I'm full stack with a focus on front-end, primarily React, and Angular. At my last company I was supporting both Java and open other source back-ends, IntelliJ IDEA met my needs perfectly. At my current company I need to support both open source and C# on the back-end. I have been provided a VS license and have been debating either using VS just for back-end C# work and continuing with IntelliJ for front-end, or switching to JetBrains Rider for fullstack? I've read that Rider is great for C# but I'm unsure if Rider will provide the same front-end capabilities that I currently enjoy with IntelliJ.
I’m pretty sure using Jetbrains Rider requires you to have a license for it, since it’s not free software like the IntelliJ Idea counterpart. Visual Studio itself is a very, very powerful IDE and has support for multiple different languages, provided you’re working on a Windows based system.
If you’re not working on a Windows based system, and you’re fine with fiddling around a little bit with your developer environment at the beginning for better experience later, and will not be developing any desktop c# applications, I have to recommend Visual Studio Code, since it’s lighter than the full fledged Visual Studio, and has absolutely amazing integration with almost anything you might need to develop .NET web applications, be it C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, YAML/JSON, SQL/NoSQL Databases, Docker, Kubernetes etc.
But in the end, if you’re getting a Visual Studio license, I’d recommend trying it out, because it’s an absolutely spectacular piece of software for working on .NET applications, and once you understand it, you’ll fall in love with it. The problem is, it’s full power is unlocked when using it on a Windows PC.
Of course he'll need a license for it, but that wasn't part of his question. Though IntelliJ does have a community edition is is only for personal use and is not licensed for use in an organizational setting.
He's going to need IntelliJ Ultimate, so no matter what he does, he'll have to have a license for it.
I have been using Visual Studio.NET since its first incarnation - actually before its first incarnation as I was on the alpha and beta programs for it back in 2000 or so. Visual Studio is a great IDE but it's only available for Windows users (Don't mention the MacOS version of it because Microsoft don't really care about it, and it shows). If you only use Windows then that's fine.
I have since moved away from Windows for daily use and use Ubuntu / RHEL Linux 60% of the time and MacOS about 35% of the time so Visual Studio is a no-go for me. I switched to JetBrains about eight to ten years ago, purchasing the all-products pack at that time. I can use any of their tools on Windows, Linux or MacOS. For the rare occasion when I need to use Windows, I can still use my preferred JetBrains IDE with ho problems. This is critical for me.
If this is not critical for you, and you use Windows all the time, then you can't go wrong with Visual Studio; especially since they already bought you a license for it.
If you do decide to go with Rider, then I'd highly recommend buying the all-products pack instead of just the Rider IDE. There will undoubtedly be times when another JB tool, like PyCharm, or IntelliJ or DataGrip will be useful to you.
I made the decision to go with JetBrains a long time ago and I never looked back. In fact, about six months ago I closed my Microsoft account completely.
That's my 2¢, YMMV.
To re-cap, I tried pretty much every suggestion.
I'm primarily on a Mac so while I have a VS license/option I found the Mac version pretty buggy/lackluster (esp compared to the Windows version) and then a couple months back I saw that MS was pulling the plug on it.
Next I tried VSCode. I tried spinning up my own C# solution without issue and was able to get rolling quickly and without issue, however I was unable to get an of our existing solutions to run. Our solutions are dependent on a number of Azure database integrations and I was never able to get my MFA approval sorted through VSC, to be fair I only spent an hour or two trying.
Finally I purchased the 'all products package' from JetBrains, I figured I could always downgrade later if it didn't perform. I'm finding that Rider exceeds my expectations, much better then VS for Mac, and the integration with AZ is almost painless. Using Rider reminds me of that first time I used IntelliJ after years of Eclipse, VS, and Netbeans, etc. It's worth the money, or at least, it is for me.