This rant has been brewing for many years...<p>Everything's been downhill since VS6. I'm only joking, but seriously, does anyone remember how lightning fast VS6 was? That was over 15 years ago with much slower computers. I guess application 'snappiness' has not been a priority for the Visual Studio decision makers.<p>I've used VS since the late 90s (writing node.js in ST2 now) and honestly appreciate the hard work and cool features that goes into it. The new VS2013 feature that shows how often a function is referenced is useful. I don't get that in ST2 and probably never will. But I've used VS enough that I've become philosophically opposed to it and other similar IDEs. The core of the problem for me was that all the fancy wizards and project templates are not maintainable for MS. There were a number of times I was using some new project type introduced in a version of VS only to find the template was incompatible in the <i>next</i> version (e.g. reporting in 2005). This inevitably lead to a lot of unexpected work when my team would upgrade. Many of the productivity wizards impose hidden debt on their users.<p>Another major gripe was that VS would get really sludgy for solutions with a great number of projects/files. Take note that whenever you see MS demo a hot new feature, it's always with a very simple solution. Also, VS would block for me a lot, but that was probably due using too many plugins. I'd find that an application freeze of even 2 seconds would distract me. Not an issue I face now with a text editor + repl.<p></rant>
And finally we should be able to see function return values in debugger:
<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/06/27/seeing-function-return-values-in-the-debugger-in-visual-studio-2013.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/06/27/s...</a>
VS2012 took out installer projects (instead telling you to just use InstallShield), SQLCLR projects, was incompatible with Oleg Sych's T4 Toolbox plug-in, and had a colour-scheme in the TFS source browser that made my eyes want to bleed.<p>Every other VS upgrade has been comparatively painless. I can't say I'm excited to try VS2013.
Very nice. I really love 2012 and the 2013 RC was pretty solid as well. The step up from 2010 was the most pronounced, as 2012 just runs circles around 2010 in (albeit, my own anecdotal) performance.<p>Just gotta wait for an upgrade license of R# to go on sale, as R#7 isn't compatible with 2013 ;(
I'm still using VS 2010 at work. Can't seem to make a compelling case to upgrade for the cost, and it's just getting more frustrating.<p>VS 2013 is looking like a really great product, especially in comparison to VS 2010.
<a href="http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/4153040-remove-the-requirment-for-internet-explorer-10-to-" rel="nofollow">http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studi...</a><p>Apparrently there is a requirement to have IE10 installed. Dealbreaker for many in the corp world.<p>These should be developed independently.
VS2013 is great, try it guys!
watch this (for web devs): <a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2013/3-503" rel="nofollow">http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2013/3-503</a>
Since moving to OS X, I've left Visual Studio behind. At first, I had a boot camp partition running windows so I could still develop our C#-based web product. Then eventually we changed the product significantly enough that moving to an OSS tech stack made sense.<p>I'd probably still be using some MSFT technologies if I could use a VSS-style IDE on OS X without virtualization (I tired MonoDevelop, but it just wan't the same). I didn't have issues with the speed of Visual Studio running on my beefed up MBPro, but the keybinding stuff was just too much to deal with.<p>Not to mention, having a ton of different runtime/hosting options is a pretty nice bonus for the OSS stack.<p>Also, for mostly web apps, I think Visual Studio is massive overkill (but I'll still watch their videos on features).<p>For now, I've settled happily using on cross-platform tools (PyCharm/WebStorm for a feature rich IDE and Sublime Text 2 for code editing, and VIm when tweaking stuff on the server). Should I ever go back to Windows (likely, because I want a Surface Pro 2), my tooling should carry over (though I'll have to go through some keybinding issues again).<p>Never again will I use products that are locked down to a single OS. Even the tools on my Mac (with the exception of Keynote) run on Windows and vice-versa.
VS 2010 is the last one I got for personal use. Not enamored with the changes in VS 2012, Windows 8.* nor the cyclical abandonment of APIs. Add in the increased license cost we face on all Microsoft products at work and any announcement from Redmond gets a "meh" from me.
In VS 2012 MSFT removed the color for the icons in the UI. Everybody complained on the web. Now the color icons are back. MSFT's spin:<p>"Visual Studio 2013 includes many user interface improvements based on customer feedback and Microsoft’s core design principle of keeping the focus on the content to deliver an improved user experience. You may notice the more than 400 modified icons with greater differentiation and increased use of color,"<p><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/visual-studio-2013" rel="nofollow">http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/visual-studio-2013</a>
Imagine one day you can just loan Windows Azure server and launches a build when you click a button on VS web edition. I think that's an attractive feature. Or pair programming on web over VS with co-workers.
There are few new features I actually need. I want speed. Speed when compiling(currently it's file-copy mania), speed when starting my project(minutes of loading debug symbol, really?)
I had the preview installed, and I had really grown to love the navigation bar for Javascript.<p>After installing the professional edition from MSDN... my navigation bars are gone. WTF?
If you need to justify upgrades I would recommend measuring build speed savings in teams - vs 2012 & vs 2013 build faster than 2010 in my findings.
"Please install Internet Explorer 10 and then retry installing Visual Studio"<p>Internet Explorer 10 also insists on Windows 7 SP1 installation. I'm using this Win7 install since 2009. I'm very scared the update will jinx it.