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Microsoft Asks Devs About Visual Studio Pet Peeves: 'Don't Get Me Started'

• By David Ramel
• 01/24/2024

Microsoft's Mads Kristensen took to social media to ask developers about their "pet peeves" with Visual Studio and got an earful in reply.

The principal program manager on the Visual Studio team is constantly adding functionality to the IDE via extensions and seeking feedback on what features/functionality developers would like to see next.

Comments to his recent social media posts occasionally numbered in the double digits. This one has garnered more than 300 so far.

"Ha. Don't get me started..." began one reply.

"How much time do you have? LOL I've been keeping a running list!" said another.

While the complaints are numerous and vociferous, Kristensen took pains to reply to many, sometimes educating users on how to immediately solve their issues, sometimes pointing out where they can vote on relevant feature requests to solve the peeves, sometimes commiserating.

Take the first reply listed above, for example.

Here's the exchange regarding Kristensen's Jan. 16 post asking "What is your pet peeve about Visual Studio?"

simey: Ha. Don't get me started... #1 If you start dragging a docked tool window by mistake and hit Escape it doesn't go back to where it came from. It sort of jumps back in the vague direction from where it came and floats on top.

Kristensen: CTRL+double-click on the window header docks it back in its previous docking location

simey: Aha. Thanks. Still odd behavior, but that makes it much less frustrating.

Peeve solved.

Kristensen even posted a video he created that shows how to "Toggle Visual Studio tool windows between last floating location and last docking location using Ctrl+double-click." A user replied "Nice one!" and asked if the feature was new. "No, it's an old one," Kristensen replied.

Similar scenarios played out several times, as many developers are simply unaware of all the features of Visual Studio.

If no feature yet exists to solve a peeve, Kristensen many times pointed to a related Developer Community feedback submission and replied, "Vote here."

For example, SkinnySackboy's peeve is "Renaming a project which doesn't result in renaming the folder automatically."

Kristensen pointed to the Developer Community item "Project Rename - Rename Folder" ("At a minimum, renaming a project should prompt to also rename its containing folder."). It has garnered 410 votes -- and it was posted in 2018. It's still "Under Review."

Here are a few other peeves and and peeve responses:

• Peeve: If I copy an error from error window it will always copy the headers: severity, level… I need to go and instal an extension just so I can copy the error message..
  Reply: Please vote here
• Peeve: My copilot auto complete indents each line of parameters one level further each line. So I now spend more time unindenting code than writing it 🥲
  Reply: I believe this is being fixed atm
• Peeve: I want to have multiple start up project configurations
  Reply: Vote here
• Peeve: In the git commit window, I would like to be able to pick from a list of commit co-authors for attribution. VS Code has this ability.
  Reply: Good one. Cast your vote here
• Peeve: I love most everything about visual studio, but one feature I wish it had was the ability to somehow change the title bar color on an instance to indicate it's a different solution open.
  Reply: See this [Kristensen-authored extension called Solution Colors]
• Peeve: can't create new folder in same step as new file eg '/Folder/File.razor'
  Reply: You can. Use Shift+F2 to quickly create files and folders. You can even create multiple by comma separating them
• Peeve: Inability to use a shortcut to go to the parent node (in XML, but also in C# (find the enclosing if, for example)).
  Reply: Shift+Alt+[ works in C# and other languages, but not in XML, I'm afraid
• Peeve: Lack of devcontainer and remote dev support
  Reply: Have you looked at Microsoft Dev Box as a remote solution?

Many more peeves haven't been replied to as of this writing, as peeves were still being posted as of yesterday (Jan. 23). One mentioned earlier is from that date: "How much time do you have? LOL I've been keeping a running list!"