Perhaps not, but it's glorious compared to, say, .xcodeproj.

Combined with .props files (same format as .csproj), managing .vcxproj s (also the same format as .csproj), to manage a build matrix of ~5 platforms x ~7 build configurations x ~20 projects via a few hundred .props files hasn't been that bad.

> XML is an extremely verbose syntax to have to deal with.

Easy to parse, though, if you want to automate keeping it in sync with other formats.

> As long as you stay in VS you won't really notice. As soon as you leave though its no longer comfortable.

The longer I use them the more often I drop down to simply firing up a text editor to edit my .props files. Configuring through the IDE is a great way to add a whole bunch of state which you may or may not have meant to set, and can get quite unwieldy... whereas I can see everything at a glance that a single .props file configures by simply opening it up.

At this point I have our .vcxproj file lists almost entirely decoupled from the .props build settings. Fewer merges, and each .props file is quite easy to digest at a glance.