Visual Studio '11' Announced

Sure it looks all pretty, but have they made it faster and more reliable?

VS2010 is just damn slow and falls over on me at least 2-3 times a day which is not acceptable. When you pay for 25 VS2010 premium licenses with MSDN on top of your gold partner allowance, you expect it to work.

It's interesting that Microsoft chose to adopt monochrome icons after Mac OS X / iTunes adopted monochrome icons. I'd be curious if Apple's design was a major influence on Microsoft's designers, or if the idea for monochrome icons came primarily from independent research/user testing.

I don't know the when we arrived in this new world, where thoughtful design is king, but I am glad to be here.

I'm sorry, but I use color to locate things. This, to me, is a disaster. If this isn't a problem for other people, fine, but it's a problem to me. A better solution would have been to use less color and desaturated tones rather than simply going to full on black and white, which serves only to rob the IDE of potential visual cues. This is like using a cannon to kill a bird. Just because they overcolorized VS2010 for no apparent reason doesn't mean they need to overcompensate in the opposite direction. I can't use this until someone comes up with color-based icons for it.

Interesting thing about VS and Xcode is that they do not really try to compete with somebody or fight for attention. Both Windows and Mac/iOS developers would use less useful tools if they still let them make products for the popular platforms. JetBrains, Borland and others are fighting for attention and developers' love. They must try really-really hard to make people choose an alternative to the official tools.

So both MS and Apple teams may focus on what is "right" and avoid feature bloat in UI, avoid quick and dirty solutions etc. Yes, they must include some features quickly and efficiently to allow support for some new APIs in the new products. But the overall design and fit and finish is free to define however they want. They can spend time making it right and redoing it how they please. They have resources and expertise for that and they don't need be in a stressing "competition" mood.

I'm really disappointed by what Microsoft did with Visual Studio. They have great technology - great language, great compiler support and integration with editors. But the way it is all presented and organized is all boring mess of panels and tons of icons. They even understand all the icons are heavy for eyes, but instead of rethinking the design, they simply ask "40 existing and 36 new VS users" how do they like monochrome versions.

Apple's Xcode 3 was also a messy window/panel cluttered tool like many others. Many still considered it lighter than any other complex IDE, but it was fairly cluttered on its own. Next version, Xcode 4 was not designed by "asking developers". Developers want a pink pony and all the features in one click. Xcode 4 was designed. They made priorities and straightened UI so much it is now Plain Straight. One window, three panes, 7 buttons on toolbar. Just by learning a single screenshot with both sidebars opened, you already know how to navigate 80% of the time. It is crucial. You don't have to read huge manual to learn more and more useful things. They all are discoverable over time. Most important things are more visible, others are discovered over time.

Apple and Microsoft are rarely in position to throw old stuff out and replace it with brand new in their actual products that make money. Windows, Mac, iOS all have its legacy which must be dealt with. But UI for developer tools are different and Microsoft has no excuse not to make it interesting. Unless, of course, they don't want to maintain their own engineering culture.