SYSK 173: Rediscovering the Immediate Window

Many developers that started their programming carriers with Visual Basic have quickly come to appreciate the power of the Immediate Window.  The documentation at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/f177hahy.aspx describes it as following: “The Immediate window is used at design time to debug and evaluate expressions, execute statements, print variable values, and so forth. It allows you to enter expressions to be evaluated or executed by the development language during debugging.  You can use this window to issue individual Visual Studio commands. The available commands include EvaluateStatement, which can be used to assign values to variables.”

One challenge is that in Visual Studio 2005, it’s no longer found in any of the menus.  To “bring it back”, press Ctrl+Alt+I.  The alternative is to open the command window (Ctrl+Alt+A or click View -> Other Windows -> Command Window), and the type “immed” (no double quotes) in it.