Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - ReSharper vs. CodeRush

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ReSharper vs. CodeRush

Posted 2004-05-22 11:34 PM in ASP.NET | TechEd | Speaking | CodeRush.

Can someone explain to me the big deal about ReSharper? Sure, I tried Refactory and I dug it. I know they disappeared and screwed some folks over, but it was a nice solid offering. Now everyone is talking about ReSharper, and forgive me, but I'm just not feeling it.

It feels VERY unpolished, and there's just no excuse for lack of polish these days.
It looks lousy at ANY "unusual" font size (Lucida Console 14pt Bold)
It's context menus are far to deep to be useful.
It doesn't support a very wide range of refactorings, and it doesn't appear to glean a lot from the context of the current cursor position.

Frankly, it looks like a Java program (wonder why? ;) ) and just doesn't fit in Visual Studio.NET.

On the other hand, CodeRush is continuing to blow me away.

It's polished
It's radically customizable (almost to a fault)
It's easily extensible by a code plugin model OR standard Regular Expressions
It's graphics are JAW DROPPING. You literally have to see it to believe it.
The Linked Identifiers are crazy useful.

It takes a little while to get use to, and I need to make a cheat sheet to keep track of the shortcuts, but I'm digging it EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Sorry to sound like such a P.I.M.P. for these guys, but seriously, it's pure sex. The UI stuff is hotter than Whidbey. If you see me at TechEd, holler at me and I'll give you a demo.

Tracked by:
"Resharper, CodeRush, Visual Assist Comparison" (Scott Elkin) [Trackback]
https://davidohara.wordpress.com/2006/03/28/now-im-a-rushie/ [Pingback]

Sunday, May 23, 2004 7:44:35 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Ouch, $249? I have to admit, it looks slick, but a bit expensive for a hobbyist developer :-(.

Omar Shahine

Monday, May 24, 2004 4:58:18 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I tried CodeRush and it was too much "smart" for me...

GMilano

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 4:57:44 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

OK, and where's the refactoring? Renaming, code generation, class moving between namespaces, find item usages, extract interfaces/superclass, usage highlighting, introduce variable/field/parameter, change method signature etc
And what about error/warning solving hints?
I think these are the tools that a real developer needs at hand, not some nifty icons and animations that end up annoying you...
Linked identifiers... have you tried the ReSharper live templates? Please do... Those linked identifiers are kindergarden things compared to that.
And the price is really stuffed up... I think ReSharper does more useful things at a much smaller price...
Just my 2 cents

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 8:14:59 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

LG - ?

*All* that is included free with CodeRush (it INCLUDES Refactor) and has for 18 months.

Details here: http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/Refactor/

Scott Hanselman

Monday, August 08, 2005 8:09:33 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

If you're used to eclipse, resharper seems to be the better choice. One of resharper's best tools, Ctrl-N (go to type), doesn't exist in CodeRush.

Why these are not standard features in Visual C#.NET is beyond me.

rant: Microsoft's really made a poor development environment for us. The most important tools for developers must be added to the IDE by third parties who are forced to integrate with an inferior plug-in framework. What a joke. Resharper costs about $150, and that's on top of the cost of Microsoft's crap IDE... God, it makes me angry just thinking about it.