MS VS2013 Community Edition - free

[DJofSD]

http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/free-developer-offers-vs

There are some restrictions but basically for you or for me, it's free!

It's a large installation -- the initial D/L is small but triggers a 9 GB D/L (which I am still in the middle of doing).

Any words of wisdom from current VS developers before I jump in with both feet? Hints about the IDE? Version control systems? Porting cross platform especially to iOS devices?

[DeltaLover]

http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/free-developer-offers-vs

There are some restrictions but basically for you or for me, it's free!

It's a large installation -- the initial D/L is small but triggers a 9 GB D/L (which I am still in the middle of doing).

Any words of wisdom from current VS developers before I jump in with both feet? Hints about the IDE? Version control systems? Porting cross platform especially to iOS devices?

I was using VS from version 1.5 to 10, when I decided that I was going to move away from it. There is no doubt that it is a very mature and powerfull IDE and if you are planning to develop on top of the microsoft stack there is not a better choice.

I would never even think of developing for VS without the assistance of resharper, although I am hearing some good comments about coderush lately, in any case though you need this kind of an add-on to make your coding easier and less error-prone.

When it comes to version control, I think that git is your best choice with a distant second subversion ( i was using it with turtoise for a few years with good results).. If you are going to develop for the enterprise, you might want to consider perforce..

reflector web essentials and code health indicator might be good to have as well and when it comes to unit testing my favourite used to be nunit...

[DJofSD]

Thanks, DL.

So far, the IDE looks familiar.

I see I have a choice for version control and git is one of the choices.

I'll need to come up to speed for the other things you've mentioned.

One thing I am hoping to find, either as a facility already present in the editor or can be made a part of the IDE via an add-in, is a tool I use for my current dev platform. It is actually just one tool of many in the add-in, and, it draws lines of different colors to visually "connect" blocks of code. The blocks are those formed from begin/end, if-then-else, case statements, etc. The sequence of the lines match the patten of a rainbow depending upon how deeply nested is your logic. Those colored lines coupled with the code folding facility makes it very easy to keep track of blocks of code. And, yes, I know, keeping things smallish so the code is not spread over many, many pages is the best way to go.

[DeltaLover]

One thing I am hoping to find, either as a facility already present in the editor or can be made a part of the IDE via an add-in, is a tool I use for my current dev platform. It is actually just one tool of many in the add-in, and, it draws lines of different colors to visually "connect" blocks of code. The blocks are those formed from begin/end, if-then-else, case statements, etc. The sequence of the lines match the patten of a rainbow depending upon how deeply nested is your logic. Those colored lines coupled with the code folding facility makes it very easy to keep track of blocks of code. And, yes, I know, keeping things smallish so the code is not spread over many, many pages is the best way to go.

What kind of an IDE you are currently using? Lately I have adopted PyCharm which out of the box provides these line you are mentioning here and I have found it useful. I think I have seem similar solutions for VS... Take a look:

https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/43bc4a3a-0182-4c36-8159-a0a4cdfd04bd

Here you can find quite a few extensions for VS:
https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/

And if you want to write your own, you can start from here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd885119.aspx

[DJofSD]

What kind of an IDE you are currently using? Lately I have adopted PyCharm which out of the box provides these line you are mentioning here and I have found it useful. I think I have seem similar solutions for VS... Take a look:

https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/43bc4a3a-0182-4c36-8159-a0a4cdfd04bd

Here you can find quite a few extensions for VS:
https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/

And if you want to write your own, you can start from here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd885119.aspx
Ya, ya, excellent -- that is what I tried to describe. Thanks!

[DeltaLover]

Ya, ya, excellent -- that is what I tried to describe. Thanks!

Cool..
What language(s) you use?

[DJofSD]

Primarily, Object Pascal, aka Delphi, aka RAD Studio. Dabbling in Objective C.

[DeltaLover]

Primarily, Object Pascal, aka Delphi, aka RAD Studio. Dabbling in Objective C.

None of these are suitable for VS

As far as ObjC I would recommend:

https://www.jetbrains.com/objc/