Top 10: Favorite things about Visual Studio .NET

Today I'm going to do my top 10 favorite things about the Visual Studio .NET Integrated Development Environment (IDE) 2003 and 2005 versions. This is by far my favorite IDE to both debug in and to rapidly develop GUI applications.

10. Regions/Outlining - the IDE supports the ability to collapse code into organized segments that can later be expanded, allowing for simple transition from segments of code. The region component is also very powerful since it allows you to place "comments" in the region header allowing your code to collapsed into very readable segments.

9. Designer - with the introduction of .NET, came the coming of the WinForm and a powerful support tool was born. The Designer is a simple drag and drop interface that allows you to easily customize GUI of an application in a few moments. With the ability to utilize your own custom GUI controls, this is a must have for any GUI developer working in .NET.

8. Breakpoint Conditions - I've dealt with other IDE's that have this feature, basically it allows to enable a breakpoint on a line when a certain condition is met. The beauty of its implementation in Visual Studio is that its extremely versatile and can even be manipulated through the breakpoint properties menu.

7. Call Stack - this is a must have for any IDE, enough said.

6. Locals Window - ever wanted to know the state of every object in your application? Well with the locals window its a matter of a simple glance. This window can also help you determine when variables go out of scope... but you knew that already now didn't you?

5. Command Window - every wanted to execute an additional command or change a setting before executing the next line of code. With the command window you can, its a great way to quickly test out those "I wonder what would happen if I ... " situations without having to constantly having to code new hook instructions. Need a flag reset to check a data structure integrity? Meet your new best friend.

4. Task List - one of the most commonly under used components in the IDE, this section is great for leaving yourself reminders to complete/fix segments of code, you can even leave a shortcut to the line you want to update.

3. Bookmarks - personally I don't think any advanced text editor should be without a bookmarking system. This is a great way to leave often visited code sections just a few keystrokes away.

2. Breakpoint - how anyone survives in the software development world with out this functionality I'll never understand. This is one of the most critical tools used in any programming environment and this is no exception.

1. Intellisense - this feature of Visual Studio, just made my #1, but with all the time it has saved me, I hate coding without it or something like it. Intellisense is a great feature of IDE since, it tries to "sense" what code you need to type next. Its a fast way to see what kind of methods are available from a class or what kind of overloaded methods can be used.