I could be wrong about this, as it's been a while, but I don't think you even have to install SQL Server Express or IIS Express in VS2015. I know you don't have to install Blend.

But, more to the point: how, aside from disk space, does any of that stuff affect you? It's not like it's persistently running. Don't use it, remove it from your toolbars, whatever--you don't have to see it, let alone use it. (It's for this reason that "bloat! bloat! bloat!" always rings so hollow.)

Altho I don't share your issues with all the 'bloating' stuff ( as others mentioned most of them can be avoided ) , I have a growing concern for the performance of VS while working with a bigger codebase (120+ projects) . It gets really really slow and full of loading screens which literally block you from doing anything. In fact you can sit there and wait 5+ minutes sometimes just to have the IDE let you do anything. Not to mention the infinite amount of times I've had Visual Studio close while I'm writing and it leaves my code in an unknown state. Oh yeah, not to forget the debugger exception which causes your debugger simply to detach even after you've spent around 5 minutes to get to the precise location of the program. Whoa, turns out I have quite a bit of hatred stored in me too! :D (VS2015)

Hey interdrift, Can you ping us at [email protected]? We would like to chat with you more on your findings. Thanks

I would have to ask why you have 120+ projects. That's likely your problem; you're doing far too much within one solution.

120 is not that high. If you have fine-granular modules for re-use across multiple product lines, you need lots of projects. Yes, one can create several solutions for each line, but many times one needs to load all the projects especially feature teams that touch a little-bit everywhere.

VS2015 starts up in ~1 second for me even with all the options installed. If I open a solution with 10 C# projects in it, it takes about 3 seconds.

So is your complaint basically that it's just taking up too much hard drive space? I can't see how the other stuff (TFS Explorer Winforms/WPF designers) could possibly be getting in your way, especially since you don't ever have to open them.

So then when you were installing Visual Studio did you do the "recommended" installation or did you customize?

Even with customization its a bit bloated, but you can totally avoid a SQL Server Express installation.

Microsoft has the IDE for you already: Visual Studio Code.

Which is 99% atom.io

Not really. It uses the same shell, but the text editor part is completely different (and from what I've heard, much faster, especially on large files).

What? Not even close. That's a ridiculous statement.

They both use electron, but Microsoft is baaarely using it for some UI pieces. That's really the only similarity between them.

Not really actually. It uses the same shell called Electron as the native host. But other than that, completely different implementation.