Microsoft Does Development Right

If there is one thing Microsoft does right its development tools. After using Eclipse, various python editors, Dev C++, Vi, emacs, etc… using Visual Studio again is like developing using “big-boy” tools. The interface is fairly simple and its very easy to find things. The debugger is easy to customize and learn. It can generate simple class diagrams from your source, can easily be linked to source control. Overall it just feels as though the environment was designed to help me not to be endlessly fiddled with like other IDE’s. It may not be open-source but it is extendible.

When using Visual Studio there is just a sense of stability (ya! thats right). Eclipse, Dev C++ crashed so often for me and often brand my computer to its knees. I’m currently running Visual Studio in a virtual machine and although its slower than normal its much faster than eclipse.

The only downside to using Visual Studio is that the only programs you can write with it that are (easily) portable to other systems besides Windows are c++ apps. Unless I am missing something really obvious.