Also see: Note to self: Blog about using Service Broker
Until about 2002 I had a broad disdain for most IDEs. I
just felt they were too pushy. They were always trying to take control
over my build system or the layout of my source tree. If I’m going to give
those things up, I want something in return. For a long time, the tradeoff
never seemed fair. THINK C on the Macintosh was one of the only IDE products I
actually liked.
Visual Studio.NET 2002 was the first Windows IDE that won
me over. I still use vi or emacs almost every day, but I’ll admit that I now use
Visual Studio more.
Last year I switched to Visual Studio 2005, and I love it.
This is a product that is so perfect I worry about its next release. Now that
Visual Studio 2008 is out, I’ll probably give it a try at some point soon. But
Visual Studio 2005 is sort of like “if it works, don’t mess with it”. The last
thing I want is for them to screw it up, and I can’t really imagine how
it could be better.
I guess when it comes to IDEs, I’m just not very
imaginative.
I started using Eclipse a few weeks ago, and now I
understand a bit more about where Visual Studio has room to improve. I think
Eclipse is amazing, and I’ve barely scratched the surface.
So anyway, here are a couple of my current favorite Eclipse
features:
Constant Builds
When I first installed Eclipse, the very first thing I did
was look for the menu item to start a build. When I didn’t find one, I assumed
that the Eclipse menu system must be too cluttered and counterintuitive. How
could they make such a frequently-used command so hard to find?
(more…)