Part II: Software Engineering and Computer Games Reference. Visual Studio, Version 6.0, came with a useful profiler tool for finding out how much time you are spending inside each of your functions.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has removed this utility from the Visual Studio.NET, Version 7.0 release. It's almost worthwhile keeping a copy of Version 6.0 around just for the profiler! Otherwise you will need to get a third-party profiling tool to use with Visual Studio.NET.
Creating Visual Studio Add-Ins. Visual Studio provides one of the most powerful IDEs on the market.
One under-exploited aspect of this IDE is the extensibility model. Programming IDEs are not static development tools. Development techniques, tools, and concepts change. Extensibility has been built into Visual Studio from its early inceptions. The great thing about Microsoft’s foresight is that you can augment functionality of Visual Studio yourself.