Evolution of every developer's most popular tool

Every development environment has a tool called «Output». There is no need to describe what it does, since all developers without exception use it in their work on a daily basis. It is simple and conservative.

It has remained essentially unchanged for decades, and to this day looks something like this:

Text, text, and more text. Lots of text...

Even in this tiny example the line containing the error is not immediately apparent. Finding it takes time and effort. Simply because one has to read through the text and search for the words «error», «exception» or «warning». The programmer has to search, and the client has to pay for the time spent searching.

Solution

What if the text were highlighted red in these messages, but highlighted yellow when warnings are present? This would be an improvement. So thought the authors of the extensions VSColorOutput and Output Enhancer for Visual Studio (this IDE will be used from here on for illustration).

The result was as follows:

Errors and warnings have become noticeable with no effort on the part of developers.

Excellent work; our thanks for the useful tool.