Despite all my bickering, Visual Studio 2008 is great. It was well worth the money to upgrade.
There are a few things missing from the Professional version, though. The lack of a powerful profiler for everyone still makes me shake my head but I’m using Red Gate’s ANTS profiler anyway, so who cares.
Let’s talk about some updates, add-ins and extras you should definetively try…
- Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1
This service pack adds a plethora of new features, enhancements and bug fixes and should be installed right away. Data scaffolding, new WinForms controls, an entire new data modelling framework, countless WPF enhancements… you name it, it’s probably in the SP already. - PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008
This package contains numerous nifty functions that’ll improve your sourcecode and workflow. Remove unnecessary usings, open command prompts on the fly, way better undo… just read about the features on the homepage and try it, you won’t regret it. - AnkhSVN
I don’t like SourceSafe. For it’s requirements it gives back very little. In comparison Subversion performs great: You don’t need a server or anything, just create a repository on your local disk, check in your files and start branching, merging and keeping book of your changes. And best of it all: It’s free. Now, that’s where AnkhSVN comes into play – it adds TortoiseSVN’s power into Visual Studio. Don’t know how I worked without this.
So, what’s missing on this list? Let me know 🙂 .