Visual Studio 2012
Update 10/2016 - This posting is better viewed in my new blog . I installed Visual Studio 2012 about two weeks ago and I've been spending time experimenting with it whenever possible. I have to admit I had more than a few doubts about VS2012 going in. I disliked how Microsoft removed all colors from everything in the UI and the accents like the ALL CAP menus and the use of strings of colon characters for emphasis. I have no idea who made some of these design decisions but they were NOT made with input from the current user base regardless of Microsoft's protests to the contrary. When the beta debuted a couple months back the overwhelming top request from developers was to fix the monochrome color scheme. Microsoft went a little way towards resolving that issue by adding just a splash of color to some of the glyphs (aka icons) but the UI is still terribly bland. The first thing I did after installing was to switch to the Dark color theme. It took me a little while to get use