Did you know that if you are a small shop or an solo independent developer you can use Visual Studio Community Edition for free? You don't need to use Visual Studio Code except if you want to! Btw VS Code is great but I prefer Visual Studio as an coding EDE.

So when can I use it for free?

It should be pretty easy... if you are making lots of money you pay... but if you are trying to make lots of money you don't...

The short TL;DR none-lawyer version

• You are an individual working on your own applications
• You are not an enterprise c.a --> collectively >250 PCs and > 1M $ annual revenue
• There are 5 or less individual VS users in your company.

The longer version

But if you are in doubt you should read the whole thing in parts 1a and 1b of the MICROSOFT SOFTWARE LICENSE TERMS MICROSOFT VISUAL STUDIO COMMUNITY 2019

So if you are eligible go download Visual Studio Community Edition or buy the other versions!