The way out there wish list...

[Merrion]

Any things we'd like to see in the dream version of VB:-

* A flow document designer as easy to use as the windows form designer (or the ability to drop in .docx files and add code to them in the VS IDE)

(Add your killer feature thoughts...?)

[Merrion]

* Compiler (code free) multithreading - I check a compile option and the generated code is automagically safely multithreaded

[RobDog888]

I believe your first choice there may be done with VSTO 08. Have you tried out VSTO 2005 SE?

[brad jones]

* Compiler (code free) multithreading - I check a compile option and the generated code is automagically safely multithreaded

I have to chime in on this one....

I hear this a lot when the conversations happen on multithreading. How would the compiler know what code can or can't be run concurrently? There is some code where order doesn't matter so breaking it into threads willy nilly is fine. There is a lot of code that is transactional or sequential that simply can't be run concurrently.

Consider a very deluted example:

tax = .07
price = product * tax

If you break the above into two threads and run each line of code on a different thread, then you never know what price will be because you won't know if the tax was set before or after.

For the following:

product1 = product1_original * 1.10
product2 = product2_original * 1.10

order doesn't matter, so these two lines could be executed on separate threads.

How would the compiler be able to differ between these two to know which could and which could not be threaded? It can't. You'd have to tell it. That is why I'll be surprised to see a "code free" option. Granted, I believe the compiler might be able to make some determinations, but never at the level you'd want.

I know this is a very simple example of something that wouldn't be threaded, but the underlying point is relevant.

There are solutions around that will let you attribute your code to indicate to the compiler what can and can't be threaded. The threading is then handled through a 3rd party library making it pretty easy to add.

Brad!

[brad jones]

I believe your first choice there may be done with VSTO 08. Have you tried out VSTO 2005 SE?

Visual Studio Tools for Office is not integrated into Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition and higher. It was a separate product in earlier releases; however, with 2005, if you had Professional edition or higher, you could get the VSTO stuff to (Microsoft made it available to you).

Brad!

[RS_Arm]

I would like to see in future versions of VB, opacity made with png files (masks), so that you can make, for instance, an opacity gradient in a form or a label.

[techgnome]

A code flow charting - would allow quick identification of dead code, incidental recursions, dead ends, and decision trees. Double-clicking on an shape would take you to that part of the code.

-tg

[timeshifter]

Ooh.. that'd be a nice one. Might help find bottlenecks in large projects, too.

[nbrege]

I would like to see connector lines in the IDE that connect an If statement to it's matching End If, For...Next, Do...Loop, etc. Sometimes when you have nested If statements or For/Next loops it's gets hard to tell what goes to what or sometimes both aren't on the screen at the same time. It should be toggleable from the toolbar. Anyone else think this would be helpful?

[RS_Arm]

I would like to see some kind of formating/classifying the source code by colors, for instance, mark a few lines with green and have some categorization for those colors:green-tested, orange-tested but with bugs, etc.

[Hack]

I would like to see connector lines in the IDE that connect an If statement to it's matching End If, For...Next, Do...Loop, etc

Although this would be a nice feature, I agree, properly indenting the code generally takes care of this.

[techgnome]

And with Smart Tab turned on.... it's almost as autonomous as breathing....

-tg

[Shaggy Hiker]

I'd like to see a block commenting option like /*....*/ in C. This would not only be very nice for documenting, it would be a handy debug tool to block off a chunk of code. Doing this with the standard ' can be error prone.

[techgnome]

I highlight the section, then hit Ctrl-K,Ctrl-C .... comments out the whole thing... Ctrl-K,Ctrl-U undoes the comment....
But there are times when /* ... */ would be handy.

-tg

[Shaggy Hiker]

I thought you'd gone off to truck driving school, yet here you are with a tip that I hadn't seen before (actually, it looks vaguely familiar, so I think I DID see it once before, but there just may be too many key options for me to remember).

[techgnome]

Actually, it almost became Train school.... but the cut in pay was just a bit too much.... Besides, jsut because I'm not passionate about doing this any more doesn't meant I can't impart some of my knowledge.

-tg