I would have to say...

Anna Jayne Metcalfe

In terms of the IDE itself - without a doubt VS2008. We've used it for Visual Lint since upgrading from VS2003, and the experience has been pretty painless and very productive. However, we're now getting to the point where we really need to start using the serious C++ 11 stuff, so an upgrade to VS2012 is in order. My eyes will probably never forgive me.

Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"

JimBob SquarePants

A lot of you guys sound really old just now. A few of the comments could be summed up with "I don't like change". VS2012 Is a major step forward in performance alone. Have you read the blog? There were some brilliant articles there explaining the work they did to reduce the memory footprint. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/[^] Loading the toolbox for example is waaay faster in VS2012. Templating, Nuget, first-class support for JavaScript and CSS, better edmx designer, intellisense and intellitracing improvements, extension management, the list goes on... All great features. There's even Git integration coming soon. As far as the IDE theme goes, I switched it to the dark theme and my eyes have thanked me since. It's far easier on the peepers than any prior version.

JimBob SquarePants ******************************************************************* "He took everything personally, including our royalties!" David St.Hubbins, Spinal Tap about Ian Faith, their ex-manager *******************************************************************

Gary Wheeler

Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:

the Thread debugging features do crash less

Now that's a ringing endorsement :laugh:.

Software Zen: delete this;

Ryan Criddle

I love 2012, quite a bit faster than 2010 and whilst I understand a lot of people hate the "boring gray", just enable the Dark Theme already and stop whinging! :) It's sexy!

Guy Harwood

Have you used 2012 for a straight week? i despised it at first, but after a week or so i found it more fluid. definitely easier to work in once you get used to it. the 2010 UI seems jarring when i open it now.

---Guy H ;-)---

baffled

Thank goodness the styler is now out so you can change at least some of it from grey. I found it was giving me serious eye strain after just a couple of hours. But I hate the kiddy-crayon graphics and monotone presentation. It does not aid intelligibility. Despite the performance improvements, the presentation seriously affects the usability. I'll be sticking to 2010 for as long as I can.

Jonathan C Dickinson

JimBob SquarePants wrote:

"I don't like change"

Just some of the things that people who complain about VS2012 are experiencing. Not being a victim of those mental processes are a deliberate decision (i.e. "I am going to evaluate VS2012 based on its merits and not what I am accustomed to").

He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes. He who does not ask a question remains a fool forever. [Chinese Proverb] Jonathan C Dickinson (C# Software Engineer)

Tomz_KV

Although VS2012 claims to have a lot of improvements, some changes in my opinion are really not necessary. For example, "no color" IDE, all new icons, the interface for search and replace looks very unprofessional. It does not have a context menu (need to use key board shortcut for copy & paste). Remote debugging is not functioning properly, which is an important feature that I need to use. I tried to find a hotfix but all the articles I have read point to the next update which does not have a release date yet. Fortunately, something can still be done in VS2010. update: I just found out that the update2 CTP is available. The remote debugging is fixed. However, this is the CTP version. It is better to wait for the final release.

TOMZ_KV

ClockMeister

Concur. I keep my copy of VS2008 under lock and key. For the kind of stuff I do on my own I don't see a point in retooling to 2010 or later. I develop primarily desktop and web applications for my own use and to give to friends and family now. For my personal use I'm off the upgrade wagon both with my O/S and my development tools. The stuff I have works fine. -CB

Bob1000

A perfect truth! Despite having the rights to upgrade (downgrade!) to 2012 no one in our company wants to move from 2008, it works well - no correction it works very well! Just wish we had C++ 11 with it. Microsoft stopped listening a long time ago to its users and until they rectify that they will be on a downward spiral!

Donald Wingate

I've been programming professionally since 2000. I've always used the latest version VS and I've always found the new versions to be improvements over previous versions. VS 2012 being no exception. Performance has never been an issue for me because I've always kept my computers up to date with Moore's law. Not that any version has ever been perfect. And there are some annoyances which persist through all versions. But VS is a tool, nothing more. And a good craftsman knows his tools and how to get the most out of them. Regarding VS 2012, if gray isn't your thing, then use the Color Theme Editor extension to get some color back. I did this for a while, but have since switched back to gray. After getting used to the IDEA of it, I find it is true what they say - that the gray is less distracting of what I am actually trying to do, which is get some code written.

KLPounds

For the projects I have worked on, VS2008 was the gold standard. It was the right balance of performance and was relatively lean and stable. Especially with the nighmares our team experienced with VS2005. VS2010 isn't bad, I hate it's sloth like performance and bloat. Some of the little things that were taken out as a result of their WPF agenda (ie. native code printing in color). The intellisense improvements, SQL improvments, and Extension ecosystem however make 2010 the overall most "productive" version for me. The Extensions add to the bloat but hey, if you can't beat em, join em right? I will be migrating a couple small projects to VS2012 in the coming months. My initial tinkering seems that VS2012 is maybe a tick more responsive than 2010. Maybe there is something to all that flat and drab UI. I just have to get past the distractions of what MS has told me is what I asked for as a better way for me to get work done.

Yvan Rodrigues

I don't mind 2010 at all, though it is definitely slower than 2008. Overall I think it's more stable. I still haven't been able to adjust to 2012 and I'm the first to admit it's due to the colour scheme and CAPITAL LETTERS. I've tried using the colour scheme add-on, but I'd be happier if I could just apply the 2010 skin to it.

Yvan Rodrigues Red Cell Innovation Inc.

Alan Balkany

VS 6. When MS introduced .NET, the speed of the code generated seemed to degrade. Ditto for the GUI. I use VS 6 at home, and find it to be much faster and more responsive even on a slower computer. Comparing VS 6 with VS 2010 is on my to-do list. I suspect VS 2010 may generate faster code for the latest processors.

RafagaX

I find Visual Studio 2012 fast to use (although I have to admit that I have a relatively powerful laptop), my only complain is the uppercase in the menus, but this is easily ignored (I don't look at the menus very often), regarding the color scheme of the application, Visual Studio is just a tool, so I don't care how it looks, as long as it's usable (which it is).

CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...

GuinnessKMF

... You're saying you won't use 2012 because the *beta* broke your system? :wtf:

YvesDaoust

The beta 2012 (back in early 2012 ?) broke something in some persistent settings, making it impossible to uninstall or install on my machine (more precisely, vs_professional.exe crashes as soon as launched). I have spent a lot of time trying to fix that, to no avail. Too much time. I'll wait until I get a new PC.

CycoCPT

This is so true. I switched over to VS2010 from VC6 and was wondering where the performance went. I still find myself opening VC6 to just quickly edit something. All these fancy things are nice, but boy the waiting. Try pressing F12 on a symbol in a LARGE project. You can have two cups of coffee before the dev environment comes back with a result.

JeremyBob

Just make sure that is supports the C++11 stuff you want to use :laugh: I was quite surprised at what it still doesn't support.

Anna Jayne Metcalfe

I'm very aware of that...and if it falls short, the Intel compiler is still an option.

Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"