Opinions on the new .net 2005?

#1

I noticed dotTom’s post on visual studio 2005 beta awhile ago, and so I tried it out. I’ve been heavy into visual studio 2002 and 2003 over the last year. What I noticed:

  1. 2k5 has a nice interface.
  2. 2k5 has a new feature for dragging paletes around.
  3. I read the new features list, and some of it went over my head.

Anyone else use it, and have more specific reasons or explanations of improved features? For instance I remember dotTom saying it’s debugging tools were to die for! Well, that sounds good, but in reading the documentation I’m thinking I missed something.

Chris J.

(P.S. I’m up late tonight, as I just wrote my first object plugin for 3dsmax tonight! How can I sleep after that?)

#2

I’ve only been doing tutorials in 2003 and mcvc++ 6, but i have to admit that 2005 seems nice even though i havent used all of the features off any of the 3 compilers ive used. I havent fully read the documentation since almost everything said would probably go over my head. One thing i wish they included though was the compile and build button that msvc++ 6 had since I am always compiling and building small programs for practice it gets tedious to go into the menu and pick compile and all, and i have never been a keyboard shortcut guy except for ctrl + z, still use the mouse pretty heavily in max.

#3

I’m not sure I understand but… why not turn on the Build bar or customize the toolbar to fit the build/compile button(s)?

#4

VS.NET 2005 is a nice leap forward. So is .NET 2.0, especially the support for generics!

The refactoring features are great, especially if you are dealing with large projects. For us here it seems that the Team System and improved SCM is probably the #1 most welcomed improvement. It was fairly easy to integrate into our custom distributed build environment and it generally makes life easier throughout the ranks.

The new debugger features are, indeed, wonderful. Check out TracePoints (similar to breakpoints but won’t break but instead will output a notice through the debug stream). You can turn TracePoints on and off like BreakPoints and it saves a lot of time compared to doing trace or debug output in the traditional way.

And let’s not forget about Edit and Continue support for C++ whereby you can edit your code during a debug session and see the changes reflected within the same session as you go along. It greatly reduces the time since you don’t need to stop the debug session, make the changes, build, and start a debug session again.

Check out the .NET Show on Whidby (http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/episode044/default.asp) to see some of the new features in action. There’s just too much to mention.

#5

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