I would recommend the stable version of VS Code. And parallel to my video where I compare Arduinos and ESPs, I’ll show how to use PlatformIO to load a program on an Arduino and on an ESP.įirst of all, download VS Code for your operating system: Visual Studio Code Then I’ll show you how to install the PlatformIO extension in VS Code. I think the very similar names are a bit of an unfortunate choice.

By the way, Visual Studio Code is not to be confused with Visual Studio (without Code), the big software development platform. So by working with VS Code, we have a very powerful development environment that offers many more features than the Arduino IDE. It is installed as a plugin in the Visual Studio Code Editor (VS Code for short), which is also free. PlatformIO is a free tool especially for working with microcontroller systems like ESPs or Arduino. Instead I use PlatformIO! What is PlatformIO? Therefore, the Arduino IDE is not enough for me. And I am missing some features in the Arduino development environment that make programming more fun for me. Because this development environment was meant to keep the entry barrier into microcontroller programming as simple as possible and not to overwhelm the newbie with too many functions.

The Arduino development environment can do nothing, and that’s a good thing.

Visual studio arduino