Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Why ReSharper is (still) the dog's bollocks

Here's a pretty good post describing why ReSharper is still the dog's bollocks.

I think ReSharper is so utterly brilliant that I'd be deeply suspicious of any C# team that wasn't using it. It's not without it's faults I'll give you, but even then it's a joy to use, and dumps all over the built-in refactoring support in VS2005-C#.

Microsoft and CodeRush just don't get refactoring. They seem to think it's some kind of point-and-click design activity, all green bendy arrows or fiddly tool tips ('making a video game out of your code'). What they don't seem to understand is that I'm typing. If I want to go all clicky-clicky I'll go back to the design pane thanks, or the Class Designer.

ReSharper is zero friction. It's the TestDriven.Net of refactoring tools. Extract Local Variable: Ctrl-Alt-V done. Override method: Alt-Insert, select, done. That thing you were about to type: Ctrl-Shift-Space (pretty much). It's so quick and easy it's not funny. People looking over your shoulder will have difficulty keeping up.

Like many XP techniques, refactoring is one that suddenly makes a lot more sense with the right tool. Using ReSharper has totally changed the way I think about my code.

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