What do you think of Visual Studio 2010?

Question

Since it came out a few days ago, I am sure at least some members of SO had a chance to try it out.

For those that did, I wonder if you could share the following:

• Whether you liked/disliked it
• What you liked/disliked
• Whether it's worth upgrading

To ensure fairness (and to make the mods happy) I will make this CW.

Answer 1

Great compiler, but a bloated beast ! VC6 IDE/interface was so cool ... (haa old times)

(and even on a powerful machine, VS2010 remains slow) too bad...

Answer 2

I've been using Visual Studio 2010 Pro to code VB.NET for several months. I like: Its beautiful new interface, better Code Editor, better optimization options w/ .Net 4.0. I dislike: It's slow and allocate more memory than VS2008. But still, if you need a intuitive stable IDE to work with, VS2010 is worth.

Answer 3

Now, finally, there is a fully managed VIX. And no stupid keys for each extension any longer!

Answer 4

Visual Studio 2010 RTM often crashes on my system when it starts up, popping up the JIT debugger asking me if I want to debug (instead of asking me if I want to send an error report to Microsoft).

When it does load successfully, it crashes after a while despite my having done absolutely nothing with the instance (left it open over night, came back the next morning to find it had crashed). That has left a bad taste in my mouth so I've continued with VS2008 for now, which is rock-solid stable.

Answer 5

I only have an Express version installed (CTP, for XNA development), but i have to say my favorite feature is that they sped it up, and used WPF for the new UI. The darker background works well with my color scheme, and it just looks nicer :)

Answer 6

Here are my (entirely subjective) thoughts after using it for the past month (pre-release mostly, but installed the RTM on Wednesday):

• C# 4:
  • Dynamic Typing: Like magic! :)
  • Named Params (i.e., when calling methods you can specify params by name rather than position (e.g., "Print(file: newFile, printer: ltp1)")): Makes your code more readable, and it looks good.
  • Optional Params (having default values for params, so that if the method is called without specifying it the default is used): I don't like this. Seems like a source for bugs.
  • Covariance and Contravariance: I like that the type system is becoming even more solid, though I don't think this will affect my daily work.
• CLR:
  • New GC: Has not had an impact on my apps yet, but supposedly the large object heap is much improved.
  • Contracts: I love the idea. Makes me think of Knuth's "assert-body-assert" technique of function declaration.
  • PLinq: Haven't tried it yet.
• BCL:
  • BigInt and Complex numbers: Finally!
  • Tuples: Should be useful, especially with IronPython.
  • System.IO enumerators: They're now async. Has already resulted in a marked improvement in some of my apps.
  • Memory mapped files, Web stuff, REST, JSON: Haven't tried.
• Editor:
  • Historic Debugger: More useful than I would've guessed. VS still has the best debugger.
  • Architecture Explorer: Very cool. I loaded Communicator's source in to it yesterday and it was able to make sense of it.
  • Improved F12 support. Should save me a second or two a day :)
  • WPF editor: Meh. Might be cool once I start creating WPF GUIs though.
• TFS Basic: This is maybe the biggest feature, and it's almost completely unprompted. Lightweight TFS that you can install by clicking "Next" three times. Source control, build automation, bug tracking, reporting -- the whole shebang. I'm sticking with Mercurial for source control for now, since I don't need rolling builds or bug tracking (I have separate systems for those now), but I might switch.
• F#. I just don't know about this language. I haven't felt compelled to switch, or even all that curious about it. I already have DrScheme installed for when I want to play around with a functional language.

Answer 7

I like the WPF GUI, because it allows for smooth zooming. Helps me a lot sometimes when my eyes are stressed.

Answer 8

Although I asked the question, I thought I might as well share my own opinion.

Note: My opinions are limited as I only use VC++

I thought it was slow... real slow... extremely slow. My machine is no slouch either: Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, and PLENTY of disk space.

Answer 9

I agree with the above answers but at the same time the UI is not so good. it hangs on a 3 GB ram machine. And on top of that the HTML Editor control that is part of the ajax controls tool kit is breaking when used with VS 2010. And also some limitation is existing on the usage of the auto extender control in ajax control kit with WCF..:(

the other feature that made me feel really uncomfartable is when u open a web application project and do a right click on a web page the scrolll option that is provided for the properties is really not user friendly..

this is so far my experience with it Going to use Silverlight 4 with that need to see how its going to be

Answer 10

I have been using VS2010 since the first beta. I'll try to restrict myself to the IDE itself and avoid talking about all the little improvements in the framework and C# language. It really is a solid step up from VS2008 in terms of IDE features. My favorite feature is the tear-off tabs that allow me to put code or tool windows on my second screen. I've really wanted that for years and even used to simulate it with code by using Notepad++ to open code files on my second screen. The various improvements in debugging when it comes to threads are something I use quite often. The Entity Framework experience is a big step up from what we had in VS2008. The web deployment is interesting as well. One of my pet peeves -- the super-slow add references dialog -- is not a problem anymore. Search and refactoring and code search capabilities are better but are not good enough to force me to kick my Resharper addiction.

Answer 11

The lack of the static checker for Code Contracts annoys me if you happen to have the Professional edition. As does the fact the "Professional" version which I have is only a slight step up from the Express editions.

Other than that, it's very nice and shiney. My next project will make use of it, so I'm looking forward to using it properly. Oh, ASP.NET MVC being included by default is a nice addition too.

Answer 12

I haven't tried the full release quite yet but I tried the Ultimate version in Beta. The only awesome feature I can say I truly noticed loved is that I liked the profiling systems which I never had in 2008 pro, but 2010 pro won't have them anyway as far as I understand, so meh.

A huge improvement I DID notice was that WPF didn't crash in designer mode all the time which I've had a lot of problems with in 2008.

On the downside, I do feel it's a bit slower.

Honestly I'll probably upgrade for my personal projects, but anything I'll be working with a team on I'll still be using 2008 due to the fact that not everybody will have 2010.

Answer 13

It's new and it's shiny. What else can a geek ask?

Answer 14

I like new C++ language featues. Parallel Library is interesting and available in all languages. New Help system is terrible, it looks like they closed the whole MSDN Library project and want us to use online help.

Answer 15

It's got a revolutionary new debugging feature.