PDC 2009 Day 3: Microsoft Visual C# IDE Tips and Tricks

In this PDC session, DJ Park, C# IDE Program Manager, reviewed a lot of tips and tricks available in Visual-Studio 2010.

Announcing CodeRush Xpress

CodeRush Xpress is coming soon for Visual-Studio 2010, and will be free and downloadable. This release is scheduled soon after the release of Visual-Studio 2010.

My Highlighted Features

Below are the features which impressed me the most. Watch the session Video to see all of the available reviewed features.

Multi-Monitor Support

Visual-Studio 2010 now (finally) support multi-monitor setups. Just click and drag document windows onto other monitors, outside of the main Visual-Studio window. For me, this is definitely a performance booster as I like working with a dual-monitor setup!

Dependency & Call Graph Generator

The IDE is now able to generate a very intuitive dependency graph between assemblies and classes in a loaded solution. You can also generate a call graph which visualizes all of the call flows in your application. Check out the “Butterfly View”. I feel like I’m going to use this feature quite a lot.

IntelliTrace

IntelliTrace allows stepping back in time while debugging your application and is very useful in scenarios in which it is hard to catch that exact moment your bug occurred, allowing you to return to it after it has happened.

Pin Data Tips to the Editor

Visual-Studio 2010 now allows you to pin data tips (which are basically watches you define) to the editor and comment them. When you move around your code – your data tips move around with it allowing for a convenient debugging experience.

Camel-Case Search in IntelliSense

IntelliSense now supports Camel-Case searches as it suggests completions to your code. For example, typing “XmlReader reader = new XR” would immediately bring the classes which XR is their initials. I like this feature as it means much less typing…

The Bottom Line

Go ahead and use Visual-Studio 2010 Beta 2. It’s fun!