The .Net framework 2.0 gave some great tools for debugging – they are a great help when writing code.

Some of these features are the DebuggerDisplay and DebuggerStepThrough attributes. I seldom use any of them, as I prefer to just overriding the ToString method instead of using the DebuggerDisplay attribute. This makes it easy to instrument the code too, as I can reuse the ToString method implementation for tracing.

Another feature is the ability to develop custom debugger visualizers. They enable smart developers to build their own. I find some really useful, especially the WCF visualizer. But there a many – check out this list of custom .Net debugger visualizers.

These small enhancements make it so easy to get an overview of the current state, instead of inspecting properties.