CodeBetter.Com
CodeBetter.Com
RSS 2.0 via Feedburner
           Do you Twitter? Follow us @CodeBetter

Brendan Tompkins [MVP]

Blog First. Ask Questions Later.

I'm a ReSharper Convert...

I've posted a couple of times about different VS plugins, like CodeRush, CodeSmart, ReFactory, and ReSharper.   I think I'm ready to finally go with one tool - I placed my orders today for ReSharper, and un-installed the copies of CodeRush, and CodeSmart that I had already paid for.  It was a close decision, especially between CodeRush and ReSharper.  But in the end ReSharper won out, and I'll try to explain why:

Now, to be fair, I don't think I took the time to fully learn CodeRush.  A listen to the latest episode of DotNetRocks, featuring Mark Miller, is a good introduction to CodeRush.   CodeRush is full-featured, well-designed and has a long history of development and use.  The application has been around for years as a Delphi product, and so a lot of thinking has gone into it. 

But... to fully utilize it's features you have to learn how to use it.  Much of the functionality is based on this macro-type language which is driven by your current context in your code.  Out of the  box, you'll only realize a small fraction of it's benefits.  If you listen to the show, Mark Miller pretty much says this word for word.  Therein lies my problem with CodeRush:

I'm spending too much of my time learning other methodologies and tools, like how to write good code, maintain production environments, unit testing and design, to learn a bunch of stuff just to use my new IDE plug-in!  I could learn the Dvorák keyboard too, which I'm sure would pay off in the long run, but the effort is too great!  Call me lazy, but I just want the plug in to make development easier for me out of the box, without any additional effort on my part.  This is exactly what ReSharper does, install it, start writing code, and your life will be better.  Mine was.  Here's some things that really made me a convert:

First, ReSharper shows you code errors before you compile.  If your code is free of errors, you get this little, green box to the right of your code window:

If it won't build you'll get a red box, along with little red lines that you can click on to go directly to the offending code:

This is an awesome feature.  It saves me so much time during a day.  In fact, I would say that this reduces the number of times I compile in a day by 75%.  When it takes you 10 seconds or so to compile, this can really add up to a large chunk of time spent not coding, and interrupting your coding flow. 

ReSharper's auto-code generation is cool too.  CodeRush works by copy-paste of source code, to automatically generate new code, so if you copy “private int someInt“ in a class, and paste it in the class, you get a public get/set property.  Now this sounds good, and does work well, but I could never get fully used to it.. I did use this for a couple of months, but it always seemed to violate some sort of UI “Single-Responsibility Principle“ to me.  Cut and paste should be just that, nothing more.

In ReSharper, you choose “Generate..“ from  a menu, and it'll popup a context menu like this, if it finds stuff to generate.

There's templates too, and all sorts of refactoring stuff built in, but that's a whole nother blog post.  But, all in all, for a developer who's too busy to stop and learn a new tool, ReSharper will give you the biggest productivity gain, in my opinion.

-B



Comments

Brendan Tompkins said:

Steve,

Performance is much improved over the earlier version I tried, it's really an order of magnitude more usable this time!
# September 18, 2004 2:23 AM

Paul Laudeman's Blog said:

Resharper Reflections
# September 18, 2004 4:16 AM

Scott Galloway said:

Only problem with Resharper is that it's like coding crack...on the odd occasion that I have to use a machine without it I feel empty and bereft. It is still a *little* buggy, I still get the occasional crash (and that dumb popup which only lets you submit a bug if you have some kind of login - which is VERY dumb!)
# September 23, 2004 2:06 AM

TrackBack said:

# February 2, 2005 6:41 AM

TrackBack said:

# February 2, 2005 6:41 AM

César F. Qüeb Montejo said:

Hi,

I have tested CodeRush for .NET and Refactor!Pro (both addins from DevExpress) for four years. I have tested Resharper (from Jetbrains) and Visual Assist (from WholeTomato). Each add-in offers productivity and fast code prodction, optimize the code, etc. (all three add-ins can't share the same VS session (installed and runnig, of course). My Impressions are:

ReSharper.

Nice add-in but verhy, very buggly. The customer support is fine and fast but the visual studio some time hangs. The features some times does not works if you don't rename the key templates at the installation process. Unistalling process is some times anonying buecause the add-in is not removed correctly. The most recent release has support for VB and ASP code (and C#, of course!). Cool feature the error detection at code-time. Custom templates are allowed too.

.

Visual Assist

This add-in present sometimes 'high' consume of resources and collationswith some internal shortcut and features in VS 2005.  VS shows to me many dialo exceptions. Excelent product but this can't coaexit with some other add-in. Suppor for C++ and error detection, custom templates are allowed. Nice tool but some limits.

CodeRush & REfactor!Pro

For me, this product are th ebest addins. Custom templates, intellisense, code optimization, data flow visualization, navigation tools, etc. Sometimes a release presents a bug respect to the high consuem of resources, but the developemt crew fixes fast the problem. The customer support is excellent. The dissapoint is that renew subscription police (for year).

# March 28, 2007 1:30 AM

Wim said:

Yes, it's always the subscription *police* that catch you out. ;-)

# May 27, 2008 11:09 AM

Ivan said:

ReSharper 4.0 is way too buggy for my tastes.  It literally crashes every single time I open an ASP.NET page and click on the markup.  

# July 8, 2008 9:43 AM

Leave a Comment

(required)  
(optional)
(required)  

Enter the numbers above:
Add

About Brendan Tompkins

Brendan has been programming with .NET since the first public beta and is owner and operator of Port Technology Services, a consultancy company providing .NET application development services to the Maritime industry. In July, 2007, he was awarded the Microsoft MVP award for ASP.NET. He's also a proud co-founder of failed .COM startup Intrinsigo, and has had a hand in the failure of numerous other businesses. He currently runs CodeBetter.Com and Devlicio.us, and lives in Norfolk, Virgina with his wife Tiara and son Ian.

View Brendan's profile on LinkedIn

Check out Devlicio.us!

Our Sponsors

This Blog

Syndication

News

MVP
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.