Item: Microsoft Visual Studio
Rating: 10
Author: John P. Maher

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Visual Studio is used to streamline or automate business processes. For example, most recently the secretary needed to send out some "Welcome Packets." To do this she needed to make mailing labels. Instead of have her enter each address, using Visual Studio I created a program to allow her to retrieve the addresses then print directly to an envelope greatly increasing the efficiency of the task. Nearly every department can benefit in some way.

Pros and Cons

The object browser and intellisense simplify finding the method or property needed.
The capability of creating a vertical selection can really increase the efficiency of the find and replace.
To be able to use the alt key to enter characters not available on the keyboard allows the selection of a delimiter guaranteed not to be in the user input.
Even though the current version is much more robust than earlier versions, occasionally it can crash. The auto recover feature proves invaluable in these situations.
Customizing the IDE works really well with the ability to not only dock to any edge but also to dock to a tabbed container. This allows frequently used windows to remain visible while allowing other windows that are sometimes needed to be combined into a tabbed window.
The most recent projects not only speeds opening of frequently used projects but also can help determine which version was the last one edited when working with multiple versions.
When dealing with a complex form the Document Outline can not only help to find hidden or lost controls but also view the hierarchy at a glance.
The ability to encapsulate groups of functions into collapsible regions can really help when working on large code bases.
With the editable toolbar, any frequently used menu item can be directly placed for immediate access.
The tabbed text editing window can make debugging easier especially when stepping through code in different assemblies and languages.

The C# IDE can use a little more automation. The VB IDE does a lot quite well to speed development. While C# can not benefit in all these areas there are some places where it can definitely be more helpful. For example, there is no reason to leave an event handler assignment in the designer if it is deleted from the code. All this does is force the developer to stop their train of thought to go to the designer and delete the single line of code in order to continue their test.
In the most recent programs include a path with the name.
Add an option to make external assemblies read-only. There have been times when I forget what project I am in when working on multiple assemblies. I can make a change to code that is not in the current assembly, so of course, compiling it does nothing. Unfortunately this error may not be noticed until the program is run and the old code still executes. This is easily fixed by (saving the changes if not using the auto save feature) going to the correct instance of the IDE, reloading then compiling but I would prefer avoiding this in the first place.

Return on Investment

Works well for me.

Alternatives Considered

I have used NetBeans but it is hard to compare since Visual Studio is more powerful due to its Windows specific nature and more evolved.

Other Software Used

Microsoft Office 2016, Microsoft SQL Server

Likelihood to Recommend

Visual Studio works really well when code is encapsulated in separate dlls. Not only can you step through every line, no matter how many dlls deep but it makes it easy to work with dlls in different languages. You can build your forms in VB and your data manager in C# while stepping through any of them in the same IDE.

Users and Roles

1 - Visual Studio is strictly used by IT.

Support Headcount Required

1 - Due to Visual Studio's nature, only developers are involved (and developers are the only people who would want to be involved) with its use.

Business Processes Supported

Improve business processes.
Save employees time.
Reduce errors in tasks

Innovative Uses

Due to its nature, there isn't really any other use for Visual Studio than developing software.

Future Planned Uses

As the business evolves new software can be written to help this process stay as efficient as possible.

Likelihood to Renew

It is the best tool for the job.

Support Rating

The support consists of a forum. The problem with the forum is the categories are poorly designed and only reflect a subset of reality. So often you need to put a specific question in a general section. What makes this bad is your question gets reviewed by only the people who feel like it (it seems). If someone with knowledge of your issue sees your question you are in luck. If not, time to look elsewhere.

Visual Studio Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Knowledgeable team Kept well informed Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	Escalation required Need to explain problems multiple times

Premium Support

Bug Resolution

Yes - I did report a bug and it was investigated and it turned out I was mistaken in how I believed the feature should work.

Usability

The thing I like the most is Visual Studio doesn't suffer from Microsoft's over eager marketing department who feel they need to redesign the UI (think Office and windows) which forces users to loose large amounts of productivity having to learn software that they had previously known.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Convenient Feel confident using	Slow to learn Lots to learn

Easy Tasks

Designing forms is well done.
The text editing area supports all the common Shift- and Ctrl- arrow keys, page down, page up, end and home functions.

Difficult Tasks

Trying to debug a designer file can be difficult since the error messages are usually poor.

Visual Studio, a well evolved IDE.

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Visual Studio IDE