While debugging, I could press "F10", keep it pressed (to single step instructions), raise my finger when I get to the right place. It all worked instantly. Now, it feels like there's half a second response time to each one of those keypresses.
While building, I could stop execution (Shift-F5) and restart (F5) in about 0.3 seconds if I didn't change any source file. VS 2010 takes about 3 seconds, on a really simple project, to figure out that it doesn't need to rebuild anything before starting. And then, it takes another second to actually start my code.
That's too flimsy a reason for labelling a product as "going downhill", in my opinion - but to each his/her own. You do realize that VS2010 has way more functionality than VS6 - debugging parallel apps/attaching to native, non-native processes and being able to step through both varieties of calls/code completion and snippets etc?
I'm not sure if you are being serious or not. You talk about all those great features that the user isn't probably interested in using, then blame those features for why the user can't start editing code in a few seconds?
Features are great when you need them. But when you don't need them, they shouldn't be negatives. Incidentally, I don't think it was really features that made VS2010 slow.
I am being serious. I'd rather doubt the seriousness of anyone moaning about an 11-second delay before they can start to code using Visual Studio while ignoring the features one truly uses Visual Studio for (which you have conveniently labelled as "not interested in using").
Why are they using Visual Studio at all then? Why not Textpad/Notepad++ or Emacs if they're so concerned about startup time? The only IDE that does come close to VS in functionality is Eclipse and that has a woefully slow startup time - never stopped any Java developer from touting that as the greatest IDE ever (it exceeds VS in many cases, IMO). Both of these IDEs, once they load, are extremely responsive considering the scale of the projects they are made to handle. JIT compilation occurs for chunks of code as you type code - that is dazzlingly fast for VS (and it's not just plain symbol-based lookup as used to happen in VS6 IntelliSense).
Incidentally, I don't think it was really features that made VS2010 slow
What do you think makes it slow during startup? According to me, it's sub-component/assembly/library load time during IDE startup and file parsing/symbol loading time during/after project-load.
Its not just start up time (only relevant on reboot or VS crash), its the amount of time it takes for VS2010 to page back in after being idle for a few hours, its the amount of it takes to edit a file, the amount of time it takes for code completion to activate, the amount of time to build your project. I'm only comparing 2010 to 2008, Microsoft's biggest competitors are often its own older products!
We can speculate all we want on what the deal is with VS2010; I'm just happy 2012 seems faster.
That's a valid comparison - 2008 vs 2010 (versus the stupid VS6 comparison) - and one I agree with in many respects - especially UI responsiveness.
However, paging-in after idle-time is pretty similar, in my experience for both 2008 and 2010 (2008 fares worse for large solutions - especially if they have web projects in there). Build times are actually faster for VS 2010 (especially if you're on x64 - where it can use multiple cores). Symbol-loading when attaching to a process to debug is way faster for VS 2010 than in 2008. Detaching from a process also seems to have less negative consequences - VS 2008 just crashed in many cases.
However, VS 2010 is way too chatty in debug trace outputs. Also, slightly slower in parsing includes for IntelliSense after project load (not so during build though, funnily enough).
