Visual Studio 64 bit?

Is there any 64 bit Visual Studio at all? Why not?

For numerous reasons, No.

Why is explained in this MSDN post.

> First, from a performance perspective the pointers get larger, so data > structures get larger, and the processor cache stays the same size. > That basically results in a raw speed hit (your mileage may vary). So > you start in a hole and you have to dig yourself out of that hole by > using the extra memory above 4G to your advantage. In Visual Studio > this can happen in some large solutions but I think a preferable thing > to do is to just use less memory in the first place. Many of VS’s > algorithms are amenable to this. Here’s an old article that discusses > the performance issues at some length: > https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/joshwil/should-i-choose-to-take-advantage-of-64-bit > > > Secondly, from a cost perspective, probably the shortest path to > porting Visual Studio to 64 bit is to port most of it to managed code > incrementally and then port the rest. The cost of a full port of that > much native code is going to be quite high and of course all known > extensions would break and we’d basically have to create a 64 bit > ecosystem pretty much like you do for drivers. Ouch.

No! There is no 64-bit version of Visual Studio.

How to know it is not 64-bit: Once you download Visual Studio and click the install button, you will see that the initialization folder it selects automatically is C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0

As per my understanding, all 64-bit programs/applications goes to C:\Program Files and all 32-bit applications goes to C:\Program Files (x86) from Windows 7 onwards.

Update: April 19th 2021

Microsoft announced their preview Visual Studio 2022 64 bit

Visual Studio 2022 is 64-bit

> Visual Studio 2022 on Windows is now a 64-bit application. This means you can open, edit, run, and debug even the biggest and most complex solutions without running out of memory.

see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/whats-new-visual-studio-2022

no, but it runs fine on win64, and can create win64 .EXEs

No, but the 32-bit version runs just fine on 64-bit Windows.

> Is there any 64 bit Visual Studio at all?

Yes literally there is one called "Visual Studio" and is 64bit, but well,, on Mac not on Windows

> Why not?

Decision making is electro-chemical reaction made in our brain and that have an activation point (Nerdest answer I can come up with, but follow). Same situation happened in history: Windows 64!...

So in order to answer this fully I want you to remember old days. Imagine reasons for "why not we see 64bit Windows" are there at the time. I think at the time for Windows64 they had exact same reasons others have enlisted here about "reasons why not 64bit VS on windows" were on "reasons why not 64bit Windows" too. Then why they did start development for Windows 64bit? Simple! If they didn't succeed in making 64bit Windows I bet M$ would have been a history nowadays. If same reasons forcing M$ making 64bit Windows starts to appear on need for 64Bit VS then I bet we will see 64bit VS, even though very same reasons everyone else here enlisted will stay same! In time the limitations of 32bit may hit VS as well, so most likely something like below start to happen:

• Visual Studio will drop 32bit support and become 64bit,
• Visual Studio Code will take it's place instead,
• Visual Studio will have similar functionality like WOW64 for old extensions which is I believe unlikely to happen.

I put my bets on Visual Studio Code taking the place in time; I guess bifurcation point for it will be some CPU manufacturer X starts to compete x86_64 architecture taking its place on mainstream market for laptop and/or workstation,

Update: From the visualstudio 2022 preview site quoting https://web.archive.org/web/20211030202827/https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/preview/:

> Our 64-bit upgrade Take advantage of all your computer’s resources to scale Visual Studio to the largest of projects and complex workloads without running out of memory. You can continue to run and debug your 32-bit apps.

It seems they did what I was expecting they are dropping old 32bit support, quoting https://web.archive.org/web/20210910130939/https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/extensibility/migration/update-visual-studio-extension?view=vs-2022:

> Visual Studio 2022 RC is a 64-bit application, and introduces some breaking changes in the VS SDK

I want to thank every upvote for keeping this answer. As a thank you I want to add one more prediction: I still believe the trend will lean towards VSCode in time while VSCode forks or turns-into something like Eclipse Theia. Most probably they will give full support on cloud platforms with that. Especially for enterprises that will add great value and for the marketing sake I cannot find any better excuse about "move your onprem into the Azure" stuff. Anyhow seems we are correct about: Why Visualstudio was not 64 bit while it should be 64bit long ago,

Update: I think this will be the last update. Yes it was the direction I expected: https://vscode.dev/ deployed to public,