Three months ago I switched from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010 as my main development environment.  Functionally it’s the same as it’s always been, but there are two things about it I consider great improvements.

First, the UI:  It looks so a lot better and cleaner than earlier versions.  It’s not that older versions were ugly, but it has a cleaner look and is much easier on the eye.

Next, C++ Development:  For the last few versions of VS, C++ developers have pretty much been shafted — no real feature improvements for the most part with all the love going to C#.  C++ received a major boost, gaining just-in-time compilation and error-detection intellisense almost exactly like C# has always had.  It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it is excellent for speeding up the code-compile-fix cycle.

Only a small portion of Basternae code is in C++, just the client and the Basternae 2 to 3 zone converter, but it is a lot more pleasant to write with Visual Studio 2010.

This project started on Visual Studio 2003, so now we’ve been through four versions.