Visual Studio IDE and Extensions

Visual Studio is Microsoft’s flagship integrated development environment for .NET development. From code editing and debugging to profiling and testing, Visual Studio provides comprehensive tooling for building, analyzing, and deploying .NET applications.

Visual Studio Capabilities

Code Editing and IntelliSense provide intelligent code completion, refactoring tools, and code analysis that accelerate development while maintaining code quality. Features like CodeLens, Quick Actions, and built-in analyzers surface issues during development.

Debugging and Diagnostics enable investigation of runtime behavior through breakpoints, watch windows, immediate window, and advanced features like time-travel debugging and performance profiling.

Testing and Quality integrate unit test runners, code coverage analysis, Live Unit Testing, and IntelliTest for automated test generation.

Extensions and Customization expand Visual Studio capabilities through marketplace extensions, custom analyzers, and productivity tools.

Productivity and Workflows

Articles in this section explore Visual Studio features, productivity shortcuts, extension recommendations, debugging techniques, and workflow optimization. Topics include solution configuration, keyboard shortcuts, code snippets, and leveraging Visual Studio for efficient .NET development.

The focus is mastering Visual Studio capabilities that genuinely improve productivity while avoiding feature overload that creates complexity without proportional value.

Code Metrics and Configuration: Beyond the Numbers Game

Code metrics have become a standard feature in modern development environments, yet their implementation and interpretation often leave much to be desired. While Visual Studio and .NET provide comprehensive code metrics analysis, the way these metrics are configured, presented, and (more critically) acted upon reveals a fundamental disconnect between measurement and meaningful improvement.

What code metrics actually measure, how to configure them properly, and (more importantly) why blindly following thresholds without understanding context is, frankly, a recipe for misguided refactoring efforts that waste your team’s time and actively damage your codebase.

Still Waiting for the Final Piece: When C# 14 Comes Close, But Not Quite There

C# 14 introduces the new ‘Extension Everything’ syntax—an elegant step toward more expressive code, yet one that still can’t quite match VB.NET’s classic ByRef magic. A humorous reflection on what’s almost, but not fully, possible in .NET 10.

Visual Studio 2026 - Why AI-Native Tooling Will Matter

Let’s skip the typical release-cycle enthusiasm for a second: Most IDE updates come and go. New features, some refactoring helpers, a bit of polish, then back to business as usual. Visual Studio 2026 is different. For once, the promise of “AI-native” isn’t just marketing. If Microsoft lands even half of what they’re previewing, it’s going to matter—a lot.

How to Use Copilot Without Becoming Its Puppet

In a previous article, we laid it out – unfiltered: Copilot turns junior devs into syntax secretaries.

Not because it’s evil. But because it removes friction before understanding.

It gives you working code before you know what working even means. It creates the illusion of progress, while slowly eroding the very skills that define a software engineer: reasoning, decision-making, and technical ownership.

Copilot Turns Junior Devs Into Syntax Secretaries

The hype around GitHub Copilot (or any other AI code assistant) is deafening. AI-assisted coding. Effortless automation. 10x productivity.

But here’s the harsh truth: Copilot isn’t empowering junior developers – it’s deskilling them.

Mastering .NET Project Properties: The `BuildingInsideVisualStudio` Flag

In the ever-evolving world of .NET development, managing project configurations effectively is crucial for maintaining a clean and efficient build process. One of the less frequently discussed but highly useful properties is BuildingInsideVisualStudio. This property, when correctly utilized, can streamline your build process and ensure that your project is configured properly depending on the build environment. In this article, we’ll explore the BuildingInsideVisualStudio property with concrete examples and discuss best practices for using it effectively.