As I am sure most of you are aware, Microsoft has released the VS 2008 IDE to MSDN subscribers yesterday.  I decided to give it a download and take it for a twirl.  I thought I would must dump a few random thoughts from my hour or so of 'playing' with it.

1. It appears to be running MUCH faster.  However, keep in mind I have not opened any large projects in it yet.  And, this is installed inside a new VM running Vista.
2. Opening VS2005 project/solution files seems to work without a hitch (as it should).  I was able to open up and convert an existing project with no issues.
3. Automatic properties are kinda cool.  I think this feature will be extremely useful in reducing unneeded code.  But if you do anything in your properties beside get/set values this new language feature will do you no good.
4. Object Initializes are kinda cool, but I am not 100% convinced of their usefulness.  I am not saying there is NO need for this feature, but I am not really sure what value it adds.  Also, if you DON'T have a empty default constructor, you CANNOT use this new feature.
5. Extension methods are cool, but I can see this new feature being the singly most abused feature.  Give the man a hammer and everything becomes a nail.

Anyway, thought I would just share my initial random thoughts on VS 2008.  And kudos to MS, they released a product early for once.  Well, at least early based on the product name :)

Till next time