When VS 2002 was first coming out, I was a Classic ASP w/VB6 COM developer, used to doing the ASP part of my work in TextPad, so I started off doing all of my ASP.NET in TextPad as well. It was painful for a while, but it did help me (force me) to learn all the syntax the hard way, using the Class Browser, Reflector, and MSDN. It was fun to see the look of horror on the faces of my audience in my early Datagrid presentations, where I presented using TextPad as well. Finally I switched over to using VS2002/2003 as I worked with clients who were using it, and while I didn't feel like I *needed* the Intellisense, it was nice to have, and sometimes sped up the process, since I didn't have to hit the references as much.
Now it's two years later and I'm hooked on Intellisense like a crack addict. I'll be typing an email or a post on the ASP.NET forums, and if I type System (DOT) and nothing comes up, I feel naked and alone. Or in VS.NET, if Intellisense lags a little bit (because I'm running 94 other apps at the same time, and sucking down RAM), I'll type the period and wait for that next name to popup, even though I could have typed it myself while I sat there and waited. Plus I email a good bit from my Pocket PC, which has its own flavor of Intellisense, guessing (sometimes poorly) which word I'm choosing next.
So imagine my giddiness today when working on a VS 2005 project, and see the Intellisense delight appear in the Watch window:
It also looks like Intellisense got better in the ASPX/ASCX files as well. Intellisense everywhere, Intellisense for all!
Now I'm waiting for dasBlog Intellisense to guess what I want type for the rest of this post...
--Marcie