The gang over at Channel 9 have just released the first beta of their Visual Studio Achievements project. I tried it out last night and it’s very cool. Here’s what it’s all about:

Bring Some Game To Your Code!

A software engineer’s glory so often goes unnoticed. Attention seems to come either when there are bugs or when the final project ships. But rarely is a developer appreciated for all the nuances and subtleties of a piece of code–and all the heroics it took to write it. With Visual Studio Achievements Beta, your talents are recognized as you perform various coding feats, unlock achievements and earn badges.

You can read the full announcement here and grab the beta from the Visual Studio Gallery here.

Tip #2 – Create Field

Use: Within the body of a class or property, you can type the name of a non-existent variable name. When you place your cursor on the variable, ReSharper provides several options to resolve the impending compilation error. Create Field is one of the options.

Before

   1:          public void AddAlbum(string album)

   2:          {

   3:              if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(album))

   4:                  throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("album",

   5:                                                        album,

   6:                                                        "Please provide an album name.");

   7:   

   8:              _albums.Add(album);

   9:          }

Press <Alt+Enter>

After

        private IList<string> _albums = new List<string>();

        public void AddAlbum(string album)
        {
            if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(album))
                throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("album",
                                                      album,
                                                      "Please provide an album name.");

            _albums.Add(album);
        }

Note: I chose the type IList<string>. The default type selected by ReSharper in this case was object. I also added the initializer to the field to avoid null reference exceptions. Please don’t take any of these examples as best coding practices, they are contrived to demonstrate a particular refactoring.

Happy coding!

I will eventually get this posted to Studio Styles. Until then, here is a dark theme for Visual Studio that I created. The green and orange give it a Halo-ish feel. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Downloads

HaloVibe theme for VS2008

HaloVibe theme for VS2010

I’ve just started taking a look at PLINQO to generate LINQ to SQL code for a sample project I’m working on. So far, I’m impressed. PLINQO looks really promising. If you’re using CodeSmith, you should definitely take a look at it. If you haven’t tried CodeSmith for code generation in .NET, you can get a free trial.

I’ll be posting the sample application when it’s complete.

This post is in response to Jeff Blankenburg’s post about the contents of his Quick Launch bar.

Nothing. Mine is turned off. Here’s what my start menu looks like though. I have turned off the display of my recently opened programs, and I dragged these shortcuts out there. (This is my work notebook.)

Internet Explorer 8 – I use it mainly to see what’s new in IE8 and when Firefox doesn’t render something correctly (hardly ever).

Firefox 3 – My primary web browser. The plug-in support is the difference-maker for me.

Outlook 2007 – Used for my work email. I also use the Outlook Connector to access one of my Hotmail accounts.

Windows Live Mail – I use this to access my other Hotmail account. I could put them both in Outlook, but I like to keep my hands in Live Mail too.

visionapp Remote Desktop 2008 – A fantastic remote desktop management tool with a very low price tag.

Visual Studio 2005 – Still some existing development work in VS2005.

Visual Studio 2008 – For all new development. Also, for playing around with new stuff out on CodePlex.

SQL Server Management Studio - ‘nuff said.

Visual SourceSafe – All of our old releases are still in VSS.    -cringe-

Command Prompt – Launches as Administrator.

FileZilla – For all my FTP client needs, mostly for uploading files to my blog.

Windows Live Writer Beta – The best blogging client for Windows.

Word 2007 – Because it’s MS Word.

Paint.NET – My favorite image editing tool… and it’s free!

Zune – My current media player, but MediaMonkey is still the default on my home PC and my favorite.

Services – Because sometime you just have to stop some services.

Event Viewer – A developer’s friend.

Programs and Features – This is here because I’m always installing and uninstalling stuff from CodePlex and MS Downloads.

Windows Update – I want to be the first one to get my Windows Defender definition updates!

So, that’s my list. What’s in your Quick Launch bar and/or Start Menu and/or Launcher of choice?

Here is a basic Outlook-style UI created in only a few minutes with Mockups for Desktop.