frankly, I think Visual Studio is a sub-par IDE for C++. Code highlighting is pretty bare bones. Debugging often misses stack frames and it regularly loses access to local variables. There is practically no refactoring support. The compiler has a weird non-standard feature set. Auto completion as usually not context aware. "Find usage" usually does not find every reference. I could go on...
When people rave about Visual Studio, they are mostly talking about C# development. And even there, they often talk about Resharper.
That said, install Visual Assist X and Visual Studio becomes quite a decent C++ IDE. That does not fix debugging or the compiler of course, but refactoring, highlighting, code navigation, contextual cues and auto completion are mightily improved.
When people rave about Visual Studio, they are mostly talking about C# development. And even there, they often talk about Resharper.
That said, install Visual Assist X and Visual Studio becomes quite a decent C++ IDE. That does not fix debugging or the compiler of course, but refactoring, highlighting, code navigation, contextual cues and auto completion are mightily improved.