I used to using visual studio and thought it was good. But after using emacs, I donot think it is good any more. and the libraries/APIs seems not well designed too now.
When talking about VS and libraries/APIs you really need to be more specific.
VS lets you work with very different technologies from native C++ to .NET languages, including web stacks.
The user experience may vary but if we are talking about the .NET world I think it is a very strong package.
The only equivalent I can think of would be the Eclipse/Java combo.
