Visual Studio 2013 and code editor meta-information

If you have had the chance to play with Visual Studio 2013's new preview version (I'm using version 12.0.20617.1 at this writing) and taken a look at the code editor, you've without doubt seen the new Code Information displays (what I call meta-information or metadata) along with your code. For instance with C#, you can see the number of references above class and method names.

What's more, these displays are interactive, and work like hyperlinks that allow you to navigate between code files. Another neat, related feature are the color indicators in the scroll bars; these indicate locations that you have changed or added in the current editing session.

Shortly put, I believe that these new features – code editor meta-information – are a beginning of a new phase in software development, where the code you write is only the base, on top of which such useful augmentations will be added. At least for an out-of-the-box experience, it's great to see Microsoft added this feature to Visual Studio. Kudos to the team: I'm sure it doesn't stop here! The Roslyn compiler is without doubt playing an important role behind the scenes.