>> On today's Visual Studio Toolbox, Mads Christensen returns
to show us some of his favorite features
in Visual Studio 2019. Should we make this a
longer, or shorter episode? [MUSIC]. >> Hi. Welcome to
Visual Studio Toolbox. I'm your host Robert Green
and joining me today is Mads Christensen. Mads, Welcome back. >> Thank you very much. >> It's been a long time. >> Yes. >> Way too long since
you've been on the show. >> I agree. It's good to be back. >> We're here to talk
about Visual Studio 2019, which has just recently shipped. Had a great launch, a lot of
great content from the launch event, we'll have pointers to that. But I thought what we would
do, is a couple of things. One, is just have you come on in and show us some
of your favorite features, to keep the excitement going, and then two we're going
to try and experiment. We talked a lot about how
long these shows should be? And when do people stop watching? And I tend to go longer than people want because
I tend to talk a lot. So we're going to try
and experiment today. I'm going to do less talking, and we're going to
focus more on demos, and we're going to see what happens if we keep this
a shorter episode, and then you guys are going to tell
us whether or not you like it. >> So I basically have 15 minutes. >> Fifteen minutes. >> To show as many of
my favorite features as I can. >> Yes, starting right now. >> All right so in
Visual Studio 2019, I want to start with
the new search experience. So we completely redid how we do
Visual Studio Search. I love it. So as I type, you see how I get search results. I get that globally from
around Visual Studio, all the commands, menus, components, templates, all sorts
of things, including options. So let me just start by going in here and make the font a little larger in the editor
when we get to that. I can also say new console app, that gives me the console
app template. I'm just going to say
okay, to create that. That was it, I now have
a new console app. >> Wow. >> That was fast, right? >> So that's even
faster than calling up the new dialogue and
searching in that. >> It is. >> Geez. >> Yes, that's why it's one
of my favorite features. It makes me more productive. So let's start coding here. So this is just the default static
void main method I have here. Let's see if we can do
something a little different. So let's create a string array. I'm going to create
a new array of strings, okay? I'm going to put
two strings in there. I basically want "Hello
world" to be in an array. So I'm going to copy hello, Control C to copy, and I'm going to go straight on
and Control C again on world. So now I've copied both. So now, I want to hit
Control Shift V to insert. Not Control V to paste
but Control Shift V, and that gives me the clipboard ring which is now visualized
so I can choose, which of the things I've copied, and insert them super
easily like this. >> Nice. So if you do a Control V, will it insert in order? >> Yes. So Control V is
just a normal paste. >> All right. >> But Control Shift V which
has been there for a long time. >> Control V has been
there for a long time. >> Control Shift V has been
there for along time too. >> Okay. >> But as the new thing,
it visualize. You can see what's in the clipboard
ring is what it's called. >> So Control C, Control C has always stored multiple things
to the clipboard? >> Yeah. >> Cool. >> Yeah. So moving on, let's say that I want to print out, I want to concatenate
these two hello and world. I want to concatenate
them into one string and that I want to write
out to the console. But only, and this is
a contrived example. But I want to make
an if statement here. If my list.length is
larger than zero, then I want to print out. So I'm just going to
hit dot and look at all these new things I've got here. Refactoring. So we got a bunch of new refactoring that
makes it super easy to do all sorts of more advanced things and I'm actually just going to add
braces to this one like this. So that's been there for awhile. But it's really helpful to have all these new refactorings
that make me make it easier to convert code from
one thing to the other. Going back from link queries to
foreach loops and vice versa. >> Cool. >> Really really helpful. So now
I can simply just go down here, and do a string join. I'm going to join on an empty string, and I'm going to provide a list. Now see what happened here. I'm going to just force this again. So I'm going to zoom in. Notice how the first two
items, list and args. Arg has a star because IntelliCode, which is a new feature
in Visual Studio, it's an optional extension at the moment so you
have to install them. But it knows the context I'm in. It knows that this particular
method, the string join method, takes an array of strings
and then it knows that, "Oh, I actually have
two that are in scope." I have args up here and
I have list right here. So it suggests to me those at
the top of the completion list. So that's just super helpful, and I can easily insert like that. >> Cool. >> So IntelliCode is really
a fantastic aid especially when you're dealing with new APIs that you're not so familiar with. It helps you to figure out what is the most common use
patterns of different API. >> IntelliCode is basically IntelliSense with
bunch of AI behind it. >> Yeah. >> Getting very smart about it. >> We've been scanning
like thousands of GitHub repos for
the different languages, for C# for instance, to figure out how people used
various different APIs. Based on that, we put it into
a machine learning model and outcomes a very very clever
IntelliSense engine. >> Cool. >> Well, that sits on top of
the current IntelliSense. So that's very nice and I forgot
a parenthesis here. All right. So let's set a break point. So now it runs and it breaks
and I can see down here in my Local's window that I have my list member here
and I can now search. So I can now search
for world and notice how it can find values that
are in lists or dictionaries, whatever, no matter how deep
they are in the hierarchy. So that's really welcomed
and that works in Autos, Locals and the Watch windows. So it makes it very easy
to find these hard to find some time values of
properties and so on. >> Cool. >> So I'm just going
to continue here, F5. We can see the hello world
is printed out but notice, it didn't close down
when it was done, it keeps going, and there
it goes. That's very nice. So that was some of the new things. So what you probably couldn't tell was that the step debugging
was a lot faster. So as I was setting the break point
and it was hitting, that's over 50 percent faster
now than it used to be. >> Okay. >> That's a very very nice thing. >> Yeah, it's hard to tell in
a simple console app like this. >> Yeah, right. All right. So let's make a mistake here. So I'm removing a parenthesis here
so I now have a syntax error. So at the bottom of the window, I now have what's called the
document health indicator. So it tells me without
having the arrow list open, I can now see that, "Oh, I
actually have one error. I don't have any warnings." But that makes it super easy
for me to see that, "It's not greened, this file
actually have some issues.". >> Right. >> Typically, that's because you scroll your syntax errors out of you, and so you don't necessarily know when you're trying
to build for instance. So glancing at this makes
it super convenient to see. So I can navigate
between these errors, Alt Page Up and Page Down. So that takes me exactly
to where they are, and I can fix them to recently and now no issues found we're good to go. >> Cool. So that's in addition to the showing it on
the scroll bar as well, right? >> Well, yes and it gives you
the navigation so you can very easily go between the errors
and see what's going on. >> So I want to show
another thing here. So let's just save this. Let's add this to source control. >> Let's do that. >> So I'm going to
right-click this solution and I'm going to Add Solution to Source Control and it's going to
add it to Git, and here we go. Now it's all first commit.
Now, let's make a change. This change I want to
do is I want to clean up this file a little bit. So I want to remove all the comments. You can see there are
other things here like I have unused using
statements and so on. Let's produce some formatting issues here like I have
some wrong indentation here. So I have an extension
called comment remover, that lets me very easily just remove comments with a keyboard
shortcut, like that. Now, I want to do the code cleanup. So as a new feature down
here at the bottom, let's zoom in here a little bit, we can see that we have a couple of profiles for code
clean up that we can run, one of them has a keyboard
shortcut assigned to it, and we can configure
those two profiles in here. So I can figure them to have
a bunch of code fixers. Now, these code fixers
I can remove them out or back into what
the profile will run. These includes like
"sort usings" or "remove unnecessary usings."
A bunch of things. So now if I hit "Ctrl KE", that was the keyboard shortcut, we can see here how my code
is just tightened up. If I were to do a code review, I'm in a much better place
right now because now we don't have to talk about formatting and coding style
convention and so on. >> How do you create those? >> You go down here to the bottom and open the menu and
click "Configure Code Cleanup." >> So how do you find
additional fixers to add? >> So right now the only fixers are the ones that are
build-in there, 14 build-in. >> Okay. >> So in the future, we
will see this change. >> Okay. >> But as of right now we
have this 14 build-in. >> Got it. Okay. >> They're super helpful. So now I have a change, I'm
going to save the file. I'm going to commit, it but I'm not going
to fully commit this. I'm going to call this cleanup. Instead, I'm going to stash it. So I'm just going to stash. So what happens is I don't
create another branch, I basically create a stash where I'd take the changes that I have
and put them away locally. If you see what happened is
that my changes in the source here was reverted because I took
the changes and stashed them. So if you're used to TFS, for instance, you have a shell set. >> Right. >> The difference is that shell set actually exists on the remote server, whereas a git stash
only exists locally. So only on my machine here. >> Okay. >> But I have it right down here, I can apply it anytime I want. Typically, use cases for
this is I make a change, but then I have to fix a bug really quick and I have
to change branches. So I can stash my stuff, change my branch, and then come back afterwards to that branch
and apply it again. Or I can work in one branch, figure it out, "Oh man, I should
have done it in another branch. Stash my change, change
to that other branch, and apply it to that branch." >> Branch? >> Yes. So that's super helpful that I can do it all
the way right here. All right. Let me show you
another really cool thing. This is the last thing
I want to show. >> Okay. >> So let's close
this solution. I'm going to open a bigger solution that's
got a bunch of projects. >> Pro Power Tools.
My all-time favorite. >> Pro Power Tools. Actually, I want to do something a
little bit different. I want to open it in a different way. >> We had the very first
Visual Studio toolbox episodes about Productivity Power Tools. We split into two episodes
because we had to keep it short. >> So now I want to open
a solution that's on my desk here. There's now a new option down here. So say "Don't load the projects." All right. That's kind of bizarre
until you see what's going on. This is a solution that
has many projects. There are solutions out
there that are way bigger, but you saw how fast this was loaded. >> Yes. >> So a typical scenario is that, if you have a solution
with a lot of projects, you might only work on
a subset of those projects. So it could be like
you have a backend and then you have like a Windows, desktop front end and
ASP.NET front end. But you only work on
either the ASP.NET front end or any of these other things, so why even load the rest? So now nothing is loaded. I can go in and say "I want to
load this particular project." So just like normal, I
can say "Reload project." But now I can also go in here and
say "Load Project Dependencies." Okay. I have this particular project
has other dependencies on other projects in the solution
that it needs in order to build. So now I can do that. In this case, it was just this other
[inaudible] up here. >> Cool. >> So now these are
the only two projects loaded, and I can hide everything else
or show it again up here. >> Is there a way to basically
set the equivalent of a profile, where some days I want to
load these three projects, other times I want to load
a different three projects? >> Yes. I'm glad you asked. So now that I have
my definition here, these are the two projects I want
the solution that I care about. I can right-click and say
"Save As Solution Filter." >> I love that. This
was not scripted. Ladies and gentlemen,
I actually was just thinking that would
be a cool thing to have. It's already in there. >> It was a perfect segue. >> Cool. >> So this saves a file. So I'm going to call this one since you know that the project names
are column guide. So I'm just going to
call it Column Guide, and if we look here, it's
going to save as an slnf file. So solution filter is the f. >> Cool. >> So save that. Now, let's
just close this solution. Now I have the slnf, I open it. Boom, it only loads this. So that slnf file roams in my repo. So other members of
my team can also use this. You can create as many as you want. So it can be one for
the ASP.NET team, one for the desktop team, one
for the back-end team and so on. >> Excellent. >> So that's very helpful. So one question that
we get with this is, well, what if you make
changes to the solution file? Let's say you add new solution items. In here for instance, what
if I add a new file here? Well, how does that then roam
between those different filters? Well, the good news is that
the filters are actually just a small little JSON file describing just a project
that it has to load, but it still uses
the original sln file to figure out what is there. So when you make changes
to the actual solution, everyone gets the benefit
regardless of what filter they have applied. >> Right. Because it is just a
filter of what's project is open. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Cool. >> So if you have a big solution
then this is going to speed up your, I work day a lot. >> That's excellent. >> Yeah. >> Cool. >> Those were my favorite features
and there's a bunch more. But these are my favorites. >> That was one minute me talking and 15 minutes
of demo. We did it. >> Yes. >> I actually like this a lot. I think we should do more of these. But as always, you guys let us know if you liked the 15 minutes or if you wanted us to spend
more time diving down. So as always this show
is all about you. So let us know what you think. Hope you like that and
we will see you next time on Visual Studio Toolbox. [MUSIC]
