What features/changes would you most like to see in Visual Studio 2012? [closed]

Question

Or at least the "next version".

There are some very interesting, grand ideas out there, threatening to revolutionise the way we code. Equally, there is likely a whole flurry of little improvements that might make the whole experience better.

I do love Visual Studio 2010, it is a luxury environment for developers (in my opinion).

What can be done next?

Answer 1

The thing that sparked the question is my discovery of Code Bubbles, which I think would be fantastic. To quote Andrew J. Brust in this blog:

Bubbles actually allow for call stack traversal, saved debug sessions, sophisticated breakpoint and value watch behaviors and more. And because bubbles, unlike windows, are borderless, and focus on code fragments rather than whole files, the de-cluttering effect is unbelievably liberating.

Answer 2

That's what I want:

1. Remove unused usings project-wide and solution-wide, don't want to click manually in every file

2. Detect unused resources

3. Some sort of a built-in Reflector since it went paid recently

Answer 3

if resharper has it visual studio should.

Answer 4

Better support for Entity Frameworks. I would like some kind of model analyzer to tell me if an EF model is compatible with different databases (ie. SQL Server, Oracel, etc.)

Answer 5

The ability to alter code for Silverlight applications while they are in debug mode.

Answer 6

This sounds really silly, but I think it would be brilliant if VS could be run stand-alone, or you could choose to move where the majority of program files are.

I have a nice fast 4GB USB stick permanently plugged in on ReadyBoost. However, I've love to be able to copy the VS runtime files there, as I think it would make a good productivity boost.

I don't think it would be practical to install the files from scratch there, as sometimes I do want to use the stick for something else, so VS should be able to gracefully fail back to "standard" mode, but for me the biggest problem with VS (even on a good computer) is having to wait.

Answer 7

I would like to be able to pay to get just the features I want

There's several different editions of Visual Studio offering an increasing amount of functionality and integration, but it is not possible (ATM) to get a basic product with a couple of the interesting features of the full Ultimate/Team Suite.

If my departmental (or personal) budget can't stretch to the Ultimate edition, some mechanism to let me get the bits I need the most would be greatly appreciated. For example, having a number of licenses of VS 2010 Professional ($799 each) already, I can't justify forking out for Premium ($5469 each) just to get Unit Testing, so we went with nUnit and PartCover instead.

It seems that some more flexible model is required so that we can pick-n-mix the features we need for the price we can afford. Looking over the feature comparison page, the more expensive editions are clearly full to the brim with awesome features but I don't need all of them, or not for all of my developers.

IME other vendors allow you to produce a shopping list of features and then charge accordingly, it's a shame that Microsoft couldn't stretch to this - they already have several 'application market place' implementations..

Answer 8

Moving the layer diagrams, UML and such (basically the whole modeling projects bit) out of Ultimate and into Premium.

Those features are too useful to only feature in Ultimate which is financially out of reach for all but the most afluent devs.

Answer 9

some support for refactoring in c++.

I know it's harder to do than in java/C# but being able to simply rename variables would be nice.

Answer 10

The ability to run LINQ with lambda statements in the Quick Watch window.

There are third party applications that show you the results of a LINQ query against a database, but if I'm debugging an app, it makes much more sense to have that ability in the Quick Watch window.

Answer 11

Caveat: I have very limited experience with VS2010, so this is more from a VS2008 point of view.

More consideration for C++ (not C++/CLI). This would include removing menu items that don't work for unmanaged code (or implementing them) and having Intellisense and related facilities work reliably. Better editing facilities for project and solution files. Making the if (x = 2) warning show up at at least as low a warning as possible loss of precision.

Answer 12

Would love to have a "group these tabs" sort of feature -- if you do web dev like I do, a typical work item is spread across at least:

• at least 1 back-end class (Controller). Usually a few more beyond that.
• at least 2 front-end classes -- master page and actual page. Oftentimes there is more
• several supporting items such as stylesheets or client scripts.

Would be neat if I could stack that group and easily flip between them.

Answer 13

Fix the unholy terror that is the Add Reference dialog. Every time I have to open that thing I want to put my fist through my monitor. They tried to fix the usability issues with it in 2010, and they made it differently bad, but certainly not fixed.

My solution:
They should cache all of the assemblies that have been discovered on your computer, and let you pick from that list very quickly. Meanwhile, they should spin off a background thread to refresh the cache, and update it as they find new things. But you have to insert the new items into the user's current sort. Don't just put them at the end. If the user can't find the thing they want, they can hit Refresh, which just forces them to wait for the background thread to finish that was already started.

Answer 14

A resource editor that doesn't suck

A replacement for MFC, maybe based on WTL

Answer 15

A built-in .NET parser generator with visual editor. Nice to have: parser generator as a service baked into next version of .NET.