12-25
- Debugger is slow, limited, and watched values update too slowly while stepping2025-12-18
- New settings pane opens tiny VS 2022-style dialog popups instead of proper windows2025-12-16
- Quick fix spins for 5 seconds then deletes the entire file2025-12-04
- Visual Studio 2010 became slow and lost features compared with 20082025-11-12
- Cluttered with too many buttons and cryptic icons; unclear how to do things in options2025-10-31
- Hard to find basic actions like creating a project or running code2025-10-31
- Suggestions auto-enable on updates and easily get accepted by mistake, forcing users to search for how to turn them off2025-10-15
- All-caps main menu labels are harder to read and scan2025-10-12
- Shortcut keys for common tasks are overly complicated and can't be changed2025-10-07
- IDE is slow and laggy to render, so the user runs separate tools2025-10-06
- Picking a color silently drops system-derived colors, with no indication to the developer2025-09-19
- Autocompletion and jump-to-definition break when using C++ modules2025-09-17
- Gets slow and buggy to use with every release2025-09-10
- C++/CLI's Windows Forms integration is clunky, so building GUIs is hard2025-08-23
- Clicking a stack of overlapping controls selects the one at the bottom instead of the top2025-08-23
- Confusing overlapping version numbers and names across cl.exe, MSBuild and build chain2025-08-23
- Early versions were almost unusable as a development environment2025-08-23
- Can't edit the .csproj directly; must unload project first, and pre/post-build GUI breaks error reporting2025-08-08
- The IDE is horrid to use, with no specific problem named2025-07-30
- Syntax highlighting and IntelliSense don't work correctly when editing Blazor components2025-07-30
- Confusing messaging about which of many half-forgotten technologies to use2025-07-30
- Feels unintuitive and backwards compared to VS Code for the commenter2025-07-05
- Auto-indentation picks inconsistent indent levels seemingly at random in JavaScript2025-06-26
- Simple C++ hello world setup takes a week and fails; manual file editing doesn't work2025-06-06
- Finds Visual Studio so unintuitive that the user switches to VS Code2025-06-06
- Search takes seconds and mixes file-name results with file-content results2025-05-31
- XML project file is hard to understand and edit compared to Cargo.toml2025-05-29
- Hard to tell framework version names apart and hard to hand-write XML with mixed attributes and child tags2025-05-29
- RAD dialog designer is limiting; can't change a label's foreground colour2025-05-15
- Watch window waits noticeably before updating while stepping through code2025-05-14
- UI freezes while holding the Step Over key, then lags after release2025-05-01
- Writing code in it feels much slower and worse than Rider2025-04-08
- Lenses disrupt vertical spacing, forcing the user to disable them2025-02-08
- Hard to find settings and features; spends more time searching than coding2025-01-12
- Long LLM suggestions are distracting and can't be accepted a word at a time2025-01-09