Marketplace reviews
Visual Studio .NET Professional
James first started this website when learning Visual Basic back in 1999 whilst studying his GCSEs. The site grew steadily over the years while being run as a hobby - to a regular monthly audience of over half a million unique developers. In July '08 James left his job as Head of Development at a digital agency in London to focus his energies on developerFusion full-time.
- Introduction
- Code Editor & Designer
- Debugging & Tools
- Conclusion
Debugging & Tools
A major benefit of the .NET Framework is that whatever language you choose to program in, everything is compiled to an identical Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL). As a result, the only debugger needed is the one in VS.NET, and this is as powerful as ever, with cross-language debugging of the .NET languages, scripting, SQL, Win32 native applications, and server processes.
VB programmers do, however, face a slight step backwards in terms of debugging, due to the fact that projects now need to be compiled into an EXE/DLL before running the project. In addition, Edit and Continue is only supported for VC++.NET; VB programmers are no longer able to edit code at runtime.
Developers are, as usual, spoilt for choice with the range of tools and windows available for use. These include a new 'Server Explorer' window that gives you access to all key services running on any network computer, an integrated web browser, task list and command window for those who don't like using menus! In addition, VS.NET now has integrated support for creating Windows Installer setups and Merge Modules, and potential for extending the Visual Studio IDE through add-ins is as extensive as ever.
The new Server Explorer window
Related articles
Related discussion
-
Binary Studio | software development outsourcing Ukraine
by shane124 (4 replies)
-
Research topic in software
by reachsangeethamathew (0 replies)
-
career improvement advice
by hnasr82 (0 replies)
-
Advice on studying and preparing for interviews
by caryatid (0 replies)
-
Chart insertation in a windows form...
by pdhanik (1 replies)
Events coming up
-
Nov
18
15 Minutes of Fame
Dresher, United States
This is a yearly tradition. We select 10 of the favorite speakers from monthly meetings, code camps, and hands on labs. Each one does a 15 minute talk on their favorite .NET technology. This is our 10th anniversary so we plan a gala event with special prizes and refreshments.
I use VS 2005 Team Edition in a big projekt. I find this IDE a step backward. Refactoring functions are painful (i.e. why, when I want to rename local variable in a function, it tries to rename all ocurrences in whole solution?) To add functions known from Eclipse (i.e. error highliting while coding - this is most useful to me, advanced finding usages, i.e. going direct to inheritors, super-fast finding of classes with a list of possible options while typing), you have to install separete Plugin. This is such a pity, while this consumes much memory. With big project, such as our, overall tool performance is bad. In my team are colleagues, which in other projects worked with Java and Eclipse. Their opinion is, that Eclipse is much better. Not to insult anybody. We use it for developing client-server application, where client is desktop (winforms) application. I've heard, that VS is very helpful when working with ASP. My company has no big experience with this technology, we used mainly Java so far.
However, at that page says
"Visual Studio .NET does not support Edit and Continue for Visual Basic or Visual C# code."
You can debug while your editing..
You have to change your options,
here's how to
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vsdebug/html/vxurfeditcontinuedebuggingoptionsdialogbox.asp
PS It's called Edit and Continue
I'm relatively new to .NET, I have programmed in VB 6 on and off for a few years and I find the main annoyance for me is the inability to enter code while debugging, you can't even comment out lines. I'm not even sure if you can skip over lines of code while debugging. I'm finding it very frustrating. Does anybody know of any work arounds. Another gripe is do people notice how difficult it is to find even the most basic information on Microsoft and other products online these days.
I began programming a year ago with Visual Basic 6, after becoming very much used to the VB6 interface, using VB.NET is a huge shock to the rituals. Visual Basic is like a totally new language. For example, something as simple as changing a Form's Back ground colour is now: Form1.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.Red which is a lot more complex than what it is.
VB.NET is as good as a new language, but will give new programmers a boost in learning other languages, such as the hyped C#.
Personally, I still prefer VB6, but along with all the changes, VB.NET is a lot more powerfull. I've got both VS6 and VS.NET installed, so I can get the best of both worlds, although I think I will be a complete .NET programmer within the next few months.
This thread is for discussions of Visual Studio .NET Professional.