VS 2010 is still my favorite as well. Only downside is it does not connect to the newer versions of SQL so you cannot debug stored procs from SQL > 2012. Other than that it is much faster than any of the newer versions.

Lopatir - you nailed the assessment of the Visual Studio versions. Not to mention that each new version is more cloud connected meaning that the tool is slower with every release as it waits to check in with the mothership at Redmond every time it starts. I miss the days when everything you needed from an IDE was on your hard drive. IDE, Compiler, Help files, Samples, Etc. Yes help can get stale, but that is the time to connect to the internet not every login.

That is true only because MS deemed it so. They have less support for VB, the business language that built MS. It is a quality language as is c# only with out the } and is intelligent enough to know when the statement ends unlike is single letter counterpart.

Almost. Seems this only works with Universal Windows Apps. No services, command prompt apps, OS event handlers etc. Microsoft is so close, but their insistence on WMA is a road block.

Ever since .net came around we have not been able to create an exe, or assembly that did not need the .net framework. Now with containers and smaller computing spaces available in .net it would be nice to have an optimized exe or service compiled to native code. Can this be done with Visual Studio or does ability belong to another compiler and no longer in Microsoft's abilities? I would like this to be done with the Microsoft, but if not I will need to search for another professional Basic that can do the job.