Visual Studio Performance Highlights Delivered in 2023

Nayana Srikanth

As we step into 2024, we’re taking a moment to look back at the significant performance improvements our team delivered in 2023. Your valuable feedback, active collaboration, and unwavering support have been crucial in enhancing Visual Studio. This past year has been focused on optimizing performance, and we’re thrilled to showcase the key advancements that have elevated your development experience. Join us as we recap the impactful enhancements that made Visual Studio faster, smoother, and more responsive in 2023. 

 17.5 Performance Enhancements

• Build Acceleration for .NET SDK style projects: Significantly speeds up incremental builds for SDK-style .NET projects, reducing build times by up to 80%. 
• External Sources De-compilation: Offers up to 10 times faster de-compilation of large modules, enhancing debugging efficiency. 
• Razor & C# experience: Improves the overall development experience by addressing feedback and introducing support for code actions in Razor files. 
• Quick Add Item: Introduces a faster way to add files and folders to solutions, streamlining the development process. 
• Code Coverage: Makes substantial improvements to dynamic code coverage performance, resulting in over 35% faster tests. 

17.6 Performance Enhancements

• Solution Open and Close: Dramatically enhances performance, particularly for larger projects like Chromium, reducing solution load and close times by up to 8 times. 
• Git File History: Offers faster loading times for file and folder scenarios in Git repositories, with a remarkable 42% improvement in the Git public repository. 
• Git Branch Switches: Reduces the time it takes to switch between Git branches by optimizing file system changes detection and processing. 
• Lightbulb Improvements: Overhauls the diagnostics and code analysis architecture, delivering a significantly improved lightbulb/code actions experience. 
• Performance Profiler stop collection: Implements parallel processing for NGEN PDB creation, resulting in 3.5 times faster stop collection.

17.7 Performance Enhancements 

• F5 Speed enhancements: Boosts F5 speed for a quicker development cycle. 
• Improved Light Bulb Performance in C#: Enhances the responsiveness and performance of the light bulb feature in C#. 
• Memory consumption improvements in C# spell checker: Optimizes memory usage for the C# spell checker, improving overall performance. 
• C++ Unreal Engine – IntelliSense optimization: Optimizes IntelliSense for C++ Unreal Engine projects, providing a more efficient development experience. 
• Solution Explorer enhancements and Find in Files optimizations: Improves Solution Explorer and optimizes the Find in Files feature for faster and more effective searches. 

17.8 Performance Enhancements 

• Improved Razor/Blazor Responsiveness: Enhances the responsiveness of Razor and Blazor projects, providing a smoother development experience. 
• Enhanced F5 Speed: Further improves F5 speed for faster build and deploy cycles. 
• Build Acceleration for Non-SDK style .NET Projects: Accelerates builds for non-SDK style .NET projects, reducing build times. 
• Optimized IntelliSense for C++ Unreal Engine: Optimizes IntelliSense for C++ Unreal Engine projects, enhancing development efficiency. 

Connect and Shape the Future of Visual Studio 

We’re continually inspired by the rich conversations and insightful feedback on Visual Studio in the Developer Community. Your active engagement has been a driving force behind many of the performance enhancements we introduced last year. This collaborative spirit is the cornerstone of our progress and innovation.  

As we move forward into 2024, we invite you to deepen your involvement in shaping Visual Studio’s future. Visit the Visual Studio topic on the Developer Community, vote for desired performance improvements, or make new suggestions. Your voice is crucial in guiding our path forward! 

Nayana Srikanth Senior Product Manager

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