Microsoft Visual Studio provides great extensibility for developers to create tools for fellow developers to use. Many of these add-ins are made to help developers gain productivity. I have been using a couple of these tools with similar features;
I have been a long-time user of the Visual Studio add-in tools CodeRush and Refactor Pro from DevExpress, and really like what the tools can do for my productivity. I’ve used the tool long enough to have a love-hate relationship with it. If I have a small solution open with a half dozen projects in it the tool is great and snappy but when I open up a solution with many projects CodeRush just takes over the memory in the system and makes having anything open except Visual Studio.
One client in particular has about 1.5-2.0 million lines of code in their solution and when open using CodeRush it makes Visual Studio become a memory hog and is unusable. I contacted support at Developer Express and they indicate they have not seen this before. Is this big of a project out of the ordinary for .NET projects? Am I out-of-line to expect CodeRush to work? I didn’t think so.
I then heard about this great product called ReSharper 4.0 which is changing the coding world. I purchased a license for it and gave it a whirl…fail. I experienced the same thing, great on small projects and unmanageable on large projects. The CPU utilization and the amount of memory used was too high to be used for any productivity whatsoever.
I have mixed feelings about using either of these tools in general day-to-day projects. I can only think that those people raving about these are folks not using them on big projects. As a regular user of Twitter I see developers saying how great these tools make the use of Visual Studio. I have to wonder if these are not just people using the tools for demos and no real work.
I think I have wasted money on both of these tools and will not be using them on any future projects. Anyone want a deal on a R# 4.0 or CodeRush 3 license? I have one of each.
I also have mixed feelings about Visual Studio add-ins like ReSharper and CodeRush, but not for the reasons you outline. I generally avoid their prolonged use, but I received a complementary ReSharper license and I plan on trying v4.0 out in VS2K8. I understand how these tools can improve your productivity in some activities, but I am a bit put off by the .NET community’s advocacy of them. I hear alot of, "Visual Studio is unusable without ABC" and "I can’t program without XYZ". That makes me think that folks place too much importance on the guidance from these tools.
I don’t like the idea of being that reliant on any tool. It reminds me of a story I heard somewhere about a Java shop that decided to put away their complex tools and fancy IDEs and use text-based editors like emacs and vi. At first, they were slower because they missed their old tools and old way of working. But after a few weeks they had learned Java better than they knew it before, and were even more productive than before because they were designing and implementing superior code.
But I also miss the days of coding C# in Notepad, so I may not be representative of the majority. 🙂
I also have mixed feelings about Visual Studio add-ins like ReSharper and CodeRush, but not for the reasons you outline. I generally avoid their prolonged use, but I received a complementary ReSharper license and I plan on trying v4.0 out in VS2K8. I understand how these tools can improve your productivity in some activities, but I am a bit put off by the .NET community’s advocacy of them. I hear alot of, "Visual Studio is unusable without ABC" and "I can’t program without XYZ". That makes me think that folks place too much importance on the guidance from these tools.
I don’t like the idea of being that reliant on any tool. It reminds me of a story I heard somewhere about a Java shop that decided to put away their complex tools and fancy IDEs and use text-based editors like emacs and vi. At first, they were slower because they missed their old tools and old way of working. But after a few weeks they had learned Java better than they knew it before, and were even more productive than before because they were designing and implementing superior code.
But I also miss the days of coding C# in Notepad, so I may not be representative of the majority. 🙂
Great points Mike. I picked up these tools really looking as a way to be more productive but they turned out to be just a distraction and in the end, hurt my productivity.
I really hadn’t thought of these tools as you indicate, they can become more of a cruch. If you follow the good folks who are Rails developers they use plain old TextMate and do great work.
Yes, very good points indeed. Thanks. No more CodeRush or ReSharper for me.
Great points Mike. I picked up these tools really looking as a way to be more productive but they turned out to be just a distraction and in the end, hurt my productivity.
I really hadn’t thought of these tools as you indicate, they can become more of a cruch. If you follow the good folks who are Rails developers they use plain old TextMate and do great work.
Yes, very good points indeed. Thanks. No more CodeRush or ReSharper for me.
Mike, Rob: You’ve both admitted that you haven’t really tried R#, so how can you say that people like us don’t know what we’re talking about?
Seriously, the best tool is the one you don’t know is there and R# is like that. Going back to non-R# is very painful. R# enables you to code as you think and then go back and fill in the details later. VS by default forces you to build up all your classes and such and THEN start coding.
Honestly, I know and respect both of you so I say this with much respect: you really have no idea what you’re talking about. We should do a pairing session and you’ll see what I mean 🙂
Mike, Rob: You’ve both admitted that you haven’t really tried R#, so how can you say that people like us don’t know what we’re talking about?
Seriously, the best tool is the one you don’t know is there and R# is like that. Going back to non-R# is very painful. R# enables you to code as you think and then go back and fill in the details later. VS by default forces you to build up all your classes and such and THEN start coding.
Honestly, I know and respect both of you so I say this with much respect: you really have no idea what you’re talking about. We should do a pairing session and you’ll see what I mean 🙂
A:
I love r# if only for three things:
1. Find Usage, which will look at usages for a method through a class + through it’s interface
2. Go-To Inheritor
3. Shift+Alt+Space
B:
I use R# on large projects, for about a year.
Castle project as an example, and some client’s projects.
They key is that usually I can break down the uber-project into smaller solution files, with possible re-use of projects (Common, Domain, Infra..) amongst solutions.
All that on a 3 yr. old 1.6Ghz Laptop with 1.5Gb. It’s no slower than vanilla VS
C:
The funniest thing is the fact that you have "wasted money" on these tools. have you ever heard of a trial?
A:
I love r# if only for three things:
1. Find Usage, which will look at usages for a method through a class + through it’s interface
2. Go-To Inheritor
3. Shift+Alt+Space
B:
I use R# on large projects, for about a year.
Castle project as an example, and some client’s projects.
They key is that usually I can break down the uber-project into smaller solution files, with possible re-use of projects (Common, Domain, Infra..) amongst solutions.
All that on a 3 yr. old 1.6Ghz Laptop with 1.5Gb. It’s no slower than vanilla VS
C:
The funniest thing is the fact that you have "wasted money" on these tools. have you ever heard of a trial?
@chad I have tried R# to the best I could. I used the trial on small projects and it looked good, so I bought it. The real problem I found was when going to a big project, something with a real code base. When I did this R# became junk, used way too much memory and was so slow I became less productive.
I don’t understand how you can say I don’t know what I am talking about? I am only reporting what I DO know about, the tool is useless for me on a large codebase because it takes up too much memory and CPU.
I am not the only one who has seen these kinds of things, look around on Twitter and you will see folks like Scott Hanselman and Sam Gentile reporting similar weird stuff.
Don’t get me wrong, I want to like and use these tools. I like what they can do, that’s why I said I have mixed feelings about the tools.
I would love to have someone like yourself, who is good with R# and I can sit with and show me the way. I want to see the way, I just can’t imagine I am doing someting so wrong that I can’t get it to work out of the box.
@chad I have tried R# to the best I could. I used the trial on small projects and it looked good, so I bought it. The real problem I found was when going to a big project, something with a real code base. When I did this R# became junk, used way too much memory and was so slow I became less productive.
I don’t understand how you can say I don’t know what I am talking about? I am only reporting what I DO know about, the tool is useless for me on a large codebase because it takes up too much memory and CPU.
I am not the only one who has seen these kinds of things, look around on Twitter and you will see folks like Scott Hanselman and Sam Gentile reporting similar weird stuff.
Don’t get me wrong, I want to like and use these tools. I like what they can do, that’s why I said I have mixed feelings about the tools.
I would love to have someone like yourself, who is good with R# and I can sit with and show me the way. I want to see the way, I just can’t imagine I am doing someting so wrong that I can’t get it to work out of the box.
@ken For the record, I tried both products first and were wonderful on small projects.
I have a 2.26ghz Core 2 Duo with 4g RAM and with a recent project of almost 2 million lines of code it was unusable. Again, I WANT to like these tools but it makes it hard.
I have no control over breaking the large project into smaller solution files, it is a good-sized team and not an option. So why are you breaking your projects up into smaller solution files? Did you also find out R# didn’t work well with a large project too?
I am not trying to create a holy war, I know many respected folks use these tools and I am not trying contradict their values. My post says "mixed" feelings, I am trying to understand how people love the tools and don’t express issues but other people, who I also respect, have the same problems I do.
I don’t understand the two different camps, those having problems and those not.
@ken For the record, I tried both products first and were wonderful on small projects.
I have a 2.26ghz Core 2 Duo with 4g RAM and with a recent project of almost 2 million lines of code it was unusable. Again, I WANT to like these tools but it makes it hard.
I have no control over breaking the large project into smaller solution files, it is a good-sized team and not an option. So why are you breaking your projects up into smaller solution files? Did you also find out R# didn’t work well with a large project too?
I am not trying to create a holy war, I know many respected folks use these tools and I am not trying contradict their values. My post says "mixed" feelings, I am trying to understand how people love the tools and don’t express issues but other people, who I also respect, have the same problems I do.
I don’t understand the two different camps, those having problems and those not.
For the record, I respect and appreciate you guys for commenting. This is the kind of two-sided response I had hoped.
I am just baffled by the performance I have had with these tools so far.
For the record, I respect and appreciate you guys for commenting. This is the kind of two-sided response I had hoped.
I am just baffled by the performance I have had with these tools so far.
The Admin: Please could you e-mail me with the metrics of the solution you’ve found ReSharper is unusable? Internally, we do use our own ReSharper on it’s codebase every day, and do not see any SERIOUS performance problems. Current ReSharper’ codebase is about 60MB of source code, ~80 projects in solution
With beast Regards, Eugene Pasynkov.
ReSharper Team
"Develop with pleasure!"
The Admin: Please could you e-mail me with the metrics of the solution you’ve found ReSharper is unusable? Internally, we do use our own ReSharper on it’s codebase every day, and do not see any SERIOUS performance problems. Current ReSharper’ codebase is about 60MB of source code, ~80 projects in solution
With beast Regards, Eugene Pasynkov.
ReSharper Team
"Develop with pleasure!"
@eugene – What do you want to know? This is a large project for a Fortune 50 public company. I am not a liberty to give you much but I will tell you what I can.
@eugene – What do you want to know? This is a large project for a Fortune 50 public company. I am not a liberty to give you much but I will tell you what I can.
@Chad I never said you don’t know what you are talking about, just that I don’t see the world the same way you do. And I’ve tried ReSharper in the past, but it never stuck. I am going to try it again though.
I find that many of the features that folks praise ReSharper for are things I already do or get with vanilla Visual Studio. Perhaps I’m just not a power user of the IDE…
@Chad I never said you don’t know what you are talking about, just that I don’t see the world the same way you do. And I’ve tried ReSharper in the past, but it never stuck. I am going to try it again though.
I find that many of the features that folks praise ReSharper for are things I already do or get with vanilla Visual Studio. Perhaps I’m just not a power user of the IDE…