I am just getting used to some of the workflow enhancements in Visual Studio 2010. I was a bit miffed when I had to go to another submenu off of my context menu to do a quick watch on a variable, until….I got annoyed enough to hit the innocuous looking Pin to Source option. It eluded me at first what the hell this option was but then it all came to light.
My watch sitting their waiting for me happily right there in code. Watching my variables never got so damn easy. So, thumbs up to the VS team on this one. Monitoring my loops and data is now a lot more convenient seeing the values right where my eyes are wanting to actually look.
The context option:

The result of this option:

I hope this new feature helps you as much as it does me.
Happy coding!
This post came up when I googled “visual studio watch pin”.
I had been trying to find out what the pin does in the floating watch window that comes up when you hover over a variable when debugging. (For some reason it didn’t work the first time I clicked it, so I got confused.)
Anyway, thanks to what I just learned, I can add to your descriptive post that there’s another, possibly easier way to do this, which as described is to put the mouse over the variable you want to watch (possibly even drilling down into members), and then clicking the pin that comes up when you hover over the variable (or member).
Ah-like so:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20055131@N03/sets/72157640844716184/
I’m working in C++ but I imagine the same would work in VB.