Visual Studio debugger tips & tricks for .NET

try {
    // do something big
}
catch {
    // breakpoint set here:
    throw CantHappenException("something horrible happened that should never happen.");
}

How do you see the exception that was originally thrown? In a watch window, enter $exception


Here's another neat trick I learned:

System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break()

programatically causes the debugger to break on the next instruction. The really nice part is, this also works for a program compiled in Release mode, without debugging information.