Suggestions for VS+Resharper keyboard shortcuts on a Mac

Question

I just upgraded to a Macbook Pro as my development machine but still primarily develop .Net applications with Visual Studio and Resharper (via VMWare Fusion). By far, the biggest obstacle I'm running into is getting used to the keyboard layout change (ex. not being able to do ALT-Insert). Do any of you Windows-on-Mac veterans have any suggestions on how to ease the pain of transitioning (without moving to an external keyboard)? Are you changing mappings via VMWare's keyboard preferences? Or are you using something like AutoHotkey?

Any other windows development tips for a Mac newb?

Answer 1

I seem to be able to manage in about 4 different situations (vi, Emacs, Mac, Windows).

If I'm learning a new IDE (as I recently was with IntelliJ IDEA) and there's a key I can't easily type, I generally remap it to a key that I'm used to from another situation; so, for example, for IDEs that use function keys for initiating compiling/debugging, I remap them to the Xcode debugging keyboard equivalents. This cuts down on the number of independent keyboard layouts I need to know (and, IMO, is an improvement; I find mnemonic equivalents easier to remember).

I don't use Resharper so I have no idea what Alt+Insert does there, but maybe you can find an equivalent from another IDE that is possible to type on the MBP keyboard and use that?

Answer 2

Between the automatic mapping VMWare can handle I have actually done pretty good. I have had a few shortcuts from OS X that I have disabled though. Sometimes, seemingly convenient things prevent me from getting work done. Recently, I had to remove the shortcut from "Things" in order to allow my IDE auto-complete to be used.