Visual Studio Makes Me Lazy
When i was doing Classic ASP and PHP work for websites i didn’t really use anything more then GoLive or Dreamweaver and sometimes the ever handy Notepad. For the most part it was just the file management and the syntax highlighting i needed. Moving to .NET let me enter the world of IDEs outside of the classroom environment. I loved it, i learned a lot just by having intellisense show me options. It helped me explore a few things i never would have even known to try.
However, it also seems to have made me lazy. I just spent a good hour trying to figure out why my Linq to Sql classes i just set up weren’t working. I use the basic Add New -> Linq to Sql Classes and then just drag the tables i need and have it generate all the classes for me. EASY!
Well it turns out that this time it didn’t add the appropriate assembly to the webconfig. All that was missing was
<add assembly=”System.Data.Linq, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″/>
In some ways Visual Studio was vastly increased my speed in pumping out a web application, in others it has stunted my knowledge. I never had to create some of the things it does for me so i probably don’t fully understand what it is doing. Understanding this means i should probably poke around more often and see what its doing automatically in case i ever need to do it by hand. Sheesh.