What's Your Biggest Visual Studio 2008 Annoyance?

Question

I love Visual Studio about 90% of the time, but that last 10% it is such a PITA it makes me want to launch my monitor off the desk.

My latest annoyances:

• It won't remember my toolbar settings. I don't want any toolbars, ever. Quit popping open the CSS editor or XML editor or text editor everytime I open a file.
• Doesn't remember which regions I had expanded or collapsed and as far as I know there is no way to tell it to always open files with the regions expanded.
• When editing CSS or HTML the damn error list wants to pop up each time I start a tag and haven't finished it yet. First of all, don't pop up at all. And if you're going to ... give me a couple seconds to finish what I'm doing.

The best part ... ReSharper :)

EDIT [Jay Bazuzi]: It seems like this discussion is only productive if it's focused on the latest released version. Set the title to VS2008.

Answer 1

• It doesn't use the reasonably-standard Alt-LeftArrow and Alt-RightArrow for back/forward.
• It doesn't automatically close "saved and not used for a while" tabs in the way that Eclipse does

Most of the rest of my annoyances are fixed by ReSharper, to be honest. (Things like Intellisense presenting overloads one line at a time, instead of in a multiline box.)

Answer 2

When IntelliSense stops working.

Answer 3

We have a solution with about 60 projects, one of which is a user controls library with 30+ controls in it. The toolbox goes mad when you open the project, or a form designer or various other common tasks. It means it can take minutes to open a form.
We recently had a problem, I compiled a release of a solution, published it, tested it and it was the previous version. Visual Studio refused to compile the new version, I had to delete the entire source tree form my working folder then re-get from source safe.
@Josh - Debug -> Exceptions - Yes, where'd it go!
It doesn't seem to be able to keep any of my tool windows or toolbars in the place I put them for more than 10 minutes. Even when I make sure I have only one instance open, get it all set up nice, close it. Re-open it everything is still fine. Open another instance to do something else and its all moved. Currently its think is to make my error list/output window that I normally have across the bottom just high enough to display the tabs and move the vertical split between them about 600px to the left.

Answer 4

My biggest annoyance is that it doesn't catch certain errors in C# unless you manually build or run a project that it catches in VB.NET at design time.

I've heard that this is fixed in VS 2008 SP1, but I'm stuck with VS 2005 at work.

Answer 5

No locking on tool window postitions. I make a sub-mm slip with the touchpad and I have to remember how to redock all the controls.

Intellisense goto declration/definition always going to the declaration.

The broken help system. I'm in a C++ file in a c++ project, I only have c++ support installed, I press f1 on a 'printf' statement - and it shows me the help for foxpro or some random language.

The build system in general. But specifically after generating an error it continues for 5mins creating a browse info and debugger file.

Answer 6

The lack of speed in the newer versions, I want my 6.0 speed back in the vs2008! :P

Answer 7

I don't remember the specific ones, but I've been annoyed by a number of dialogs with bad (or no) resize behavior, meaning that long lines of text get truncated and you've no way of seeing the pertinent information at the end. Seems amateurish.

Though on the whole it's a very nice IDE.

Answer 8

That it sometimes causes access failures when building in parallell. Extremely annoying, since it causes our automatic build machine to fail randomly.

Answer 9

The best part ... ReSharper :)

This is actually one of the big weaknesses of Visual Studio, I think. As far as I have read on SO, a lot of programmers do not want to code without ReSharper any more - the annoyance is that this addon seems to incorporate a lot of functionality which should actually be core components, and are core components in other IDEs.

Disclaimer: I have not used ReSharper, yet, but SO has several questions dealing with stuff like “How can I do Feature X from Eclipse/Netbeans/… in Visual Studio?”, which can quite often be answered with “Visual Studio cannot do this, get ReSharper”.

Answer 10

VS2008 SP1 caused more problems that it fixed for our team. I am trying to work with MS via Connect, but progress is slloooowwwwwww. 1) IDE disappears if you have a pane floated (Callstack, etc) and you stop debugging. Already in Connect and MS claims we must wait for VS2010. 2) Break points are not hit, or breaks on random x86 instructions in a C# project. We have a possible fix from MS 3) IDE disappers when editing cs proj props, and certain xaml files are open. MS escalated this to their dev team 4) Other cases where IDE disappears/dies

Our productivity dropped a lot after SP1. No s/w is perfect, not mine nor their's

Answer 11

I don't know if this is in the latest version, but in VS2005 it annoys me that Ctrl+W does not close the currently open file. Ctrl+F4 is a bit awkward.

It also seems to take ages to realize that I corrected a mistake. Particularly if I paste something, it leaves the blue underline across two words - it thinks the previous word is still there.

Answer 12

If you don't want to pay for ReSharper, consider CodeRush Express for C#; it's free. It sounds like Microsoft did something to make that happen, but I don't know what.

Answer 13

When I saw/used Visual Studio 2008, I was not specially impressed with most stuff because of the reason that it was exposing the advancements in .NET technologies. As a developer I need tool that make my everyday work easy. Having worked with linux editors and mac editors that in no way do as much as visual studio does but I absolutely love using editors like Kate or TextMate or E which have absolutely awesome text editing features. I would personally like to have themes like Zenburn etc working out of the box. I would definitely like Microsoft to collaborate with experts at JetBrains or DevExpress and include it in VS instead of plugin. I saw PDC2008 presentation for VS2010 almost stopped my bitchin...

Peace!

Answer 14

No multimonitor support...

Answer 15

It's a bit clunky for most anything that isn't done it's way. If I have a pile of C code, to build it, I must create solution and project and mess with all that. Some sort of Ad-Hoc project (e.g. all C files in this dir) would be very nice.

Answer 16

My biggest annoyance is that no one else can compete with it!

We need more choices for IDEs to promote ingenuity.

Answer 17

Complete disregard for C++ support, which is basically the same as it was in VS 2005.

1. Fragile intellisense.
2. No refactoring support.
3. No code-snippet support.
4. broken build system.

Answer 18

Creating a new file takes a ridiculous amount of mouse clicks.

Answer 19

I love the squiggly lines indicating I have a mistake, but when I fix it, can't it check my new code a little quicker? I often find myself watching, waiting for it to disappear...

lack of multi-monitor support is a bigger issue though.. Excel and Visual Studio both seem like apps from the dark ages with no ability to take advantage of several screens. Does anyone code on a single screen anymore?

Viewing resources could use some more organization and options. It is like going to a folder and being forced to view all the files with only a single 'view'...

Answer 20

I actually used to think Visual Studio was awesome... until I used Eclipse for a few years. Now I really miss programming Java in Eclipse.

Things I DONT like:

1. Clicking on a variable doesn't highlight all of its instances, like in Eclipse.
2. VS doesn't fix errors as well as Eclipse. For example, often a build error will spit out a message saying exactly how to fix it, but there isn't a way for the editor to just do it for you. In eclipse, almost every error has the "!" icon next to the line that will give you options to fix it automatically.
3. Would like an easy way to clean up the "using" section. I don't want every new class to include things like LINQ and System.Text. Would be nice to have a "remove unneeded usings" option.
4. All the different project templates get confusing and don't have good descriptions. It is also hard to convert between them. For example, there are seperate project templates for a WCF standalone service, and an IIS hosted WCF service. Both build a .dll, but only one has a web.config set up for IIS. The initial template descriptions aren't clear on which does what.
5. Code isn't compiled as I type to find errors. In Eclipse, errors are highlighted in realtime as you type. In VS, you have to build the project to get errors to show up,a nd sometimes build it again after fixing to get the error to go away. Hence I find myself pressing "F6" after every method I create to make sure its correct.

Things I DO like:

1. Visual designer. Top notch!
2. typing "DataTable dt = new " pops up the intelisence window right to "DataTable()". Eclipse doesn't even do that :)
3. typing "myClass.SomeEvent += " pops up a "press tab to insert" box to create a default handler method for the event.
4. Generally pretty stable. I don't have it crash or lock up very often.
5. Integrated ASP.NET/SCF test web server, instead of deploying to fullblown IIS for every test run.

Answer 21

• Mobile tools got moved from Standard 2005 to Professional 2008. Irritating.
• 2008: Unit testing (MSTS) built in, but code coverage is only in Team Suite? That's pants.
• 2005 & 2008: Installing service pack 1 should not take an entire freaking day. (I realize this is more or less related to the idiocy that is the Windows Installer. But really, it'd be faster just give everyone a new ISO to download and have them uninstall the original and reinstall with SP1.)
• 2005 & 2008: Opening a solution with > 15 projects? Go grab a sandwich.
• 2005 & 2008: Sometime during the day, I bring up the "Record Macro" toolbar accidentally at least once. I'm still not quite sure what key combo I keep pressing to trigger this.

Despite all that, you can pry my copy of Visual Studio from my cold, dead hands.

Answer 22

I've gotten bit by the SECURE_SCL defaults in VS 2008, whereas in VS 2005 I was able to compile and hack with libraries really easily -- VS 2008 has proven much trickier.

Some links about that:

http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=352699 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/137089/boostsignal-memory-access-error http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=352481 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/49330/vs-2005-2008-library-linking

Answer 23

Its truly and deeply CRAPPY integration with SourceSafe. If I'm in SourceSafe itself and I want to check out a branched version of a file, no problem. But if I'm in Visual Studio, it completely scrozzes the destination folder settings for the entire branch and then checks out the wrong version on top of it. I not only have to manually uncheck and fix the files, but I also have to shut down VS and SS and manually delete the incorrect ss.ini folder settings to prevent SS from continuing to use the wrong branch folders. I've completely given up on ever letting Visual Studio check anything in/out of any branch other than the central development line.

Answer 24

I think the help system for Visual Studio is horribly, horribly broken. Between online and offline content, finding help on topic was much much better 10 years ago than it is now. Now, you often navigate a maze of help. There are likely many more help "pages", but it is so much more like being at the zoo.

Simplify! Make it work well! Is that too much to ask?

Related item: I know it is fixable, but I've had to correct this for other developers on my team: when other items are installed (SQL Server, for example), it can mess with the Visual Studio help system. It is correctable, but why so complicated? Just make it work.

Answer 25

Windows Workflow Designer.

It's a crippled, one-legged, drunk, poisoned, hippopotamus carrying fifteen elephants slow. It's an absolute dog. It's really the shining example of why shifting portions of VS from native code to managed code was just a silly idea.

Answer 26

Extremely slow refactoring, lack of refactoring features, slow symbol search, constant recompiling due to terrible non-incremental compiler, lack of occurrence highlighting, the list goes on. Visual Studio has a lot of catching up to do, a sad state considering how it used to be the best. I actually miss Eclipse.

Answer 27

Output to OMF format so it can be used directly with digital mars tools which use OMF but visual studio uses COFF. I always use this tool because it is less buggy than digital mars's converter but if anyone knows how to output in OMF in MS visual studio please share your knowledge.

Answer 28

The price! (Coupled with the fact that for most development tasks, realistically I don't have any alternatives).

Answer 29

When I'm doing WPF, it crashes constantly. Three or four crashes per hour of work.

Answer 30

The weenies.

Answer 31

I'm not sure if this is Visual Studio or SourceGear or both but I'd say once every other day I have to rebind my two web projects in my solution to source control.

I wish I could work with SQL Server better inside the VS IDE and stay out of Management Studio.

I agree with what someone said a few posts up, no competition.

But if these are my biggest gripes then I'm doing okay.

Answer 32

Shift+alt+F10 for auto adding the relevant namespace, come on you could do better than that......

Answer 33

Solution Explorer visibly repaints itself too often; for instance, every time you double click in the main editor. Seen on Vista (I don't recall seeing that in Windows XP).

Answer 34

The performance is my main annoyance definitely.

Visual studio is the slowest desktop application I have.

Answer 35

The length of time the Help dialog takes to appear (locking up the IDE in the process)...

It is quicker for me to open Firefox, type what I'm after into Google, click on the relevant MSDN link, read my solution/search again and make a cup of tea, than it is for help to load.

Answer 36

I've got a solution reaching 70 projects and constantly growing (I've done a very small percentage of the project).

The toolbox doesn't remember my additions - Telerik and ASP.NET AJAX (you'd think the last one would be remembered by the IDE because it's all Microsoft!).

Html Designer crashes (or used to).

Got .NET 3.5/VS2008 SP1 and now my Silverlight projects cannot be loaded!

Answer 37

IntelliSense hogging the up/down keys to scroll through search results.

So if you're typing some function call and want to move to the next line it's (esc)(down) instead of just (down).

Answer 38

When I moved from VS 2003 to VS 2005, it became much more difficult to chase down object properties in the debugger QuickWatch window. How should I know if it's "base" or "Non-Public" or "Static", and, more to the point, what do I care?

They also buried the code deeper into the folder tree, from "My Documents\Visual Studio Projects\MyApp" to "My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\MyApp\MyApp". How did that improve my experience?

Answer 39

First of all... I love Visual Studio. I worked with it for years and it keeps getting better for every version.

I hate it when VS 2008 stops giving IntelliSense and when, for some unknown reason, it sets my keyboard settings to a different language, so 'special' keys like - and = become things like °, only in Visual Studio so a restart of it fixes the problem.

Another thing I think needs improvement is opening XAML files. I've changed the settings so it doesn't open in split mode but only shows me the actual XAML. Very often Visual Studio shuts down immediately. When restarting Visual Studio after that and opening in my project, that file is still open so Visual Studio shuts down again. After that Visual Studio doesn't load any files when opening the project. Very annoying.

Answer 40

I hate that VS2008 as well as the versions before do not get it managed to let the actual interface be usable, since it permanently locks up.

While building a project, it locks up, background compiling for intellisense works, but while actual compiling the code, it locks up the whole frontend.

Thats the most annoying thing with VS to me.

Answer 41

When you add a reference, the dialog box seems to take forever to load - like minutes - because it's loading up every bloody .net, com, whatever library it can think of.

Answer 42

Simpler addon development would be really nice.

Answer 43

Why does it take forever to launch the Add Reference dialog for a project?

Answer 44

I don't know what causes it, but on occasions as I'm typing in an .aspx page the 'Error List' tab keeps jumping up and down like a f@cking jack russell terrier.

Otherwise I like it.

Answer 45

There was a really nice FTP interface for deploying web site projects in 2005. Now they replaced it with something much worse.

Edit: my new biggest annoyances are:

1. Sometimes windows like the solution explorer forget that they are supposed to autohide, and you have to tack and untack them again to make them go away.

2. One of the windows from the bottom, such as the Output or Error List pops up for no good reason, such as when I save a file, although thankfully it usually realizes it should hide and goes away after a second.

Answer 46

Two of my biggest gripes:

• 6.0 had a setting that let you see the shortcut keys on the tooltips (very useful in trying to learn a new keyboard shortcut for often used features); 2005/2008 doesn't. (Thanks to SLax for the comment on how to turn on that feature. This isn't a problem now.)
• 6.0 let you put toolbars anywhere, even in between the workspace window and the code window (next to the separator bar); 2005/2008 doesn't.

On thing that I really like:

• The class view window -- much more useful in 2005/2008 than it was in 6.0.

Edit Thanks to SLaks's comment, the first gripe is no longer an issue. However, this is:

• The Class Wizard in 6.0 let you easily add handlers for pretty much any message you wanted on the dialogue as well as its controls. I find that the Class Wizard in 2005/2008 is much more restrictive and, therefor, much less flexible. It doesn't even let you add event handlers for the dialogue itself for God's sake! (Being lazy, I found it very useful to have the wizard put the stubs in for OnInitDialog(), etc. for me.)

Answer 47

When designing windows forms with lots of controls I'll first design the form with all the controls and then go back and rename all the controls prior to wiring anything up. I'm very careful to click one time with my mouse on each control I am renaming, however VS 2008 (and previous versions) often interprets a double click -- which throws me into the code behind thinking I want to wire up an event handler. This is highly annoying and wastes a tremendous amount of my time clicking to get out of the code behind. The problem becomes exponentially worse with forms containing many controls. Why in the heck isn't there an option to disable auto-wireup (at least temporarily)? I can't be the first windows developer to encounter this problem.

Answer 48

My biggest annoyance, is when intellisense pops up, and steals what I was trying to type.. That, and when intellisense decides to get in the way of what I was writing with a big window, and I have to click elsewhere to get it to leave me alone so I can see what I was writing.

Answer 49

Design View!

Answer 50

If searching for text within a file that has regions, it's considered hidden text. One must STILL remember to check Find options->Search hidden text. Otherwise one will not find what they're looking for.

Answer 51

It's sad but I still need to work with 1.1. So I need two versions of VS installed.

Answer 52

I would really like to be able to copy references from one project to another.

Especially since the add references dialog takes forever to load.

Answer 53

Crashes are the biggest pain... it just breaks your flow of thoughts and decreases productivity way too much.

Answer 54

• Gradient bars - If I want 5% of the screen to be filled with a gradient bar I can create my own in photoshop. I gathered this is something they payed attention to with VS2010
• As mentioned before - total stagnation of C++ project.
• Inflating NCB files - It seems this has been around from VC6.0

Answer 55

Projects are incorrectly ordered when placed in Solution Folders.

UPDATE Apparently fixed now, though I guess I'll have to wait for VS2010.

Answer 56

The big sleep ...

Loading projects (medium sized, up to 10 projects in a solution) it takes minutes to load the solution and display the files left open last time on a good equipped pc (4gb ram, dual core ~3ghz). And it's not just on one pc...

Anyone else has this phenomen?

Answer 57

No incremental build support. At all.

See Eclipse for how it should be done: Ctrl+S, and a second later I can run. Compare to VS 2008: save, and it just sits there. F5 and I have to wait 5 minutes (more, if Code Analysis is on) for it to finally cough up that class Foo does not implement method Bar from interface IFoo. Then I have to wait another 5 minutes for it to stop building the rest of the projects, because it DOES NOT stop building by default when it hits an error.

Microsoft did not realize that there is a huge difference between a build tool for a build server and a build tool in an IDE (batch vs interactive application).

Answer 58

When having a Setup & Deployment project in your solution, you can't unload it by right-clicking it in the solution explorer (there's no "Unload Project" option like there should be).

You have to either go to the top menu bar and do it from there or select another project with it and unload them both.

Answer 59

In Visual Web Developer / Design View

Sometimes clicking a control and changing its properties does not work: The Properties window becomes "out of sync", still linked to the previously-selected-control.

Switching to Source view then back to Design view solves this, but is an annoyance.

Answer 60

1. Cut/Copy line
2. shift+del to tidy up some whitespace
3. Go to where you to relocate the line
4. ctrl+v and it pastes the removed line (usually blank) rather than the original!

Answer 61

UI designer is targeted for C# and VB and not C++.
All code it generates for given form is put in a single file without separation on header and source files.
C++ Builder has this for years...

I'm pissed off on M$ how they treat C++ and it's users; no respect at all.
I'm sure they will regret this. The sooner the better.

Answer 62

The time it takes to shutdown Visual studio. Even with small project it sometimes takes very long time, sometimes so long that I reside to force it with task manager. I can't figure out why, there is obviously a lot of disk activity but I can't figure out the reason to why it should save so much.

Answer 63

The macro recorder is just so slow it hurts. I remember in MSVC 6, it was lightning fast. Now, it feels like the whole IDE is in molasses when you record. I don't know what they have done to it, but it's a shame.

Answer 64

I'd like it to be able to export build files to other platforms - or at least provide a plug-in ability to do that.

Basically I want it to be its own CMake.

Answer 65

There is no shortcut for switching between source and header files in C++.
That is just ridiculous...
C++ Builder has it from years (and QT Creator has this feature as well).

Answer 66

Two complaints:

• Custom build rules are source-based, instead of target-based, and they operate by file extension. That means if I want to add a custom step (such as unit-test boilerplate generation for CxxTest), I need to create a new type of file, foo.unit and define a rule that operates on *.unit files.

• Refusal to support C99 features. I want my <stdint.h>, <inttypes.h>. I know not a lot of people use C anymore, but C99 headers are at least accessible from C++, and I hate resorting to third-party projects for something like this.

Answer 67

I think some of the simple features included in Visual Assist should make its way into Visual Studio; for example "go to file", and fast switch between .h and .cpp file.

Answer 68

The time it takes to delete a single damn file out of your project the first time you run a delete command. Seriously, c'mon!

Answer 69

Debug CRT Deployment: Installing the debug C runtime (msvcr90d.dll) on test systems is far more complicated than it needs to be. I usually would prefer to use a lighter weight debugger, and adding Visual Studio 2008 to test system images takes a lot more space and imaging time.

• Microsoft does not distribute a standalone installer for the debug CRT. (However, it is possible to create a debug CRT installer using Visual Studio.)
• Copying the debug CRT to %SystemRoot%\system32 does not work, due to WinSxS (except on Windows 2000).
• Copying the debug CRT to your application's directory (a.k.a. xcopy deployment) works, assuming that you are debugging an application that has its own directory. This does not work if you're debugging a DLL installed in %SystemRoot%\system32.

Answer 70

• It simply can't handle editing any file acceptably if it's more than about 2K lines long on my machine. Constant waits and lockups even when just typing in new lines of code! VS.NET 2003 did not have this issue, 2005/2008 have introduced it.
• The huge amount of time it takes to open/shut solutions. Our solutions only have 10 projects and maybe 20-30KLOC total, and it's still several minutes to open it all up!
• It never remembers that I want SonicFileFinder OPEN and the Properties window CLOSED. Almost every time I open up a solution it gets it the wrong way around...
• It can't debug C# server code and JS client code in the same instance.
• When debugging JS client code, you can't make changes and keep going without detaching and reattaching.
• Intellisense is rubbish for JavaScript.
• ASP/ASPX editing is pretty rubbish, features-wise. It always uses spaces instead of tabs, horrible mangles tags/layout, and can't rollup tags/functions/sections.
• Why does it take so long to switch between Design and Source mode? And stop messing up all my markup when I go into Design.

Answer 71

No intuitive way to "Refresh" the .dbml file when the underlying SQL tables/sproc are changed.

Answer 72

1 Performance.. Start-up, loading help (I'm not pressing F1, I'm not stupid).

Seriously, would use Excel if it had the start-up time of Visual Studio? It doesn't matter if i have a 80k or 8MB XLS file, it opens fast, saves fast and is generally a pleasure to use.

2 Inconsistent search options, find, find in files, etc. Pick one!

4 If you create a blank solution, then add a project to it, the project appears at the top of the hierarchy, even though it's not. If you add another project, the solution reappears at the top of the hierarchy, and then shows the two projects below it, so irritating. Most of us create solution folders to get around this annoyance.

5 Poor setup. Why is the only difference between complete and typical install the 64 bit compilers?

Answer 73

• No closing buttons on tabs
• Easier SVN integration

Answer 74

You can't do a textual search in the toolbox, the properties window (in non-WPF projects) or the add references dialog.

Answer 75

The time it takes to upgrade VS 2008 to SP1!

It takes about 90 minutes on my machine.

Answer 76

That you can't select the event handlers for controls from the code-behind for C#.

Also the fact that you have to be in design mode to even get the Event Handler options in the ascx or aspx for C#. Why can't that option just be available in source mode?

Answer 77

C++ Intellisense constantly consuming ALL available processor cycles. OK, it may be in a low priority backgroud thread, but it still burns cycles and does slow other stuff down. Not to mention - it makes my laptop run really hot!

Answer 78

I've joined the dark side, but the Solution Explorer still burns my eyes.

Answer 79

1. Add reference dialog taking forever to load the first time round
2. Unstable WPF designer (though applying the KB958017 hotfix does seem to improve this)
3. Badly designed Unhandled Exception dialog. They put a help link where I would actually want to view the exception in greater detail.

Answer 80

I don't know if it's my biggest annoyance, but it really bugs me how many long-running operations are either modal or just cause the UI to lock up. Now I'm forced to use TFS which is a DOG, and causes lots of little glitches in UI responsiveness, but at least I understand why some of those need to prevent you from interacting for a bit.

I really don't understand why opening help need to tie up the IDE while Document Explorer takes what seems like hours to update for new content. Or why loading the available tests for a large project needs to lock up the whole IDE. There's a little progress bar on the Test View tab, which makes me think that they tried to make this more localized and just couldn't get it to work or something. I guess I need a faster machine or something.

But my biggest annoyance is TFS and it's remarkably painful integration. Not the little glitches I mention above, but the incredible, across the board, immense crappiness of this POS. I can't express in words how much I hate this thing.

Answer 81

Overall, I think Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 are fantastic IDEs. But the one thing that gets me time and time again is accidentally dragging and dropping files in the Solution Explorer. Maybe I'm trying to work too quickly, but there really needs to be an "Undo file move" or something along those lines.

Answer 82

The biggest annoyance is when you open a project that was built in another version of VS it has to convert. It should be able to open any project in read-only mode for browsing.

I also don't like how it implies you can never go back - you can if you edit the proj files. This should all be more transparent and simpler.

Second annoyance is when it tells you it is going to check files out of source control when opening a solution especially since I do not use source control through the IDE and often I'm looking at open source software for read-only.

Answer 83

The folks over at Coding Horror gave an example of a Visual Studio macro for collapsing to definitions but expanding macros. The following was given by Kyralessa in a comment:

Sub CollapseToDefinitionsButExpandAllRegions()
  DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.CollapsetoDefinitions")
  DTE.SuppressUI = True
  Dim objSelection As TextSelection = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection
  objSelection.StartOfDocument()
  Do While objSelection.FindText("#region", vsFindOptions.vsFindOptionsMatchInHiddenText)
  Loop
  objSelection.StartOfDocument()
  DTE.SuppressUI = False
End Sub

This code works fine when you execute it as a regular macro, but I would prefer it to happen automatically when I open a document.

I tried taking this code and working it into an EnvironmentEvent, but without much luck. When I try debugging the macro, the debugger gets to the ExecuteCommand line and then does not return to the subroutine. It also doesn't collapse to definitions (Edit > Outlining > Collapse to Definitions). Here's my EnvironmentEvent subroutine, for anyone to poke at:

Public Sub documentEvents_DocumentOpened(ByVal Document As EnvDTE.Document) Handles DocumentEvents.DocumentOpened
    ' Thanks to http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001147.html
    Document.DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.CollapsetoDefinitions")
    'DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.CollapsetoDefinitions")
    DTE.SuppressUI = True
    Dim objSelection As TextSelection = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection
    objSelection.StartOfDocument()
    Do While objSelection.FindText("#region", vsFindOptions.vsFindOptionsMatchInHiddenText)
    Loop
    objSelection.StartOfDocument()
    DTE.SuppressUI = False
End Sub

So beyond trying to offer some potentially useful region-expanding code, I'd also like to register that this is way too much pain to go through just to collapse methods but expand regions when opening a file. Really, VS? That can't just be a preference somewhere?

Answer 84

Not being able to add snippets for other languages than MS supported ones (for example, while using Intel's fortran compiler).

Answer 85

The fact that the icon colors are almost identical to Chrome, and they're right next to each other in my quicklaunch bar.

In other words, nothing that hasn't been mentioned yet.

Answer 86

That you cannot create an empty solution inside an existing folder. VS 2008 always creates a new folder whenever you create an empty solution.

Answer 87

Ctrl+W closes the current tab in almost every tabbed application I use ...except VS. grr

Answer 88

An ability to quickly find and open files. In a solution with lots of projects it takes too much time to find and open the file you want. I know about Find bar + ">of Filename...", and this helps a lot, but still it takes too much time...

Answer 89

Being able to collapse/expand JavaScript code when editing wouldn`t have been that hard for Microsoft to implement, would it?

BTW, what JS editor offers VS integration and collapses/expand JavaScript?

Federico Caldas (TeamDotNet)

Answer 90

The fact that the regular expression syntax in the Find/Replace dialog (used in the IDE itself) is different from the regular expression syntax used by the Regex class (used in programs you write).

Answer 91

Creating new Projects and Solutions is a mess.

Various menu items lead to dead ends (e.g. 'Create Project from Existing Code"... but there is no option to create a web application).

Why can't we do File->New->Solution, save the solution where we want it, then add projects to it?

Files get auto saved all over the place and its never clear what is actually going on.

Answer 92

I find the VS IDE very unreliable. It stuffs up my resources. I add images to the tollbar (lots of them) and a few days later, they're all gone. The references are there but some how it manages to stuff it up and then I have to go and add all the images again, double-click on them all all over again and re-paste the code all over again. Worst IDE known to mankind.

Answer 93

"Could not load file or assembly xxxxxx" when the assembly is f**** right there!

Answer 94

1. If any projects, which are under source control, get updated, VS keeps on popping up the dialog asking me whether I want to reload the project for each project. There is no option to reload automatically or a "Reload All" button in the dialog.

2. IronPython is developed by Microsoft and there is practically zero support on Visual Studio. (Yes they do have something, but that is not under active development and is for an older version of IPy)

3. Sometimes while debugging, if I do things like "Open Containing Folder" on a file, things just freeze.

4. There is no direct way to manually edit project files -- I have to unload the project and then do an "Edit Project".

Answer 95

Lack of incremental compilation ala eclipse in the c# mode. I miss seeing the mistakes before compiling. Always hitting the compile button. It's become a muscle memory thing.

Answer 96

I hate the way that you can't remove items from the "Recent Projects" list without going into the registry, or moving/deleting the project. I make throwaway projects often, and it's annoying when they push your real projects off the bottom of the list.

Answer 97

When changing values on a control in designer mode, it takes forever to find the thing you want to change. To make this even more annoying when your doing WPF they have a easy search field on top of the properties window making finding what you wanna change simple.

Answer 98

Most of my pet peeves have been mentioned already, but here's another one:

Visual Studio includes lots of great options for controlling Code Formatting, but all of those options are global (across all solutions). One thing I really miss from Eclipse is being able to define different Code Formatting for different projects. In particular, this is important when you're working on different projects with different teams, and each team has its own quirks in coding standards.

Answer 99

A few times a year, "Find in Files" fails with the message : "No files were found to look in." The inexplicable solution is to press Ctrl+ScrLk . This occurs in VS 2008, and I think earlier versions.

Answer 100

It lacks a "Reload all" command, when you use source control and make an update before shutting down visual studio. Then sometimes you have to click "Reload" almost as many times as how many projects you have. Or press ctrl-alt-del and kill VS (which is almost always faster)!

Answer 101

Javascript debugging is forced on in Internet Explorer with no way to switch it off. Which results in all sorts of (anonymous) javascript blocks to flicker on and off as solution items.

Answer 102

When you have multiple instances open and change preferences, you have to be careful in what order you close all instances, or you loose the changes.

Answer 103

When stopping the debugger, the computer hangs for up minutes at a time, while God Knows What is going on.

Answer 104

Single biggest annoyance, particularly given how easy it would be for MS to fix: the fact that there is no simple option to make compilations abort on the first project which contains errors.

Given how unresponsive the IDE becomes during a compilation, it's a real pain to have to attempt to switch to the output tab, in order to hit CTL-Break so that you can stop a compilation once you notice that you've got compile errors on a project.

I know that there are 'work-arounds' that IIRC, involve custom build steps etc., but for something so darn simple I shouldn't have to jump through PIA hoops in order to change the behavior to what I would argue should most likely be the default behavior.

Argh.

Having said that, there's a lot I do like about VS.

One more area that it must be said is problematic is the WPF designer support. As has been commented by others it's very buggy. For me this has been exacerbated by having a couple of more unusual system configuration items, and the difficulty finding information on hotfixes: I have had to install one hotfix to VS to solve 64bit windows issues, and have had to install Silverlight 2 tools for VS2008 SP1 - so that it's compatible with Blend 3 behaviors (even though I'm not using Silverlight!).

Answer 105

1. Can't put two source codes window from two projects side by side if I don't open one from the other instance of VS or create a solution file containing the two projects. If I put two VS window side by side, then tool bar button area, menu areas take too much space.

2. Can't copy files in a project when the project is opened with VS. Some files are locked and can't be copied. This is weird. Copying is to "read". Why "read" is not possible?

Answer 106

My favorites:

• No way to change compiler settings (such as "Treat warnings as error" -setting) for all projects in the Solution at once.
• "Find all references" sometimes only searches from the compilation unit that the symbol is defined in, not from the whole project/Solution.
• Project settings dialog is REALLY hairy and messy.
• No search functionality in Options dialog (similar to Eclipse's Preferences search)
• Key bindings are presented by some API names they map to, such as Edit.DoThis or Window.Something, instead of logical, descriptive names such as "Close Window", "Delete current line" (again, Eclipse has this one Right) Moreover, the list of commands/bindings is long as hell, but the window they're shown in, is only four lines and the dialog is of fixed-size.
• Broken regular expression implementation (ill use of < and >, no support for word-boundary operator, messy :fubar constructs, etc.)
• No move line/block up/down/whatever-direction in editor (except for "Transpose line", which only moves line down)
• No semantic highlighting (This is REALLY annoying)
• IntelliSense doesn't quite sense a thing when e.g. hovering the mouse cursor on some variable. It just shows something like "__unknown_type_something foo::bar" (at least for C code)
• Lack of user defined types' highlighting (Stabbing/hard coding your own types into some usertypes.dat/whatever that is only loaded when the IDE starts doesn't count. These should be definable at least per-project basis or even better if IntelliSense was smart enough to parse them on-the-fly, as Eclipse does)
• Syntax highlight should be configurable on per-language and per-perspective (editing/debugging/whatever) basis. When I'm writing C or C++, I don't want to see HTML/SQL/whatnot items in the syntax items list. Debugger-specific items should also in a separate list.
• Build output is full of crap, mostly, and the actual information, such as errors & warnings are buried deep under that. Syntax coloring (different colors for commands, errors & warnings etc.) and selection highlight are missing too.
• No way to configure automagic indentation (like how case statements should be indented inside a switch block)
• Match ranges are not highlighted in Search results (partial-line matches)
• Ambiguous symbol resolving on "Goto definition": instead of asking every time, you only get asked once, and that's it.

Answer 107

The javascript editor does not remember your preferences for formatting. I'm a "brace at the end of the opening line" kinda guy, but I work where the brace needs to be on its own line. I like that in VS I can just type the way I've conditioned myself and VS will fix it for me.

Except the javascript editor. It forgets the settings periodically, and next thing I know I diff my changes and 80% of the file has changed because the braces all moved. So annoying!

Answer 108

When highlighting gets "sticky" and does not want to start selecting from your cursor. Only way to correct it is by restarting. Very annoying....

Answer 109

My three:

• The project references box takes a long time to display (on an AD domain it seems)
• The toolbox is the same
• The search box. I'd much prefer a firefox style search

Answer 110

A simple to fix but very annoying thing is the QuickWatch Window. It never remembers it's column slider positions so I always have to slide the colums into view every time I open the QuickWatch. The default settings of are pretty bad. The column that displays the Type of the Object is out of view. A quick fix would be a better default. Remembering where I put them would be luxurious but is not a must.

Answer 111

In the XAML editor, alt-tab somewhere else, alt-tab back and it's moved your cursor to the beginning of the control! so frustrating

Answer 112

Trying to navigate the visualization of objects in the debugger.

Here's this TEENY plus sign, followed by myriad other plus signs, and damn you to heck if you don't move the mouse precisely as required. You have to HOVER the mouse, and probably click the object, to get the visualization started; there's no keyboard shortcut. There's no way to use the keyboard AFAIK (PLEASE tell me, if there is) for dropping the visualization menu so you can select from text or XML or HTML.

The labels are obscure. You get into base type fugues, recursing down base type to base type, and sometimes there's never any data to reward your spelunking. If you're looking at a lot of data, like members of a dictionary, there's no way to capture that data.

I'd like to be able to put the cursor on an object and enter Ctrl-E + Ctrl-D (for ExplicateData) -- to open a window where ALL of the data is expanded, the parent-child relationships shown via indentation, with the option to mark bits as "favorites" that are placed in a window at the top. Save the favorites in the SUO file. Permit opening or closing blocks using the usual VS shortcuts, and save the open/closed state in the SUO. Select all or part of the data and click the alternate tabs at the top to see the data as XML or HTML.

Answer 113

Completely Uninstalling It for:

1. Repairing a problem with corrupt files
2. Installing a new version of Visual Studio
3. Simply getting rid of it

Without a doubt the worst program when it comes to uninstalling as it has literally taken over your system completely and has it's garbage laying everywhere from registry to my documents to your drive. You have to uninstall several programs and even then it is not completely removed. Horrible, especially coming from a company like Microsoft who own the OS as well.

Answer 114

That sometimes the C++ rebuild dependencies stop working. I've seen this with VS2005 & VS2008 on different projects at different companies. Sometimes changing a header file will not cause all the cpp files that include it to be recompiled and link errors result. Some combination of deleting .idb, .obj files will fix it, or do a rebuild all of the solution but that can take a long time.

Answer 115

Wow, 4 pages of responses and nobody has mentioned "Copy Web Site"?

In VS2005 it worked as fast as any other file-synchronization utility. In VS2008, a Remote Source located on a network share takes at least 10 seconds just to list the file names if there are more than ~5 files in the directory.