Anyone who writes code knows that a fair amount of time is spent debugging it. Writing more than 10 lines of code invariable means there is going to be a bug or two. Sometimes, getting to the root of the problem means delving deep into the objects your code instantiates. Visual Studio provides a mechanism to explore the instantiated objects in you code, via debugger visualizers.

Scott Mitchell has a great article outlining debugger visualizers if you would like to learn more.

I have created a couple project templates to help you get started building debugger visualizers, one for C# and one for VB. Also in the Downloads section is a sample project to create a StringBuilder visualizer.

StringBuilder Visualizer Sample Project

Visual Basic Debugger Visualizer Project Template

Visual C# Debugger Visualizer Project Template

To use the project templates, you will need to make a couple of changes. First, in the AssemblyInfo file, change the Target in the DebuggerVisualizer attribute to the type you want to visualize. Next, build the UI in the VisualizerDialog page, and update the Class1 file to reflect the type you are visualizing.

Enjoy!