Visual Studio performance and add-ins

Question

Do the useful add-ins (Resharper, StyleCop, etc.) to Visual Studio speed up your work? Or tools need too many resources and you have to wait until each add-in completes execution?

[Update]: By the way does some body notice whether performance of IDE + Resharper is better for solutions that contain web sites or web applications?

Answer 1

I can speak very strongly that resharper definitly does speed my productivity greatly. Past versions of Resharper have had some bad performance issue with the IDE but I have had no issues with the most recent version.

Answer 2

I user Refactor! all the time. Just the time it saves me to encapsulate private variables into properties is worth it in my opinion.

That being said... a lot of the "benefits" of these programs are negated if you program it correctly to begin with.

For example, if you already habitually use "WITH" statements properly, you probably do not need something to clean up your style.

However in corporate America (and elsewhere I am sure), coding practices are not always followed by everyone, and rework and modifications are always coming in, so usually you will end up needing them eventually.

I personally have not experienced any noticeable difference in performance with these type of tools.

Answer 3

I have Resharper, Resharper Scout and Team Explorer + TFS Power tools. My Visual Studio definitely feels a little sluggish comparing to barebones, but if you want superspeed over features why not work in Notepad? For me, Resharper is definitely worth the viscosity.

Answer 4

I use some add-ins as long as they don't affect the performance of Visual Studio. To that end, tools like StyleCop, MZ-Tools, and Visual Studio Commands are the clear winners.

The problem I have with tools like Refactor! and Resharper are that

1. They degrade performance, particularly for large solutions.
2. You become dependent on the shortcut keys, etc. they provide and become completely useless when working on another environment that doesn't have them installed.

Yes, tools like Refactor! and Resharper are excellent for what they do and can increase your typing productivity but I don't think the gain is worth the dependence. This, of course, depends largely on how you use them. For things like refactoring method parameters, changing fields into properties, etc. they can be very useful and potentially save a lot of time. Again, while it can save a lot of time it is still important to know what these tools are actually doing for you so you can still be productive without them.

Answer 5

ReSharper definitely puts a demand on hardware resources, particularly when using site wide analysis on a large project. Having said that, the extent of the performance hit is highly dependent on the host machine. On my work laptop (32 bit XP, 3Gb RAM, 7200 RPM HDD, 2.2 GHz dual core) it suffers but on my home PC (64 bit Win 7, 8Gb RAM, 7200 RPM HDD, 2.9 GHz quad core) it flies and I barely notice the performance hit. That said, I still couldn’t live without it even on the lower specced hardware. The productivity gain still outweighs the downtime in waiting for slower processes.