Appendix G. Developing Django with Visual Studio
Regardless of what you might hear trolling around the Internet, Microsoft Visual Studio (VS) has always been an extremely capable and powerful Integrated Development Environment (IDE). As a developer for multiple platforms, I have dabbled in just about everything else out there and have always ended up back with VS.
The biggest barriers to wider uptake of VS in the past have been (in my opinion):
- Lack of good support for languages outside of Microsoft's ecosystem (C++, C# and VB)
- Cost of the fully featured IDE. Previous incarnations of Microsoft 'free' IDE's have fallen a bit short of being useful for professional development
With the release of Visual Studio Community Editions a few years ago and the more recent release of Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS), this situation has changed dramatically for the better. So much so that I now do all my development in VS-both Microsoft technologies and Python and Django.
I am not going to go on with the virtues of VS, lest I begin to sound like a commercial for Microsoft, so let's assume that you have at least decided to give VS and PTVS a go.
Firstly, I will explain how to install VS and PTVS on your Windows box and then I will give you a quick overview of all the cool Django and Python tools that you have at your disposal.
