Microsoft introduced a beta plug-in for the company's Visual Studio development environment today. Visual Studio Achievements is a free plug-in that allows developers to unlock achievements and badges, in the same way that Xbox gamers pick up achievements. Developers can even compete with each other on a virtual leader board for coding bragging rights. Microsoft says the plug-in is designed to be "playful and pragmatic," built to help developers discover new features of the Visual Studio application.
Developers will be greeted with the classic "achievement unlocked" toast on their desktop after particular events are triggered inside Visual Studio. There are 32 achievements across six categories, and badges can be shared on Twitter, Facebook and blogs thanks to a javascript widget. With achievements like "Lonely" and "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)," it's probably a good idea not to share every badge on your social network though. You can grab the free plug-in at the source link below.
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Ridiculous, but fun.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 12:45 PM EST via mobile reply Recommend (19) Flag actions
Agreed. It seems absolutely nuts but I’m all for adding more fun to life.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 12:46 PM EST reply Recommend (8) Flag actions
I’d be up for a bit of healthy competition. But I think it’d be hard to hoard dem achievements without any knowledge of how to code.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 12:59 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
It’s obviously being aimed at existing developers.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 1:18 PM EST reply Recommend (3) Flag actions
Take it as motivation to learn! :)
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 8:20 PM EST reply Recommend (1) Flag actions
As ridiculously stupid as this it, I still found myself installing it.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 12:57 PM EST reply Recommend (5) Flag actions
This is a little silly. The best ones I saw:
Go To Hell
(0 points)
Use of the goto keyword. Um, I heard it was a best practice that you weren’t supposed to do that anymore.
Job Security
(0 points)
Write 20 single letter class level variables in one file. Kudos to you for being cryptic!
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 12:59 PM EST reply Recommend (6) Flag actions
It’s best practice to avoid it as much as possible, but there are times when it’s better to use goto than (for example) to code stepping out of deeply nested loops. A single goto can save a lot of extra conditional tests, if used carefully.
If used badly, your code will turn into a spaghetti of pain when you’re debugging.
Like all coding guidelines, you should know when to break this one.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 6:48 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
(sigh) Sorry, I looked up the achievement and realised that wasn’t your commentchrise524, but the funny one in the achievement.
d’oh! (slaps forehead)
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 6:50 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
Usually I get out of nested loops by returning a value.
Posted on Jan 24, 2012 | 5:50 AM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
that’s great. I wonder what achievements I have already earned…
must. resist. temptation.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 1:11 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
Lonely
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 1:18 PM EST reply Recommend (10) Flag actions
well played sir. well played.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 1:20 PM EST reply Recommend (1) Flag actions
might just encourage me to play with it more often
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 1:20 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
Hopefully, it makes the achievement unlock sound like on the Xbox.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 1:34 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
Badges? We don’t need any stinkin’ badges.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 2:02 PM EST reply Recommend (2) Flag actions
Wow, I made a joke about this years ago! I can’t believe they went ahead and did it!
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 2:03 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
I need to know what achievement is assigned to the man running with scissors.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 2:22 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
O wait they are on the website. Most of these achievements are really really totally senseless.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 2:26 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
A lot of coders with ADD gotta keep it interesting. xD
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 3:13 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
It’s such a shame,..they could have done this right and built an awesome community a la StackOverflow.com. At least half of the badges are awarded for things that are considered bad practice. I think they kinda missed the point of gameification here.
Still installed it though,..might be fun. :-)
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 4:00 PM EST reply Recommend (2) Flag actions
“Dude, did you check out my awesome NullPointer?!”
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 4:08 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
Are they that desperate for people to use Visual Studio?
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 4:08 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
Not in the least.
Posted on Jan 18, 2012 | 4:11 PM EST reply Recommend (8) Flag actions
If you bothered to look at the achievements, you’ll find that they’re a humorous range of activities that ‘reward’ using Visual Studio properly (e.g. navigating around your project, closing unused tabs etc.), organising your code efficiently (e.g. using regions), using the debugger (e.g. use step-over 10 times) and so on. Some are just for fun, like the ‘Lonely’ achievement for coding at the weekend, but I’m all for something that injects a bit of fun into a beginner coder’s life. Finally, some of the achievements require FxCop, which is A Good Thing – that’s a great tool for checking the quality of your code.
It’s certainly better than a dry MSDN paper on How To Use Visual Studio.
Posted on Jan 22, 2012 | 4:01 PM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
What’s the story behind ‘Interrupting Cow’ then? It it actually as offensive as my mind is parsing it to be?
Posted on Jan 19, 2012 | 6:44 AM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
A: Knock, knock.
B: Who’s there?
A: The interrupting cow.
B: The interrupting cow—
A: Moo
Posted on Jan 19, 2012 | 9:34 AM EST reply Recommend (2) Flag actions
I had never heard of this thing! :)
Posted on Jan 19, 2012 | 10:18 AM EST reply Recommend Flag actions
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