Is it really worth purchasing R# for VS2010?

Question

Hi I heard that R#5.0 (still in beta) will support VS 2010. My question is VS2010 == VS2008 + ReSharper ?

I know there are many improvements to VS2010, so I 'm not sure weather is it really worth purchasing the R#5.0 for VS2010?

Answer 1

YES. unequivocably YES.

Answer 2

Hi there.

Why don't you try out the R# 5 betas and then you can decide if you're using enough of its features to justify purchasing it.

http://confluence.jetbrains.net/display/ReSharper/ReSharper+5.0+Nightly+Builds

Cheers. Jas.

Answer 3

If your having to ask the question, my guess is that you're not using ReSharper to its full potential. Personally I find that R# writes most of my code for me and I feel like a noob using visual studio without it.

Answer 4

Well, I haven't explored VS 2010 new refactoring features that much, but its my understanding that VS has some but definitely not all of resharpers features implemented (From MSDN):

Navigate To

You can use the Navigate To feature to search for a symbol or file in the source code.

Navigate To lets you find a specific location in the solution or explore elements in the solution. It helps you pick a good set of matching results from a query.

You can search for keywords that are contained in a symbol by using Camel casing and underscore characters to divide the symbol into keywords.

For more information, see How to: Search for Objects, Definitions, and References (Symbols).

Generate From Usage

The Generate From Usage feature lets you use classes and members before you define them. You can generate a stub for any undefined class, constructor, method, property, field, or enum that you want to use but have not yet defined. You can generate new types and members without leaving your current location in code, This minimizes interruption to your workflow.

Generate From Usage supports programming styles such as test-first development.

IntelliSense Suggestion Mode

IntelliSense now provides two alternatives for IntelliSense statement completion, completion mode and suggestion mode. Use suggestion mode for situations where classes and members are used before they are defined.

In suggestion mode, when you type in the editor and then commit the entry, the text you typed is inserted into the code. When you commit an entry in completion mode, the editor shows the entry that is highlighted on the members list.

When an IntelliSense window is open, you can press CTRL+ALT+SPACEBAR to toggle between completion mode and suggestion mode.

So I guess it would depend on which of Resharpers features you want to use. If you are satisfied with the above which is certainly great improvements, then you don't need Resharper.

On the performance question, well it might perform better because of tighter integration.

Personally the above leaves me still needing a lot of features like (just the ones i can think of right now - might be more):

• There are as far as I can tell only about 6 refactorings, where resharper currently has more than 30
• No import type completion, which i use ALL the time. One shortcut adds to references and adds import statement
• No smart completion
• Change namespace to follow navigation structure and update all references with one shortcut
• Goto is more advanced in R# you can go to inheritors and bases, file member, recent files and edits and theres the fast goto feature
• Resharpers static analysis is far more comprehensive than what you get from VS

So what do you need? (I am definitely not giving up Resharper)

Answer 5

Peter,

Best person that can answer this question is yourself. What I suggest is you download it, learn it (and note I said learn it, not just play with it). Then decide. However, I'll warn you that it's quite addictive.

Answer 6

ReSharper has been around long enough that developers might purchase the upgrade just out of habit! :)

I recall that when VS2008 was released, R# wasn't quite ready, and there was griping among the .NET community about it. "Must...have...ReSharper!". Heh. Jetbrains appear to be on top of it this time though.

Answer 7

My question is VS2010 == VS2008 + ReSharper ?

Oh hell no. VS2010 has more features than VS2008, and some of those feature ideas were stolen from ReSharper, but vanilla VS2010 is still a long way behind VS2010 + ReSharper 5 or even VS2008 + ReSharper 5.

From a quick glance at my 31 Days of ReSharper blog posts (written back in the R# 2.5 days), here are just a few ReSharper features that are still not present in VS2010: (Please correct me if VS2010 does have any of these -- I haven't actually used it that much without ReSharper!)

• Unused code highlighted in gray and with quick-fixes to delete the unused code for you (this is just one of many hints and warnings R# does that VS does not)
• Visual indication of where you have hints, warnings, and errors in a source file (colored stripe next to the vertical scroll bar)
• Integrated unit-test runner that's not locked down to only MS's test framework
• Shared settings for code formatting, code templates, etc. -- check these settings into version control, and they'll be picked up automatically by other computers (no manual export/import)
• Go To Type -- a pop-up window where you can enter a type name (or part of the name) and jump straight to the right source file
• Navigate to derived types / overriding methods
• Code Structure View -- view a list of members in your type, and drag/drop to reorder them in your source code
• R# will suggest variable names for you
• You can invoke an Intellisense dropdown that shows types from all namespaces (and then it adds the using for you)
• It's eerily good at guessing what you meant when you tell it to fix an error for you
• Remove unused braces and Invert If
• Generate Code (I particularly like Generate Equals and GetHashCode, even though I use them very rarely)
• Viral Rename (if you rename a type, it'll also suggest that you rename any variables that were named after the type)
• And best of all, Safe Delete.

Safe Delete rocks.

And that's just the features that R# had in 2.5 when I wrote the 31 Days of ReSharper. They've added plenty of new features since (I just don't have a comprehensive list handy). A couple of my favorites are the background solution-wide analysis, which will tell you in nearly real-time if you have compiler errors anywhere in your solution, and Inspect > Value Origin, which is just wicked cool.

Answer 8

After migrating to Visual Studio 2010 we asked our development team if buying Resharper upgrades is worth the investment. The votes were unanimous: yes!

Btw: we use VS2010 Premium and the devteam has its own budget.