VS2005 Release
I’ve just started using Visual Studio 2005 on an existing C# solution in earnest today. There were too many dependancies on third party controls for the existing solution to entertain the possibility of using the beta versions. It would have been just too painful dealing with the third party component vendors support departments for the problem areas. Now that VS2005 is released, its easier to argue the support case if problems are identified.
It’s been a pleasure to work with so far. A particulary satisfying moment was deciding to rename a core list class TorqArrayList to just TorqList using the refactoring support. In an instance VS checked out the 50 or so classes that it was used in and renamed it. Ctrl-F5 and bam the application compiled and ran. I’ve read about refactoring support for many years, but never actually experienced it myself. Third party packages with refactoring support for VS2002/2003 have been around for a while, but for some reason I never got to the point of shelling out some cash to buy one.
Another area that third party packages had covered previously is the automatic source code formatting and the related settings. There is a bunch of spacing related settings that can be tweaked to just the right combination. The spacing related settings made it real easy to get the spacing just right. I do like consistently formatted code with spacing in certain places. It just makes code more readable. For sure, this is pedantic and not a big deal in reality. Regardless its still a preference of mine.
At the same time as starting to use VS2005, I’ve also been using GhostDoc. It’s very handy to quickly get the comments in for a method. The auto generated comment can then be augmented with extra explanation or modified as needed. Good names for classes, methods, fields etc. gets you so far in documenting the code but my opinion is that sometimes an extra explanatory sentence can help.
Now I’m partying on with .NET generics related code changes. It feels good to work with generics/templates in a managed environment. Certainly not an early adopter, but hey you do what makes sense for the situation at hand.