Visual Studio Hacks

142

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Debugging

Hacks 36–43

The ability to debug an application is arguably what turns an excellent text

editor into an interactive development environment. Without debugging,

Visual Studio is really just a feature-rich text editor that allows you to com-

pile applications. With debugging, Visual Studio turns into an invaluable

development tool. If I were to argue the merits of using an IDE versus using

just a normal text editor to develop applications, debugging would be one of

the pillars of my argument.

Visual Studio provides a rich debugging experience. You can set break-

points in your code, step through application execution line by line, and

read and set the value of variables while the application is executing.

The hacks in this chapter show you how to get the most out of debugging

with Visual Studio. You will learn how to set breakpoints, troubleshoot

breakpoints, and halt the execution of your application when exceptions are

thrown. You will also learn how to debug scripting languages like Java-

Script and VBScript, as well as how to debug T-SQL that’s running on an

instance of SQL Server.

This chapter will help you learn how to better debug your applications, lead-

ing to more productive development and more efficient bug resolution.

All of the code discussed in this chapter can be downloaded

from the book’s web site (see the Preface for more details).