Visual Studio 2008 Multi-Targeting feature
I remember the switch to VS 2003 and then again to VS2005. With each move there was a wait to have the latest framework approved to go into the IT stack. When you get a taste of the latest improvements in the IDE, you want them now, not 6 months from now. I have been playing with the latest beta for a while now and I see the new features and once again, I want them now. There are a host of new improvements that have nothing to do with the 3.5 framework. The web designer and CSS support are far superior to what we have today. If you've heard of Web Expression, then you know that Microsoft has brought us a world class web designer. It's no surprise that much of that has made its way into VS 2008. We now have split view editing and a CSS style manager. Those of us who love IntelliSense will appreciate the fact that we now have that feature down to the CSS level. If you write JavaScript and miss the rich debugging experience we have with C# and VB.Net then you will love the debugging and IntelliSense improvements. To be able to type . and get full IntelliSense on our own JavaScript objects is a dream come true for many JavaScript developers. We also have AJAX support build right in to the IDE now.
With all of these features, we again could be in the same boat as with previous releases. That does not have to be the case anymore with the Multi-Targeting feature. Everything I mentioned so far has nothing to do with the latest framework but everything to do with IDE enhancements. We can now tell the IDE to target the 2.0 framework, just open an existing project and choose not to migrate it. You can always go back later on and change the target framework. The downside for those who are still on 1.1, this doesn’t go back any further then the 2.0 framework, at least for now.
Having experienced programming in Eclipse and Visual Studio I can tell you the productivity gap is expanding. Hats off to the Visual Studio team!