I'm having a bit of trouble understanding why i would need/want to upgrade to a newer version of Visual Studio from VS2010 Pro. At the moment i use 2010 because i am only interested in writing software for up to windows 7 and using XNA and a few other things while i learn. (And SQL eventually)
This is mainly open to anyone with knowledge, if i'm not interested in developing Web Applications, should i even look at VS2012 or 2013? Actually better question: Who "Should and Shouldn't" consider going to VS2012?
I'm hoping this isn't too vague an inquiry for experienced developers
stick to 2010. the only thing i really enjoy more about 2012 is the color scheme addon i found applies uniformally. outside of that though, 2010 is perfectly fine and the last version supported for XNA
For basic C++ dev then its fine. Currently I have been switching back and forth due to software requirements. If you want to create games for UE4 then 2013 is required. But if you want to play around with the android NDK with VS then I think 2012 is required (2013 wont work).
I liked VS2010 and then I switched to VS2012 and I begun to have issues closing xaml files which takes sometimes up to 5 minutes. Closing VS can also take 5+ minutes. I have 3 different computers exhibiting same problems. Today I worked in vs2013 for the first time and I did not have these problems. There are also some good productivity features so I am switching to it.
From what I have experienced starting from Visual Studio 2015 to Visual Studio 2013 - The performance differences are wonderful! New versions are more optimized for the system and offer different features depending on what you need to do! Along with supporting new technologies it will be more stable and bugs will be fixed within its lifetime! I remember using 2010 and installing tons of security fixes - do you see them coming through WU still? If not its time to move on or have a huge security hole on your system.