> Mercifully, VS seemed to already know how to compile stuff, so that wasn't 
> too hard. (Persuading it to build a JAR file was another matter...)

Yes it has pretty good defaults that work straight out of the box (debug and 
release).  But there is a huge amount you can configure, especially if you 
start adding custom build events and more complicated projects with 
installers, dlls, database servers etc.

> The debugger, at least, was relatively intuivite to use. IIRC, the only 
> tricky thing was figuring out how the hell to invoke it in the first 
> place. (Oh, and the fact that the bug is almost never where you think it 
> was, so you invariably put the breakpoints in the wrong place...)

The DirectX debugger is pretty cool too, it can actually record every single 
call to the GPU each frame and store it in a file while your program is 
running.  Then you can go back into the debugger and step through each frame 
or call and see what is rendered on each call, check the textures and vertex 
buffers etc.  I found out I was drawing the terrain in my game 4 times each 
frame this way :-)

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