I've often wondered how life as an add-in developer for Visual Studio is like. On one hand you have the power to create tools and utilities which will benefit you greatly in your everyday life and you get the added benefit of geek-cred if you do your job really well.

On the other hand though we've got Microsoft who for any given release of a product can annihilate your entire market simple as that. In the same stroke they create markets simply by making stupid mistakes so it's really a double edge sword when you're working in semi-competition with Microsoft.

I think the newly released version of Visual Studio 2008, ah 2005 I hardly knew you, is a shining example of that however small the example is.

TestDriven.NET an add-in which has proven very useful to me, particularly for a single function: Run Test in Local Scope. Basically it allows me to execute the test I'm currently in with a shortcut and you know that I'm all about the shortcut driven development :)

Visual Studio 2008 introduces unit testing features in the professional version for the first time ever and with it a nice addition which does exactly what I've used TestDriven.NET for in the past: Run Test in Local Scope. It's even bound to the same shortcut that I chose myself when I configured TestDriven.NET the very first time. Just go CTRL + R + T and your test will execute. W

With a single stroke of genius Microsoft has taken away my need to install a third party add-in in Visual Studio 2008 by providing me with exactly what I need out of the box. Of course the feature only works with MSTest which will be a problem for all you xUnit users out there but we've run with MSTest for a while now making it a perfect fit.

Oh yeah - Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 this week :)