Quick Review: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

I've been using the Microsoft Visual Studio product line for over a decade. I've had my share of complaints about each version, to be sure. However, I've been using VS 2008 for about 4 months (previously using VS 2005), and have the following (super-quick) review: Upgrade.

Comments:

I've found the upgrade path quick, simple, and most importantly, stable. I still have VS 2005 installed, and have encountered NO problems. The upgrade was smooth, and most of my VS 05 settings migrated w/o issue. There were a few minor things here and there, mostly dealing w/ toolbar customizations and external tools under the Tools menu, but by and large, it was a no-brainer process. Unlike VS 05 which had a tendency to nuke toolbar customizations with the drop of a hat, the VS 08 toolbar (and other customizations) have been rock-solid.

I've found the IDE to be much less buggy than VS 05 -- so far no crashes, hangs, etc. Also, the startup times are greatly improved over their predecessors -- a few seconds or less on an average developer-class machine. Project load times also seem quicker. Compiling may be faster, but haven't done any timings or anything specific to determine if there are actual improvements or just user-perception.

Code migration for existing (.Net 2.0) projects was simple and painless. Not much to do other than convert the solution/project, definitely less hassle than migrating from 1.1 to 2.0.

One bug (at least in my opinion) that persists from VS 05 deals with the Object Browser. One of the projects that I'm working on has C#, managed and unmanaged C/C++ code. When using the browser, it is a real dog -- taking up to 30 seconds or longer to browse for the symbols. In watching the status bar, I see most of the time in the C/C++ code. Obviously browsing in C/C++ code is expected to be slower, but the real problem is that it keeps refreshing every couple of seconds, essentially locking up the UI. The solution is to clear the text in the Object Browser search or close the browser altogether. FWIW, browsing against a user-defined Custom Component Set that excludes the C/C++ code results in browse times of 5 seconds or less.

Other than that, very pleased w/ this rev. of the product. Strongly recommended just for the improvements in the responsiveness of the IDE, not to mention the support for C#/.Net 3, etc.