Overview of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1

Every software development company periodically updates its software and brings out a new version. You can observe this as a buyer via a higher number or later year tagged onto the end of the product name. New versions can dramatically improve the software. They are supposed to both introduce new technologies and reinvent old ones in order to improve them.

However, sometimes this is also used as a marketing gimmick, fooling users into buying/upgrading to the new product, which still does the same thing in the same fashion. The Visual Studio franchise, with its last releases, ended up doing just this unless you were interested in the upgrades to the .Net framework. Now  Visual Studio 2010 promises to put an end to this complaint. The question is, can it succeed?

It is a fact that if you were, for example, a C++ developer using version 6, excluding some minor library extensions, not much changed in the way you wrote code and debugged it. With the introduction of the .Net framework in Microsoft Visual Studio 2003, Microsoft did nothing other than redesign the look, leaving the core of how things work exactly the same.

As a bonus, a couple of new bugs were present as well. One of the most cursed was the inefficiency of the Intellisense technology. According to an interview with an MS spokesperson, Visual Studio 2008 had approximately 14,000 customers and 500,000 clients. Now that is a large enough market to make it worthwhile to bring out something revolutionary, convincing customers to buy the new version.

Under this circumstances, the marketing action to present Visual Studio 2010 as the new six is understandable. Version six was probably the most solid one, and 10 promises to deliver the same, with an improved design and optimized technology to power all this. In May 2009, Microsoft released the first beta that everyone can download at the official page here.

This is the perfect time to see if this new version manages to deliver on a long list of promises. This list includes an enhanced user experience, improved Parallel programming, and new methods for debugging your code, new language additions, improved Intellisense, web development, UML modeling, support for Oracle databases, multi monitor support and so on. It seems that Microsoft has tried really hard to impress us. Let us see if the company managed to pull it off.

The Design Changes

You can download the beta yourself from the official site here. The downloading process should go smoothly. The giant from Redmond has plenty of servers to assure a good experience. Once you start up the installation process, the usual menus will pop up. Just follow them, and you will quickly install the program.

You will need approximately 4.2 GB of free space on your hard drive if you plan to install everything.

Now let us talk about the design of the new Visual Studio. This one aspect probably makes the greatest impact on debugging. Anyone programming in a new environment will feel the improvements or problems brought about from the change immediately. Following the idea of "if it works, do not break it," Microsoft left the main appearance of Visual Studio mostly the same as it was in the 2003 version.

If you are expecting huge differences, you will be disappointed with this version. However, a massive behind-the-scenes change was made. The interface no longer relies on Windows Forms. Instead, it has been rebuilt to use the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) first unveiled as a sub part of the .Net framework version 3 (also codenamed Avalon).

WPF allows users to create a rich presentation of the code while using as source the actual text written in the files. This lets you use multiple layers, rich text editing and additional technologies to create a cleaner and more modern-looking environment. I would say that Microsoft actually managed to pull this off.

The new environment looks cleaner and has an air of modern and practical about it. If you managed to get your hands on the Windows 7 Release Candidate, you should know what I am talking about. The picture below is what you get after the first start and configuring the tools to auto hide.

The first thing you might observe is that the active document now stands out right away:

Colored squares at the start of the line indicate modified lines in the source. The outline system is also reworked and the code preview is done in a more stylish fashion.

Syntactically incorrect segments are underlined, and the way the software shows the cause is decent. All of this works automatically, with no build or compile required.

The WPF also gives a more modern look to IntelliSense. After the introduction of this technology, more and more people started complaining that it just does not works most of the time. Sometimes a solution to this is the deletion of the .ncb files. Other times it would give invalid information or just not work at all.

Due to this, Microsoft decided to forget about the file system and opted for a database approach. I can say it was a really good decision. IntelliSense now works well. Moreover, smart file parsing now happens in the background, which is useful for large projects.

There are three innovations that you will probably love after the first time you use them. The first is the ability to zoom in and out with the Ctrl plus the scroll of the mouse. The second is a feature you probably used daily inside your browser. I am talking about that feature that, when you push down the middle button of your mouse, an alternative way of scrolling appears, where the speed is dependent on how far you are from the place where you pushed down the scroll. Just do it as I described, and you will get the idea. This is a priceless function if you work with really long source files.

However, most importantly, there is the “Navigate To” option. This is a sort of multiple and quick search dialog. Enter a string and it will start to search inside of a previously-built database. Here you can choose between the functions inside your project, your types, file names in your project and definitions. Soon after you have learned how to use this, you will ask yourself how on the earth you coded before without it.

Understanding the code easily is also important, and for this, the inline call hierarchy and the highlight references options are great. Additionally the UML support has been updated to version 2.1.1. Making architecture and sequence diagrams will help you see how your program is built and works. An additional feature awaited by many is multi-monitor support. I do not have multiple monitors to check this out. However, Microsoft promised that it is working.

Language Improvements

The look is important. However, no vehicle is a dream car without a great engine. Therefore, Microsoft made a couple of improvements for practically every language present in the studio. Now you can easily create Office programs with the introduction of the dynamic keyword, name parameters and optional parameters in C# and Visual Basic.

Visual Basic received automatic properties, statement lambdas (inline functions that stop breaking your code flow, and create it where and when you need it) and collection initializes. Additionally, now you no longer needs to add the _ char at the end of the line to indicate a continuing statement in the next line.

C# comes with the .Net framework version 4.0. Now the WPF designers work much more smoothly. Hence, it should do well, as the whole IDE is now built on it. There is a Silverlight design tool also, that is sort of like the WPF Designer, just with fewer options in it.

The C++ world received a major update. The compiler now supports the new stuff introduced in the C++ Technical Report 1 and is migrating to the C++0X standard. The new stuff introduced include smart pointers, lambdas, regular expressions, a lot of mathematical functions and more. If you are interested, you can look here to find out more.

Also for C++, we can add that the support for the build has been moved to  MSBUILD. You can use the new project editor for creating your own custom project lab scripts. In order to ease the step from older versions of the IDE, a C runtime multi-targeting system is introduced:

The MFC benefits from some additional content and optimized support for  Windows 7. This will come out later this year. The MFC Class Wizard that disappeared after version six of the IDE is back. It has pretty much the same look as it did in version six, as you can see from the picture below:

Web developers will love the HTML snippets addition if they prefer to hand code rather than use a designer. JavaScript now benefits from the improved IntelliSense, and to compared how it worked in VS 2008, now it is perfect. Inline comment handling is also on the list, with the addition that JQuery now ships with the studio. The one-click publishing system is also worth checking out.

Moreover, if improving old languages is not enough, a brand new language is present in the package. It is F#. This was initially a research project inside Microsoft and therefore it is delightful to see it making it to the masses. According to MS: “F# is a succinct, type-inferred, expressive, efficient functional and object-oriented language for the .NET platform.” You can look at it and learn more about it here.

Other improvements and shortcomings

Microsoft tried to improve the debugging experience for coders as well. One of the most annoying bugs is the so-called No Repro Bugs. These cannot be reproduced by the coder for some reason, although they are found by testers. In these cases, you can now record data and a video of your testing procedure. This should help show the coder exactly what went wrong without trying to reproduce it.

Overall, the testing system is simpler. The historical debugger tries to prevent you from getting obsessed with filling your code with break points to find a nasty bug. You can find a more detailed description of this here inside a video from Channel 9. The other great addition is the support for true parallelism in C++ and C# codes.

We have more and more cores inside our CPU. However, until we write and design source code to be executed in parallel, the compilers can do little to speed things up on multi-core systems. In order to make all this simpler, VS 2010 comes with a collection of classes that are designed to solve problems when thinking and writing in parallel. Check out the CodePlex site for some examples.

Another extra bonus if you work with Oracle databases is that now the IDE has support for it. You can now connect and work with these databases inside C++ thanks to an arrangement between Microsoft and Quest Software Inc.

I think the introduction of the Extension Manger is also a great idea. Microsoft offered support early on to create extensions. However, it was a troublesome process to search for and install them. Now the extension manager allows you to search from inside the application for new extensions, download, and install them right away.

They are already a couple of interesting additions that I've installed and you could see during this article, like the italic comments or the WPF IntelliSense Presentation. This could definitely make a nice addition to a customized IDE. The system is easy and straightforward, like the Firefox browser.

What you will find lacking in this first beta, if you try to use it, is the local MSDN help. You will need to use the online version only. The list of shortcomings can continue with ASP.Net MVC, and there is no support for smart devices or the .Net Micro Framework. Nevertheless, you can download support for Azure, Silverlight, IronRuby, and IronPython if you want to try them out.

The new Visual Studio runs acceptably (if not great) on a stronger PC (2GB of RAM, 2GHZ Dual Core CPU). However, I am skeptical that it will do the same on a slower system. I did not have any issues during the time I tried out VS 2010. Therefore, I can say that if Microsoft manages to work a little more to improve its performance, we can look forward to a new era in coding.

I invite you to try out the IDE yourself and comment here. Also please rate my article and express any other thoughts related to this item here on the blog or join our friendly and ever growing forum over at DevHardware and do the same there. Live With Passion!