If you're a developer, you know the feeling - and if you're not, I'm sure you can imagine it: you have just written the most amazing little piece of code, and nobody is there to kiss your feet, praise some deity for your existence and generally worship you in the way you deserve.

I set out to solve this problem by creating a DXCore plugin for Visual Studio. DXCore is a fantastic product to help you bring round Visual Studio to your point of view, in this case by making it a substitute worshipper of your computer programming intellect. With this plugin installed, every time you build a project successfully, Visual Studio will sing your praise, perhaps like this:

Or maybe like this:

Now, while I was working on bending Visual Studio to my will, I found I had to make certain concessions. So I gave VS the right to swear at me when I get something wrong - that way everybody is happy! So when your build fails, VS might show you one of these messages:

Great, isn't it? Instant gratification! Ah, okay, the odd swear word as well, but then you're not supposed to make mistakes after all.

If you want this, here's what you do:

• If you don't have DXCore yet, download it here and install it: http://www.devexpress.com/dxcore (oh yeah - it's free!)
• Download the plugin here: OS_CompilationResult-1.0.0.0.dll
• Drop the plugin dll into this folder (adjust if your installation path is different): C:\Program Files\Developer Express Inc\DXCore for Visual Studio .NET\2.0\Bin\Plugins
• Restart Visual Studio
• If you want to configure the lists of things the plugin says (or you even want to switch it off - what made me say that?), go to the Options dialog (DevExpress menu, Options) and find the page Hinting/Compilation Result

If you have other great ideas what the plugin should do or say, let me know!