Colin Thomsen's Microsoft Blog

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I'm a developer working on the code profiler that ships with Visual Studio 2010 Premium and Ultimate editions. At a previous company I worked on computer vision software for face and gaze tracking.

Remote Debugging

Every so often, on days like today, I need to debug on a machine where I don't have a debugger...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 06/30/2011

The GM of Visual Studio Ultimate, Cameron Skinner, recently gave a talk at Tech-Ed 2011 about...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 05/17/2011

VS2010: Just My Code

The ‘Just My Code’ feature in the profiler has a few differences to the ‘Just My Code’ feature in...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 05/12/2011

The Visual Studio 2010 MSDN documentation includes some more detailed examples (including...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 05/06/2011

Tip: Fixing VSPerfASPNetCmd metabase errors

VSPerfASPNetCmd is a new Visual Studio 2010 tool that helps you profile ASP.Net websites from the...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 07/23/2010

VS2010: Profiler Guidance (rules) Part 1

The new guidance feature in the VS2010 profiler will look familiar to people who have used the...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 02/25/2010

VS2010: Profiling In Progress (PIP)

With Visual Studio 2010 we want to make it clearer when you are profiling your application within...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 02/04/2010

VS2010: Investigating a sample profiling report (Function Details)

I’ve already discussed how the new profiler summary page makes it easier to discover and fix...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 01/18/2010

VS2010: New Profiler Summary Page

With Visual Studio 2010 we want to make it easier for customers to find and fix performance issues...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 12/31/2009

VS2010: Using the keyboard to profile an application (Alt-F2 shortcut)

In announcing the Visual Studio Beta 2 profiler features, Chris mentioned that we have a new option...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 12/29/2009

VS2010: Attaching the Profiler to a Managed Application

Before Visual Studio 2010, in order to attach the profiler to a managed application, certain...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 12/05/2009

PDC 2008 - See the Sessions

This year if you didn't get a chance to go to the Professional Developer's Conference (PDC), there...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 11/01/2008

Visual Studio 2010

This week Microsoft is starting to talk about Visual Studio 2010. One of the best resources I've...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 09/30/2008

Tip: VS2008 – Finding and Setting Properties (Right-Click)

The Visual Studio Profiler has many properties and options and this tip shows you where to find most...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 09/19/2008

Tip: VS2008 - Understanding Performance Targets

If you have a solution that contains multiple projects it is important to know what the 'Targets'...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 07/18/2008

Quick Tip: VS2008 - Compare Reports Quickly

While investigating a performance problem you may need to collect many Performance Reports and...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 06/20/2008

Tech-Ed 2008 Wrap-up

Quite a few people at Tech-Ed wanted to know more about the various components of Visual Studio Team...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 06/10/2008

Sysinternals is Live

I use a bunch of Sysinternals tools for diagnosing problems while developing. My two favorites are:...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 05/30/2008

Performance: Inserting Marks Using Code

Ian previously covered using the VS 2008 Data Collection Control to choose when to collect data. The...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 05/01/2008

Performance: Find Application Bottlenecks With Visual Studio Profiler

If you're a subscriber to msdn magazine, take a look at the article in the March 2008, Vol 23, No 4...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 03/13/2008

Noise Reduction in the VS2008 Profiler

One of the new profiler features in Visual Studio Team System (VS2008) is called Noise Reduction....

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 01/31/2008

Scripting for C#

Have you ever wanted to quickly run a C# application without having to setup a new project in Visual...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 12/31/2007

Free Microsoft Software (including VSTS) for IEEE Computer Society Student Members

I'm a member of IEEE and IEEE Computer Society and recently received requests to renew my...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 11/27/2007

Visual Studio Team System Chat – December 5th

Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Team...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 11/21/2007

Microsoft Blogs I Read

There are a lot of Microsoft bloggers, literally thousands of them. When I first joined Microsoft I...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 10/16/2007

Tools of the Trade

I've been thinking about what some of the most important tools are for me while coding. Here's a...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 08/15/2007

C# For C++ Devs: ~A() doesn't act like a destructor

In C++, memory allocated with the 'new' keyword must be deallocated using 'delete' or it is not...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 08/08/2007

Visual Studio 2008, Beta 2 (now with some of my code)

Today we released Beta 2 of VS2008. This is the first public release from Microsoft that contains a...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 07/27/2007

C# for C++ Devs: Generics vs Templates for Primitive Types

I was trying to write some type-generic (almost) code in C# using a pattern that I commonly use in...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 07/02/2007

Developer Dogfooding at Microsoft

I hadn't heard the term dogfooding used much before I started here, but it has already been...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 06/07/2007

Tech-Ed 2007

Tech-Ed 2007 is starting tomorrow and the Profiler Team is sending a few people to sunny Orlando for...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 06/03/2007

Learning to Profile

I went to a meeting with Rico the other day and he showed us a few approaches he uses when solving...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 05/21/2007

C# for C++ Devs: Structs vs Classes

I'm from a C++ background and now I'm working quite a bit more with C# so I'm learning new things...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 05/14/2007

Basic Profiler Scenarios

This post was going to cover some basic scenarios discussing the differences between sampling and...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 05/07/2007

Why Performance Matters

Everybody likes to think that what they're working on is important so this is why I think...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 04/18/2007

There's a Profiler in Visual Studio?

I've just started working in the Visual Studio Team System, Profiler team. Many people are surprised...

Author: Colin Thomsen - MSFT Date: 04/12/2007