Maximizing everyday debugging

Given the frequency of debugging, any refinement to the tools used can pay immediate dividends. Visual Studio 2013 brings the popular Edit and Continue feature into the 21st century by supporting 64-bit code. Added to that is the new ability to see the return value of functions in your debugger. The addition of these features combines to make debugging code easier, allowing you to solve problems faster.

Getting ready

For this recipe, you will just need a premium version of VS2013 or you may use VS Express for Windows Desktop. Be sure to run your choice on a machine using a 64-bit edition of Windows. Note that Edit and Continue previously existed for 32-bit code.

How to do it…

Both features are now supported by C#/VB, but we will be using C# for our examples. The features being demonstrated are compiler features, so feel free to use code from one of your projects if you prefer. To see how Edit and Continue can benefit 64-bit development, perform the following steps...