From Wikipedia..."Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs for Microsoft Windows, as well as web sites, web applications and web services. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such as Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Store and Microsoft Silverlight. It can produce both native code and managed code"

From Ross...Visual Studio is an excellent mainstream development enviornment that can be used to develop applications making use of the Microsoft .net framework. VS can be used to code in any .net language and through pluggins can be used to administer and create MS SQL Server databases, create MS Reporting Services reporting, Business Intelligence reporting, Integration Services objects. VS is tightly integrated to MS Team Foundation Server making source and version control control simple and easy. VS provides an excellent debug environment and makes it easy to create pubilshable packages. I ♥ Visual Studio ☺. I've used previous versions of the JBoss and WebSphere IDEs - they don't come anywhere near the flexibility, functionality, intuitiveness and integration with source control and versioning that VS does.