Visual Studio is an Integrated Development Environment IDE developed by Microsoft which is used to code,debug and run the respective applications. According to Wikipedia, Visual Studio supports around 36 programming languages and the advantage of using Visual Studio is the code editor and debugger will support all these programming languages and also it supports cross-platform.
The latest version of Visual Studio is 2019(16.4.1). There are some major improvements done in Visual Studio 2019 when compared to Visual Studio 2017. The performance and the look & feel has been vastly improved.
So in this blog, we will see some improvements that has been done in Visual Studio 2019 which increases our .NET Productivity.
New Features
Start Window & UI Refresh
There’s a new startup window for Visual Studio 2019 and it looks mesmerizing.
After the startup window, you should be able to see an another Projects dialog where it shows the recently opened projects based upon the days and also you can,
- Create New Projects
- Open a Local Folder
- Open a Project or a Solution
- Clone or check out code
Or you can also continue without code.
Project Templates
If you select Create a new project, there’s bunch of templates available, and you can also search the templates. On the left hand-side of the window we have recently used templates, you can also select that if you want to kick start your application with that respective template.
Once the project template is selected, you should mention the location of the project to continue.
Search Improvements
The searching technique has been vastly improved in Visual Studio 2019. At the top bar, we have search included where you can search for any options regarding Visual Studio and it will throw you with proper suggestions.
It uses Fuzzy Search technique to search the items and in the above image you can see I have misspell the word Code(Cdoe) but it gives me proper suggestions. You can use Ctrl + Q to use this search. And also you can use Online Search if you want.
Document Health Indicator
At the bottom right corner of Visual Studio 2019, we have an Document Health Indicator.
If there are any refactoring needs to be done in the file, there will be an exclamation mark on the bottom right corner of your respective editor, right click on that such that you can traverse between the issues.
Code Cleanup
If the document health indicator shows you warning sign, you can cleanup the respective file or the whole solution using Code Cleanup. So to remove unused variables, unused using statements, sorting the using statements you can use this code cleanup.
You can use Ctrl + E, C to run Code Cleanup. And also the code cleanup is configurable.
Debugging Improvements
The debugger has became more powerful than Visual Studio 2017. The performance of step up and step backward has been improved. And also Search bar has been introduced in Auto, Local and Watch Windows.
This window will help you to search the value of an specific variable by defining the data type of that respective variable. And also you can depth search these things. And the depth search value can be set in the settings of Visual Studio.
Live Share Extension
In Visual Studio 2019, there’s an extension introduced called Live Share which is used for collaborative session to code, run and debug your applications. And also there’s an call option available where you can speak to your respective partner and debug accordingly.
And also you can share your workspace irrespective of your platform i.e you can share Visual Studio workspace from MAC to Visual Studio which is installed in Windows.
Intellicode Extension
This extension was also introduced in Visual Studio 2019. It provides AI–assisted capabilities to provide you proper suggestions when you code. Basically you can train this extension based upon your coding style and you’ll get proper suggestions based on it.
You can train this model and you can share this model to your colleagues where they will also get proper suggestions when they code.
Solution Filter
In the large enterprise application, we would have around 20-30 projects and sometimes you don’t need to load all the projects. So in Visual Studio 2019, you can unload those projects and right click on your solution and there will be an new option available called Save as Solution filter.
Specify a proper name and you can save this as an solution. So the next time if you click that respective solution filter, it wont load the unloaded projects.
Conclusion
There are lot of differences using Visual Studio 2017 and 2019. The load time, performance issues and also the look & fell has been done in a great way. Don’t forget to try out the latest version of Visual Studio.
Download link => visualstudio.com
If you are a student, use Community edition its free.
In our next blog we will see how we can create ASP.NET Core Web API using Visual Studio 2019.
Happy Coding!
Cheers! 🙂
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