I setup TFS 2013-15 in our company, a complete switchover from our previous source control and bug tracking. We use local TFS, not TFS online. For source control everything is instantanous, and we're using TFVC not Git (which has a local repo). I think it's fantastic and the whole company loves it. Keep in mind we're all using Visual Studio 2015 so the integration is basically flawless.

950XL here!

I replaced notepad++ with it :) It has a bunch of great features and the current list of extensions are great. Even though NP++ has more functionality, what made me change was the design and colours, viewing C++ is extremely pleasing on the eyes Open folders -> so you have a directory of code files to easily navigate I've gotten used to the package manager (F1) and I think it's fun and quicker than many tasks I did in NP++ Being a bit of an IDE was fascinating though, I was totally surprised when it could connect to Unity to debug my code

I've moved 3 home machines to Win10 from Win8.1. Only one of them started to BSOD. I originally "upgrade" installed all of them to Windows 10, for the BSODing machine I did a full refresh of the hardware and software to make sure I got rid of BSODs (and it worked). >Updated all firmware on the PC, EG: latest motherboard BIOs >Reinstalled windows 10 via Windows Refresh (clean install) to remove any junk left from Win8.1 that could cause the BSOD. >After refresh, install all the latest Windows 10 drivers and software. If you have an old mobo and the manufacturer hasn't updated their drivers to Windows 10, it's possible to get the "latest" driver from the offical vendor for that piece of hardware instead. EG: You could get the windows 10 intel chipset driver from intel directly if your mobos support page hasn't updated their chipset version for several years.

They are separate products, you may not have value in the old version after an upgrade but many other people do. In C++, each version of VS comes with a huge set of libraries that are vastly different from each other. The libraries are part of the VS installation, not some shared common library. This is good for backwards compatibility etc. Such as how VS2012 comes with an early implementation of C++11, while VS2015 comes with a C++11/14 almost complete. Also the compilers are different in each version, and having separate versions on your machines allow you to compile for each one. In Web development or something a lot of people may not care about previous versions, but VS is an IDE that caters to "most" developers, and upgrading over a previous install isn't always appropriate. And finally VS2015 fixes most issues mentioned in this post, on installation almost every major feature is now option to set to install. Installing C++ support can be disabled in VS2015 so the install size is gigabytes smaller than before.

My current job came from LinkedIn, got contacted by a company purely based on my LinkedIn profile. Most of my job opportunities and interviews have came through LinkedIn, I would estimate about.. 10% of jobs I've attempted to get came from various jobsites.

I'll offer a non-hater answer; There's nothing wrong with 10 at all. Windows 8-8.1 was the major revamp to Windows, for better performance, security, awesome features like drive-pooling, Client-side Hyper-V etc. Windows 10 is "mostly" a UI revamp, you get all the benefits of 8.1 plus a swishy new UI. EG, even though there was nothing bad about the windows 8 startmenu (Yes I said it, I'm not a mindless hater drone, I see it's value), they did actually improve it by not having it fullscreen anymore, and integrated Cortana, which offers serious value btw. There is also Virtual Desktops similar to what's existed in Linux for a long time. You can literally have multiple desktops, and switch between them with a key combination. There is also new apps that are incredibly useful. I use the new XBOX App, it allows me to connect to my Xbox One downstairs and play games directly on my PC monitor. I'm almost always on my PC doing something so I don't really get to play my Xbox much. It's awesome doing the usual PC chores on one monitor, and have Halo or Peggle 2 on the other :) There's also the new MS Edge browser. It's brand new and has nothing to do with IE. There is a huge performance difference compared to chrome and FF, and it takes much less battery compared to those two browsers as well on a tablet or laptop. Finally, there's no driver issues at this time in win10. Even if you had hardware from a crappy vendor that didn't make their win10 drivers; It doesn't matter as every windows 8.1 driver is fully compatible with 10.

I'm the same as most posts here, but the second most press keys are ALT + G. With the Visual Assist addon that combo goes to definition/decleration of a variable, function, object, header file etc.

Always 3 for my personal and development machines. 99% of updates exist for a good reason so I have no issue with letting them all in, they have never caused an issue. In fact WinUpdates have saved me and many other PCs I've dealt with from serious issues with drivers and security. The only time I've ever ignored an update is on fresh OS install where WinUpdate offers graphics drivers etc. While their ones usually work I prefer to get the latest, most correct drivers from the manufacturer themselves. Except on my Surface Pro 3, you definitely want to prefer windows updates to Intels generic driver!

Disappointing there's no mention of a Windows Phone considering they are often much more stable among other things. If you just want a phone to work then you really should be looking at WP. If you really don't want to leave the popular choice then why not just install CyanogenMod onto the android? that will most likely fix every single problem you have with it. FYI I've used all 3 OSes extensively and the most unproductive and troublesome devices I've ever had are iPhones. I've had plenty of problems with Samsung phones but at least they were problems you could actually solve (googling the answer, installing Cyanogen etc.) Currently my Lumia is my latest and most satisfactory device.

I would strongly recommend LinkedIn, it is a professional social media site dedicated to jobs. In this day and age LinkedIn is extremely valuable for software engineers (or any IT field really), and it's an excellent advertisement tool (employers and recruitment agencies troll through LinkedIn frequently). Facebook, Twitter etc. is stupid. Facebook should be your own private profile for family and friends and theres no value in giving this to an employer other than allowing them to snoop through your page to find bad things about you. Maybe Twitter is useful to a company focused on advertising itself, but most jobs I've been in and seen would never like to know that you have the opportunity to accidently share company info etc. The only other sites you could use is www.about.me which is quite useful as a front advert for yourself, or make your own website to display your portfolio (or don't if you don't have one). Protip: You should have your CV on Skydrive. You can then share your CV with a single weblink, which will open up Office Word online to view. It's shocking how many times I've had to send a CV in the email and suddenly a recruitment agent couldn't open it or some bollocks.

If you're going to multiquote and refute every single piece then it would be nice if you backed up something with evidence. My "hand-waving" is all someone can get if they don't actually provide legitimate problem, if anyone has a problem then they should explain it clearly to get help. Just saying everything's bad gets no where. What's things are harder to do exactly? install what "alternate solutions"? The only advocated software I've ever seen is bringing back the old start menu, but that isn't a benefit. Plenty of things that make multi-tasking less effective? like what?? While the OP doesn't explicitly state it, a few things he mentions sounds like he's strongly referring to the Metro UI, which is obviously "NOT" for development or any power-user task. The original desktop UI is still there and it's vastly improved over Win7 (Such as no more useless Aero, much better explorer window, much more detailed Task manager, plenty of better shortcuts etc.), the only big difference is that there's a full screen start menu which isn't exactly a problem.

Sorry to be a hater but everything you said is basically rubbish. Every single valuable thing in Win7 is in Win8 PLUS more. There is no downside or change in Win8 that somehow magically makes multi-tasking less effective, not playing well with Visual Studio etc. The only thing that people "think" they have a complaint about is the Metro UI and apps, but that is mainly aimed for casual and tablet use; NOT to replace your main workstation/production/development environment (blabla..) To add: I have 3 Win 8.1 devices at home (2 gaming/development PCs, 1 laptop) Dual boot Win8.1 and Win7 at work. Win7 is on here because I'm forced to by the IT admins, but much of my real testing is on Win8 because I need Virtual Machines, and Win8s Hyper-V is significantly more awesome than most others like virtualbox and VMware.

I strongly prefer WP for a huge variety of reasons, I own a Lumia 920 myself and even the small things like Wireless charging and Glance make me tingle :D But from a developers point of view I personally say working on WP is a better choice. There's obviously dozens of pros/cons to both platforms but here's a small sample that make me say WP. --------- Developing on Windows phone can be done in many languages besides C#; and C# is pretty much a global standard for many environments. With your new found C# skills you could make a program for windows desktop, phone, RT, Linux, Android AND Apple products. However if you picked iPhone you will either use Objective-C or Swift, which are both locked languages to apple usage only. If you look into iPhone development you pretty much need a Mac product to work with, such as a MacBook or iMac. You can't do iPhone programming on any other environment unless you spend a lot of money. While you are allowed to WP development on pretty much any machine. If you plan to get into the app market to make money, you will find it extremely difficult to succeed in the apple Appstore because of the millions of apps and developers lingering on it for years. I know of, and seen countless companies, indies, friends etc. Try extremely hard to get anywhere in that Appstore and failed. At least in the Windows app store its still fresh and it's steadily growing. Windows Phone 8.1 update is now available to use and develop on. They've added plenty of features and improvements which make WP stand out quite well from other platforms, such as Access to the Cortana API to integrate voice tools into your own app. That's all the thought I can spare atm, feel free to correct me if I got any details wrong etc.

I posted this in another thread recently, figured a copy/paste is alright; Better performance Access to the latest Dev kits for WP8, W8, DX11.2 etc. Almost all the UI is vastly superior, such as windows explorer. No Aero for performance improvements, task manager etc. More secure than 7 less intrusive windows updates less spontaneous restarts (most updates and programs install don't need a PC restart anymore) EasyMode restore PC if you broke it (while keeping all your data too) runs ISOs and VHDs natively (that's right, you don't even need to use daemon tools) Driver support is excellent, W8 supports pretty much any device you connect to it without installing native drivers (especially good for HP printers, which comes with bloated driver software, you can avoid entirely by just using the windows driver) Plenty of excellent tools that just don't exist in 7: such as Drive Pooling and local Hyper-V virtual machines! Seriously, Local Hyper-V is a godlike for virtual machines and I think its terrible that hardly anyone even knows about it!

Its a shame that people only seem to focus on the UI as a major problem (Don't even see it as a problem) and instead completely ignoring all the other massive benefits to the OS. Such as; Better performance Access to the latest Dev kits for WP8, W8, DX11.2 etc. Almost all the UI is vastly superior, such as windows explorer. No Aero for performance improvements, task manager etc. More secure than 7 Plenty of excellent tools that just don't exist in 7: such as Drive Pooling and local Hyper-V virtual machines! Seriously, Local Hyper-V is a godlike for virtual machines and I think its terrible that hardly anyone even knows about it! I just don't see how with all these major improvements and dozens more that I haven't mentioned, how could people base their decision to nerf their computer life for the sake of having a start menu. (ClassicShell?)