Visual Studio 2019 Tricks and Techniques: A developer's guide to writing better code and maximizing productivity

Harness the full power of the Visual Studio IDE to take your coding skills to the next level by learning about IDE productivity practices and exclusive techniques

Key Features

• Increase your productivity by leveraging Visual Studio 2019's improvements and features
• Explore powerful editing, code intelligence, and source code control features to increase productivity
• Delve into VS's powerful, untapped features such as custom project templates and extensions

Book Description

Visual Studio 2019 (VS 2019) and Visual Studio Code (VS Code) are powerful professional development tools that help you to develop applications for any platform with ease. Whether you want to create web, mobile, or desktop applications, Microsoft Visual Studio is your one-stop solution. This book demonstrates some of the most sophisticated capabilities of the tooling and shows you how to use the integrated development environment (IDE) more efficiently to be more productive.

You'll begin by gradually building on concepts, starting with the basics. The introductory chapters cover shortcuts, snippets, and numerous optimization tricks, along with debugging techniques, source control integration, and other important IDE features that will help you make your time more productive. With that groundwork in place, more advanced concepts such as the inner workings of project and item templates are covered. You will also learn how to write quality, secure code more efficiently as well as discover how certain Visual Studio features work 'under the hood'.

By the end of this Visual Studio book, you'll have learned how to write more secure code faster than ever using your knowledge of the extensions and processes that make developing successful solutions more enjoyable and repeatable.

What you will learn

• Understand the similarities and differences between VS 2019 and VS Code
• Get to grips with numerous keyboard shortcuts to improve efficiency
• Discover IDE tips and tricks that make it easier to write code
• Experiment with code snippets that make it easier to write repeating code patterns
• Find out how to customize project and item templates with the help of hands-on exercises
• Use Visual Studio extensions for ease and improved productivity
• Delve into Visual Studio's behind the scene operations

Who this book is for

This book is for C# and .NET developers who want to become more efficient and take advantage of features they may not be aware of in the IDE. Those looking to increase their productivity and write quality code more quickly by fully utilizing the power of the Visual Studio IDE will also find this book useful.

Table of Contents

1. Flavors of Visual Studio
2. Keyboard Shortcuts
3. IDE Tips and Tricks
4. Working with a Repository
5. Working with Snippets
6. Database Explorers
7. Compiling, Debugging, and Version Control
8. Introduction to Project and Item Templates
9. Creating Your Own Template
10. Deploying Custom Templates
11. Overviewing VS 2019 Extensions
12. Overviewing VS Code Extensions
13. CodeMaid is Your Friend
14. Be Your Team's Hero with CodeGenHero
15. Secure Code with Puma Scan
16. Appendix - Other Popular Productivity Extensions

Paul Schroeder is a versatile application developer, speaker, author, and managing director at MSC Technology Consulting. Along with a multi-decade professional IT career, Paul has a bachelor's degree in computer science and an MBA, and has earned an MCSD certification for web development.

Whether coding or not, Paul enjoys spending time with his marvelous and talented wife, Robin, herself a Xamarin developer/speaker who creates Bluetooth mesh mobile applications.

Drawn to code generation, Paul is the inspiration behind CodeGenHero , an innovative Visual Studio extension, covered in Chapter 14, Be Your Team's Hero with CodeGenHero. Follow Paul at PaulBSchroeder.

Aaron Cure is a principal security consultant for Cypress Data Defense specializing in penetration testing, secure SDLC, static code review, and secure architectures. His certifications include CISSP, GPEN, GMOB, GWAPT, and GSSP-NET. As a global speaker and instructor, Aaron is passionate about helping developers understand and write safe and secure code.

Aaron transitioned to programming after a decade as a Russian linguist and a satellite repair technician in the Army. He was an early adopter of technologies such as Mono and NHibernate for cross-platform development. Besides .NET, he has programmed in PHP, Python, Perl, TCL/TK, and Java.

Currently, Aaron programs almost entirely in VS Code and .NET Core with projects transitioning to .NET 5.