VS2012 did a lot of visual changes, many of them controversial. The guise was to make it "more metro" despite Windows 8 not taking the same approach (like all caps).
The VS 2012 betas tried putting all caps on various parts of the UI. They got tons of pushback on that, so they eventually just made it the menu so they could still claim they kept the principle idea alive. In the final release, there's an option to turn it off.
A lot of VS devs are happy that they added a proper dark mode, and there's a plugin to autohide the menus so it's less of an issue that it appears at first. The biggest usability issue is the single-colour icons.
There's probably amazing internal threads and all sorts of political issues surrounding the design. In the end, I think the champions of the change count on wearing you down, making their opponents feel silly for arguing over such petty things as menu styles.
The VS 2012 betas tried putting all caps on various parts of the UI. They got tons of pushback on that, so they eventually just made it the menu so they could still claim they kept the principle idea alive. In the final release, there's an option to turn it off.
A lot of VS devs are happy that they added a proper dark mode, and there's a plugin to autohide the menus so it's less of an issue that it appears at first. The biggest usability issue is the single-colour icons.
There's probably amazing internal threads and all sorts of political issues surrounding the design. In the end, I think the champions of the change count on wearing you down, making their opponents feel silly for arguing over such petty things as menu styles.