Resharper, what do you think?

Comments

# Matt Berther said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 11:58 AM

The best part of resharper is that it seems to know what you want to do... before you do.

I was in a similar situation several years ago... I insisted to my boss that we needed licenses for everyone on the team.

You should do this now... you'll certainly not regret it.

# Dave said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 12:04 PM

It takes a few days to get used to, but is really great once you do get used to it.  A great time saver.

There has been an annoying issue with version 3, web site projects, and user controls, but I believe that's about to be fixed in 3.0.2.

# Will Asrari said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 12:19 PM

Do it. Get it. It will make development more enjoyable.

I've been using it for over a year now and will continue to do so.

# Steve said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 12:40 PM

The code navigation on its own is amazing. Ctrl+N to navigate to type, Shift+N for by file, and now Ctrl+Shift+N to navigate to a member of any type. Add in wildcards to that searching and you never have to use the solution explorer (and the mouse!) ever again.

Find usages is also a godsend. Being able to do Alt+F7 to see where a variable/member/type is used across a large project where you are trying to get to grips with the code base is a must. And it is quick as well (after the initial start up lag). It all adds together to just make it so easy to navigate around.

But when you add in the refactoring - even just simple extract method and introduce/inline variable makes it essential. Going back to naked VS makes me shudder every time.

# Joe said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 12:42 PM

It's awesome, but I would also check out DevExpress' CodeRush and Refactor!  I run all 3 (took some tweaking) and dont think I could function without them anymore.

# scott cate said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 12:50 PM

I'm sure there are issues, but I haven't run into any of them. The tool just works for me, to perfection. In the past, I have written about two of my favorite features.

weblogs.asp.net/.../default.aspx

# x said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 1:07 PM

Its a great tool, im trying to get some licences now my self. Little bit of overhead, but not too bad.

# Uwe said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 1:14 PM

I would fire every VS.NET developer that is _not_ using ReSharper!

# Travis said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 1:26 PM

There is one issue I have with Resharper, and that is trying to work in VS.NET without it. *cough* VS.NET Beta2 *cough*

Seriously, VS uses a bit more memory, but its well worth it.

# Laurent Kempe said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 1:43 PM

For me it is abolutely a MUST. I can't work without it anymore. The refactoring, code navigation but also the different help in coding are good help in daily job. Go for it!!

# Jason Meridth said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 1:54 PM

It is an absolute must.

There is even a ReSharper Jedi Council (lol)

blogs.jetbrains.com/.../the-resharper-jedi

A good tutorial (31 days of ReSharper):

www.excastle.com/.../13141.aspx

# Brian Scott said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 2:06 PM

I would say get it. From the code navigation to refactoring to auto field naming it is a big time saver. The live error highlighting similar to what you get in VB is also great. You get to see a mistake right away that you normally wouldn't until the code was compiled.

The user controls in websites issue Dave mentioned has been fixed in the upcoming 3.0.2 version. Thats another thing that is great about Resharper, the developers are really responsive. I helped track down that bug by submitting sample files to reproduce it and the team there has always been really responsive to that kind of help.

# Casey Barton said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 2:44 PM

It's a great tool, and I'm firmly in the camp of people dependent on it. Helping at the desk of another developer that doesn't have it installed is frustrating!

However, it's not without its downsides. It's you're a performance freak, you may be annoyed by the added memory it uses and the occasional pause while it thinks. It'll also pop up an exception dialog every now and then, which doesn't inspire confidence.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think that there are still some files in my project that don't have green boxes yet...

# Ryan Hoffman said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 3:43 PM

I used Reshaper for over four months, and I mostly enjoyed it.  I ended up getting rid of it, mainly because of what it does to intellisense.  I love the VS intellisense, and Resharper replaces it.  There is an option in Resharper to put back the VS intellisense, but it *never* worked for me (on 4 machines that I have tried).  When the VS Intellisense option was selected, I got *NO* intellisense.  After uninstalling Resharper, I also had no intellisense and it took a lot of hair pulling to figure out how to get it back!

# Bill said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 6:34 PM

One thing to keep in mind, when you get this; make sure you print out a keymap for resharper. Then every spare moment you have, try to get used to some of the commands. I am currently about 3x more productive than I was without resharper and am finding myself using only about 25% of the commands, and this is about 2 months into using it. I fully expect to reach productivity levels of 6x compared to working without resharper as I get deeper into using it (I know about half the editing scheme, a bit of the navigation stuff; I use 2 refactoring commands (f2 and f6) and I haven't touched the templates yet).

I'd say a good way to work your way through the scheme to learn it is to start with alt+enter and f12/alt+f12, then learn the "Go to" and "Usage Search" sections and then get used to the rest of the "Editing" section. After that take some time to learn the "Refactoring" section and finally the "Templates" sections.

# ROhan said on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 10:58 PM

I have been using Resharper for about 4 months now. Used it on a project that needed code-clean up. Love the "Reformat Code" option and the grays' which tell you about unnecessary code. Only problem is the memory it eats up, if you are on a m/c with less than 1 gig, God help you.

# Greg Brewer said on Wednesday, August 01, 2007 12:06 AM

I agree with Ryan, I have tried it several times and I always end up removing it, it seems to slow VS down and I have random hang ups.  After uninstalling reharper everything returned to normal.  The intellisense issue is very annoying.  I seem to have better luck with Coderush and Refactor Pro.  

# Joe said on Wednesday, August 01, 2007 12:23 AM

It's a great tool, but it's very buggy and a resource hog.  I find it's best to keep it turned off, and only turn it on when I need to do some serious refactoring (although I wish I could have the Ctrl+N type search facility on all the time).

# Drakiula said on Wednesday, August 01, 2007 3:31 AM

I also got rid of Resharper, the used memory almost doubled. Nobody in my company is using it,

VS by itself is offering all I need.

# Chinh Do said on Wednesday, August 01, 2007 4:19 PM

ReSharper is a great productivity booster. I used to have stability/slowness issues with it until I upgraded my PC to 2.5 GB of RAM... now everything is working great. I estimate that Resharper helps improve my coding productivity by at least 25%.

# john said on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 5:31 PM

same problems. resource hog and glitches.

i'm reading ilya's blog (one of the developers) and i totally dig it, i like the way these guys think and do stuff!.

However, it seems they might not have had the time to tweak performance, and thats a dealbreaker.

I also think resharper is too intrusive.

In the end you learn everything that it recommends you to do, and you don't do it from the start. it kinda educates you.

I've uninstalled it because it was slowing my IDE down. And i think people (devs) really hate that.

I also think the resharper hype is partially fake.

(notice people started openly discussing its flaws only after a brave one did)

# leslie said on Wednesday, January 30, 2008 11:13 PM

Resharper is a resource hog.

I machine can be using over a 1.5 gigs of memory which does away after shutdown the IDE.

However it good enough (I don't really have any glitches to talk about) to put up with the hi memory usage.

It has really saved my bacon with it's real-time suggestions and warnings. Yes you learn how to code better and then you would think you don't need it anymore. However everyone makes mistakes and often Resharper would catch something and same a whole lot of debugging time or an exception that could have been been avoided.

# anonymous said on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 10:01 AM

How to get intellisense working after reinstalling resharper :

http://paltman.com/2007/02/09/intellisense-breaks-after-uninstalling-resharper/

# Chris said on Tuesday, September 30, 2008 10:38 AM

Likes

1. Suggests coding improvements, using ?? instead of "if {} else {}" for null conditions

2. Writes lambda expressions

3. Makes Unit Testing a dream

Dislikes

1. How do i put HTML into the Unit Test output window?  Console.WriteLine is nice, but I want to use my own HTML Table.

2. Loading assemblies takes too much resources

3. Freezes the IDE when compiling the entire solution

# Dmitry said on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 1:33 PM

It is nice for refactoring and code browsing. Some refactoring features in VS functions better however. Like encapsulate property is definitely better.