The Devlineator

So I have been trying to give each tool a look to make sure that I am using the best for me. So here is the meat.

This is 3 weeks in.

Responsiveness – My computer overall is slower running CodeRush, but the memory usage is lower. I am sure this is just a lack of configuration understanding on my part, but the CodeRush option screen is like a monkey looking at the shuttle control board right now. So many knobs and buttons for tweaking.

Productive help – I am used to resharper so I keep missing things like the solution insert with Alt-Ins or just using the tool instead of the mix of Visual studio commands and CodeRush. The one that bugs me the most is the reference and using import. I used to use Alt.Enter Enter and be done now it is manually add reference, use the Ctrl-. to add the using. I have to constantly switch between the Ctrl-~ and Ctrl-. for commands.

UPDATE – Rory Becker just pointed me to the ImportNamespace plugin and yep, That solved this one, but also added a section

Extensibility – The plugin ecosystem around CodeRush is much more prolific than that around resharper. I’ll have to see if most of my problems have already been solved.

Templating – CodeRush wins hands down with context aware templating. The templates are great, and they speed things up. I extensively used Resharper templates so the one big win here is having a single template that reacts differently based on references and language. This is incredibly helpful.

Overall – Using CodeRush still feels like a chore right now, but I am going to give it a couple more weeks and see if it grows on me. The visual stuff is mad distracting and the next thing I will be hunting how to turn off. My Resharper bias comes from 6 years of heavy power using, so I don’t want to call this one just yet.

P.S. Customer Service – CodeRush wins this hands down. Better website for product and license management, built in license management just with a login, and they responded to a bug with a fixed build within 24 hours. Resharper however took UPDATE 8 not 13 days to get my license key to me after a hard drive crash. ( This was partly my fault for not emailling sooner and trying to use the phone contact. Once I emailed they turned it around in 5 minutes). I emailed again a bit later to get my licenses for the other products I use and got them back in 7 days (March 21st to 28th). CodeRush is winning this battle, and this is the main reason I am still using it.

Resharper, Productivity

When running Resharper against legacy code I have found that I would like to turn off code analysis for certain files, folders, or code blocks so I went hunting in Resharper options land and found the nugget that I was hunting for.

Open Resharper Options:

Then go to Code Inspection Settings ?>

If you add a Generated Code Region Resharper will ignore everything in that region. You can name it something subtle like ?Resharper Ignore this please? like so.

You also have that advanced button that allows you to add entire files and folders to be skipped.

Enjoy the increased performance of Resharper with all your legacy code.

Productivity, Resharper resharper

I have come across something in the project that I am working on that is weird. Resharper marks a using directive as unused because we use it through reflection. When we do a clean up it is removed. So I went hunting and found that you can tell Resharper to never removed certain namespaces. You can also tell it to add certain namespaces by default.

Open your Resharper Options Menu.

Then go to language ?> Namespace Import

Just click add on the should not be removed for the ones you don?t want deleted and add on the right for the ones that you want to add by default.

Enjoy.

Productivity, Resharper