Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)

Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? Ruminations on the Psychology and Aesthetics of Coding By Charles Petzold A Talk Delivered at the NYC .NET Developer’s Group, October 20, 2005 Abstract: Visual Studio can be one of the programmer's best friends, but over the years it has become increasingly pushy, domineering, and suffering from unsettling control issues. Should we just surrender to Visual Studio's insistence on writing our code for us? Or is Visual Studio sapping our programming intelligence rather than augmenting it? This talk dissects the code generated by Visual Studio; analyzes the appalling programming practices it perpetuates; rhapsodizes about the joys, frustrations, and satisfactions of unassisted coding; and speculates about the radical changes that Avalon will bring. I don’t speak to user groups or developer groups very often, partially because of a bad experience I had a number of years ago. In 1991, the Boston Computer Society invited me to speak on the subject of Win ... Read full article.