MVP Spotlight: Learning Visual Studio with Lee Englestone

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Welcome to our MVP Spotlight series! We’re showcasing some of the wonderful people in our MVP program about their areas of expertise, so that we can learn more about how they got started and their recommendations for others doing the same. We’ll also point you towards the resources they’ve worked on, whether it be articles, videos or podcasts, to help you level-up your own skills.

Meet Lee, Developer Technologies MVP

A photo of Lee EnglestoneThis time I caught up with Lee Englestone, where I asked him about his personal dev journey, and how others can improve their Visual Studio skills.

Chris: Introduce yourself!

Lee: My name is Lee Englestone, Avanade DevRel Lead based in Manchester, England. I have a two great kids, an amazing wife and two ok cats (Molly and Stormtrooper). I enjoy Taekwondo, Badminton, Reading, Hackathons and building a few side projects.

I’ve gone back to school to pursue my masters degree part time and am currently studying MSc Entrepreneurship Management and Innovation online at the University of Bath.

I’ve been a Microsoft MVP in developer technologies for the last 3 years, largely because I enjoy creating videos and useful online resources for the developer community such as VisualStudioTips.co.uk and XamarinARKit.com (and others), which are regularly visited by 1000s of developers. I also wrote a book sharing how .NET developers can create Augmented Reality experiences for iOS devices using Xamarin, ARKit, .NET, C# and Visual Studio.

I enjoy playing around with AI and Image classification models, which you can see in my experiments at IsChristmasTree.com and GoodyOrBaddy.com, as well as in my video on self driving/learning car simulation.

I’ve recently made the move from Software Engineering to Developer Relations, as I am finding DevRel to be increasingly important for both organisations and the community (though I still code a lot in my spare time). As DevRel Lead, I don’t sit in marketing or recruitment. Instead, my north star is building long term relationships with the development community by encouraging my organisation to have a community centric mindset that benefits the community.

For example, I am building out TechCommunityCalendar.com to be a resource that aggregates Tech Conferences, Meetups, Hackathons and Call for Speakers – all in one place.

C: How did you get into Visual Studio?

L: I’ve been using Visual Studio since Visual Studio 2003 in all my roles and enjoy seeing it improve with every new release.

Recently I’ve been amazed how you can use StereoKit and C# to build and deploy virtual reality experiences straight from Visual Studio to your Oculus/Meta Quest 2 headset in a code-first manner with just a few lines of code. Mind blown!

Visual Studio really is the modern-day canvas for creativity and innovation.

C: What are some of your favourite tips for using Visual Studio?

L: If I had to choose, my most used keyboard shortcuts are probably the following:

Ctrl + Shift + F9 = Delete All Breakpoints
Ctrl + – and Ctrl + Shift + – = Navigate backwards, forwards
Ctrl + K, K = Toggle bookmark
Ctrl + K, N = Go to next bookmark (cycles through)
Ctrl + R, W = Toggle showing whitespace (I don’t like unnecessary whitespace)
Ctrl + K, D = Format document (Removes most of that unnecessary whitespace)

C: Do you have any tips for people starting out with Visual Studio?

L: 

Keep learning! – Check out VisualStudioTips.co.uk, learn the keyboard shortcuts and see your productivity and enjoyment of using the tool rocket!

Go build! – There are multiple versions of Visual Studio, including a free community edition. With C#, .NET and Visual Studio you can build any website, mobile app, AI program, IoT or cloud solution, augmented or virtual reality app you like!
The only limit is your imagination!

Share what you learn! – I’ve previously delivered a couple of talks titled “25 Tips for Visual Studio”. When you start sharing what you learn, not only do you help others but they will share and pass on their learnings with others and you as well!

Lee’s Visual Studio content

Fortunately for us, Lee has written a wealth of content both on Visual Studio and on topics related to it, so it’s a great way to get stuck in. Check out our curated selection of articles below, but be sure to VisualStudioTips for a more comprehensive list of everything that is available.

Articles

Videos

You can find Lee on Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Learn more