Anaconda vs Visual Studio: Which is Right for You? | TrustRadius (2024)

As a Data Analyst, it is my job to analyze large datasets using complex mathematical models. Anaconda provides a one-stop destination with tools like PyCharm, Jupyter, Spyder, and RStudio. One case where it is well suited is for someone who has just started his/her career in this field. The ability to install Anaconda requires zero to little skills and its UI is a lot easier for a beginner to try. On the other hand, for a professional, its ability to handle large data sets could be improved. From my experience, it has happened a lot that the system would crash with big files.

Incentivized

It's useful for app development, debugging, and testing. I've been using it for two years and have seen it grow into a fantastic tool. All of the features, NuGet packages, and settings that enable different types of projects are fantastic. It also has a connection to Azure DevOps and Git. It's a fantastic product that's simple to use.

• It provides easy access to software like Jupyter, Spyder, R and QT Console etc.
• Easy installation of Anaconda even without much technical knowledge.
• Easy to navigate through files in Jupyter and also to install new libraries.
• R Studio in Anaconda is easy to use for complex machine learning algorithms.

Incentivized

• Since Microsoft offers a free Community Edition of the IDE many of our new developers have used it at home or school and are very familiar with the user interface, requiring little training to move up to the paid, enterprise-friendly editions we use.
• The online community support for Visual Studio is outstanding, as solid or better than any other commercial or open-source project software.
• Microsoft continuously keeps the product up to date and has maintained a history of doing so. They use it internally for their own development so there is little chance it will ever fall out of favor and become unsupported.

Incentivized

• Although I have generally had positive experiences with Anaconda, I have had trouble installing specific python libraries. I tried to remedy the solution by updating other packages, but in the end, things got really messed up, and I ended up having to uninstall and reinstall a total of about 4 times over the past 2 years.
• If you have the free version of Anaconda, there is not much support. Googling questions and error messages are helpful, but there were times when I wished I would have been able to ask technical support to help me troubleshoot issues.
• There were a few times when I tried to install tensorflow and tensorboard via Anaconda on a PC, but I could not get them to install properly. Anaconda allows you to create 'environments' , which allow you to install specific versions of python and associated libraries. You can keep your environments separate so they do not conflict with one another. Anyway, I ended up having to create several 'conda envrionments' just so I could use tensforflow/tensorboard and a few other utilities to avoid errors. This was somewhat annoying, because every time I wanted to run a specific model, I'd have to open up the specific conda environment with the appropriate python libraries.

Incentivized

• Certain settings and features can sometimes be challenging to locate. The interface isn't always intuitive.
• Sometimes there are too many ways to do the same thing. For example, users can quickly add a new workspace in Source Control Explorer when a local path shows as "Not Mapped," but it doesn't indicate that the user might want to check the dropdown list of workspaces. The shortcut of creating a new workspace by clicking on the "Not Mapped" link can lead to developers creating too many workspaces and causing workspace management to become unwieldy. If the shortcut link were removed, the user would be forced to use the Workspace dropdown. While it can add an extra step to the process, workspaces would be managed more easily, and this would enforce consistency. At the very least, there should be a high-level administrative setting to hide the shortcut link.

Incentivized

It's really good at data processing, but needs to grow more in publishing in a way that a non-programmer can interact with. It also introduces confusion for programmers that are familiar with normal Python processes which are slightly different in Anaconda such as virtualenvs.

Incentivized

VS is the best and is required for building Microsoft applications. The quality and usefulness of the product far out-weight the licensing costs associated with it.

Incentivized

See Also

PyCharm: all about the most popular Python IDE

The interface is an easy to use command-line interface, or a GUI for launching and/or discovering different parts of the system.

Incentivized

The thing I like the most is Visual Studio doesn't suffer from Microsoft's over eager marketing department who feel they need to redesign the UI (think Office and windows) which forces users to loose large amounts of productivity having to learn software that they had previously known.

Incentivized

Anaconda provides fast support, and a large number of users moderate its online community. This enables any questions you may have to be answered in a timely fashion, regardless of the topic. The fact that it is based in a Python environment only adds to the size of the online community.

Incentivized

Between online forums like StackOverflow, online documentation, MSDN forums, and the customer support options, I find it very easy to get support for Visual Studio IDE when I need it. If desired, one can also download the MSDN documentation about the IDE and have it readily available for any support needs.

Incentivized

ANACONDA VS Alteryx Analytics: Even though I find Alteryx to be an excellent tool for managing extremely massive data, Anaconda is much better and easy for analytics. Anaconda VS. MicroStrategy Analytics: Compared with Anaconda, MicroStrategy Analytics is very difficult to use and counter-intuitive Anaconda VS. Power BI For Office 365: One of the main advantages of BI for Office 364 is its capacity to data connectivity. However, it's very hard to edit data connections, once BI for Office is deployed in other platforms

Incentivized

I personally feel Visual Studio IDE has [a] better interface and [is more] user friendly than other IDEs. It has better code maintainability and intellisense. Its inbuilt team foundation server help coders to check on their code then and go. Better nugget package management, quality testing and gives features to extract TRX file as result of testing which includes all the summary of each test case.

• Positive: Lower maintenance cost compared to other tools on the market
• Positive: Ease in hiring professionals already accustomed to the tool in the job market
• Positive: Projects are portable, allowing you to share projects with others and execute projects on different platforms, reducing deployment costs

Incentivized

• We've had hundreds of hours saved by the rapid development that Visual Studio provides.
• We've lost some time in the Xamarin updates. However, being cross platform, we ultimately saved tons of time not having to create separate apps for iOS and Android.

Incentivized