Dev Tools

CR/R! Wrap up

Jay Kimble — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:25:47 GMT

It’s been about a month since I took the challenge to replace ReSharper (R#) with Code Rush/Refactor! Pro (CR/R!). In that time I have adjusted well to CR/R!. There are a number of areas where I am MORE productive. Yep, I said that. There are a few things I miss (So Mark of DevExpress pay attention).

Code Analysis could improve

Code Analysis is a fairly new feature of CR/R! and as one would expect it’s not quite as strong as R#'s (I do expect this to get better, BTW). Sometimes it doesn’t find references to ASP.NET Server Controls from the Code Behind for instance which tends to make its analysis on ASPX CodeBehind files somewhat unpredictable. I also ran into some speed issues with JS code, but I think it was the network that day (because I haven’t had any issues since).

The other thing I love about R# is that not only does it analyze my code, but it gives me a convenient keystroke that helps me resolve the problem without having to leave where I am. CR/R! is building some of this stuff so we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

Embeddings

I still have a few embeddings that I would like to turn off (with no options to do so -- as far as I can tell)... I suspect I need to dig into the XML config files, but am scared to do so.

For the DevExpress Guys to note the main one I want to get rid of is called "Embed Not Parenthesis." What happens is that I’m in a long "if(...)" and I highlight the first "=" of an "==" (because I stupidly set it to "==" and not "!="), when I type "!" it translates my entry to "!(=)=" which would be nice is I had more than 1 character highlighted.

[If you don’t know what they are let me explain them. Basically with CR/R! if you have a section of code highlighted you can easily wrap that selection with say a region by typing CTL+3 (BTW, # = Shift+3 so the sequence makes sense); when you do that a #region/#endregion automagically wraps your selected code and drops you on the line to set the region text. ]

The embeddings in general could really benefit from a different set of key sequences. it’s too easy to highlight a section of code and accidentally type the single character that creates the embedding... I’d prefer a CTL sequence. Yes, I know I can change them myself, but the defaults make the product frustrating for newbies.

Wish List

Beyond what I have already mentioned I really have 1 wish. I want either an alternate set of keystroke shortcuts for things like Embeddings and single character templates [CR/R! has some single character templates that you type like "c{space}" and a class shell automagically appears] that I can set as the default (so choose something other than what has been the standard) or the ability to package up my settings and be able to easily share them...

Yes, Rory, I have thought about contributing an addin for your community project.

Script# Compatibility

BTW, CR/R! works with Script#! Well, I ran into a few minor difficulties, but I could use it with the product which is all I would have asked for. No crashes, and no real warts.

Final words

Well, the good news for the CR/R! crew is that I’m a convert. I waited too long for VS 2008 from R#, and in that time I realized that there is a different place to go to.

Finding that I can refactor all kinds of things (like HTML code and JS code as well as C# and VB code now if it only did Python... just kidding, Mark... I don’t need it) really sealed the deal.

If you are trying out CR/R! you should get the Rory’s latest zip file containing all the community plugins. You should especially install "Refactor_Resolve" from this zip file (You’ll want it!). This is the plugin that was written by Koen Hoefkens. BTW, these plugins I think all run with DXCore, so if you don’t have a license to any kind of Refactoring product then you might want to consider installing DXCore (it’s free) and then installing these plugins... they can make your life a little easier.

Red Gate & Reflector: My Concerns...

Jay Kimble — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:22:20 GMT

Ok, before I start off I want to note that Red Gate is one of our "Friends of TRT," so they show up on just about every page of the site (and would appear in every RSS if I had the time to figure out how to do it). I also want to note that I know that I am breaking a rule with this post and may alienate a vendor, but this needs to be said (and sometimes I can’t resist).

I love Red Gate tools. Their commercial stuff is absolutely awesome, and I mean that. If you don’t own at least their SQL Data/Compare tools, then you should. Their software engineering is without much fault (as far as I have seen). I love how they help the community (hence they are in our "Friends" program).

I was chatting with JP (John Papa) when I caught the news in the latest bulletin from them (it might have been old), and went from casual talk about John’s skin on his blog (see here) to "Crap! Red Gate just bought Reflector..." JP doesn’t necessarily agree with me, but I wanted to at least spit out what I’m bugged by.

Red Gate also owns the PInvoke.net addin for VS2005 (and maybe it now works with VS2008). When you click on the web site to get the addin you are prompted for an email address and are informed that you will be getting ANTS Profiler 3 and Exception Hunter 1 as well... so they bundled 2 trials with a free product... products that you may already have licenses to.

Not only that but every couple days you start getting spammed by their marketing department (it’s one of those... 2 days, 5 days, 1.5 weeks, 3 weeks, and after about a month they finally leave you alone). The bigger problem is that they don’t check their DB to see if you are already a registered licensee of a product (beyond the fact that you went there for a FREE PRODUCT).

So everyone is wondering if .NET Reflector will continue to be free. I know that it will... It will just be bundled with some stuff that you may or may not want... and then you’ll be marketed to for a couple weeks after... That would be my big complaint. I hope that they choose to do otherwise (right now you can still download just .NET Reflector... but the marketing guys haven’t had time yet to figure out what they want to do... so we’ll see what happens).

BTW, I hope I’m wrong about all this ... I really do. Red Gate is a company I really do like (I just don’t always like the way they have handled "free" products in the past)... I hope they continue to have a single download to the free product.

Core Addin Challenge: 2 weeks with CodeRush/Refactor Pro (CR/R!)

Jay Kimble — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:43:58 GMT

[As previously mentioned I have committed to switching from ReSharper (R#) to CR/R!... the end result will be a regular guy’s comparison of the 2. DISCLAIMER: By no means is this meant to be a slight on R#, but more of me looking at CR/R! a little closer -- I think a number of us took a cursory look at CR/R! and while we found value a surface look doesn’t really give you the full picture... I’m going through the challenges of using CR/R! because it IS different from R# and hopefully I can help folks who are trying to compare between the two and decide which is best for their situation]

Turning the corner (sort of)

Tuesday I turned the corner I thought that there was no coming back (more on that in a second). The thing about CR/R! is that it’s truly a learning experience. CR takes over your environment in such a way that, while it still looks like Visual Studio, you need to re-educate yourself a little to all its nuances. It can actually get in your way (and there have been a couple times with Mark and Rory (and Koen HanHoefkens, the author of the excellent --and free-- CR_Resolve plugin) where I have asked "how do I turn xxx feature off." The most annoying one for me is that I tend to highlight code and start to overwrite with new code... for the most part there are no pains here, except when the character you type is a "(" which is often the character I am typing when changing an "if" statement. What happens is that this embeds your selection in a set of parenthesis. This was actually easy to turn off... the feature is called "embeddings" which is found in the shortcuts section of the options (there are lots of options with CR/R!). Before I shut them all down I discovered some really rich stuff here... for instance you can highlight code, type "c" and your code is instantly surrounded by a try catch with your cursor setting in the catch block. I still turned off the parenthesis, but I left the rest of them on.

I’ve also started figuring out some of the templates.

I’m still learning here, but the topic is very deep!

BTW, I’ve found that this product enhances your experience while working with ASP.NET HTML, JavaScript, VB, C#, and even Script# (C# variant that creates JS files).

My One hiccup

I have experienced one hiccup over the last several days: PERFORMANCE/MEMORY FOOTPRINT. I’ve had VS crash a few times. I finally think I have the problem figured out (a not so well behaved plug-in I installed... I installed some really old plugins... well they didn’t seem that old).

Currently the only DXCore plugins I have running (besides CR/R!) are CR_RESOLVE, and the "Highlight Current Line" both from the community plugins (mentioned in the last post). I also have turned off the Code Analysis (temporarily).

I am still watching this closely (and am sure that Mark Miller will chime in either personally or publicly with a few more suggestions, but I don’t think he needs to... this lesson should be heeded that you need to be careful which addins you install in VS... they can make things run less than smoothly, and adding a bunch of them all at once makes it even harder to determine where the problem really lies).

Core Addin Challenge: 1 week with CodeRush/Refactor Pro

Jay Kimble — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:29:28 GMT

[UPDATE 8/5: Rory noticed a couple spelling errors in people's names and also noted that I should give Koen HanHoefkens credit for his excellent CR_RESOLVE plugin]

I have survived my first week with CodeRush/Refactor Pro (CR/RP). I have discovered a few things about my development habits:

I don’t memorize all that many shortcut keystrokes... I tend to look for the "one keystroke to rule them all." Interestingly enough I avoid mouse usage as well
With the competing produce (R#) I use about 7 features:
- Improved Intellisense
- Rename Refactoring (which is also available in VS)
- Extract Method (also available in VS)
- Code Analysis
- Auto-create add using/import
- File Templates
- Find Usages

I’m also discovering some things about CR/RP

I’m discovering that I need to tweak CR/RP’s default settings to avoid some of the "annoyances" (CR/RP can take over at times when you don’t want it to)
I think If I can get over the hump I am going to find that I’m MORE productive with this thing (although it has been touch and go at times)
One of my machines seems to run faster than R# and the other not so much (there are different things turned on/off on these machines right now)
RP provides more refactorings than any other product I have seen!! They even have refactorings for ASP.NET .ASPX files (the html part!!!)

So the "one keystroke to rule them all" for CR/RP is CTL + ~ . Oh yeah, you also need to install the community DXCore addin called -- Refactor_Resolve (which was written by Koen HanHoefkens and you can get from here.. but I would recommend that you get it out of the zip file found here. BTW, thank you Rory Becker for this info). Once you have installed that and get it turned on then Refactor! will give you an option to add usings/imports for your unresolved references.

Oh yeah that community project has a number of nice things you may want to install... like the highlighted line focus.

As I mentioned before you also need to turn on Code Analysis and cut down the size of the little bar at the bottom of the code files, by setting it to 1 file and 0 pixels (it will still show up, but it won’t be as intrusive... your scroll bar will work again). One more thing I believe this feature is a new one (and maybe even a beta one)... it’s not as good as R#'s but from what I understand with their plans it is going to get a lot better (they are going to add over 100 items it can check for and find...)

Additional things I did was I turned off the Smart Brackets and Smart Parentheses and the some of the Smart Paste features features (the auto create properties ones are what I killed... I may kill a few more of the Smart Paste features to get things tweaked out a little better for me).

Summary
All in all things are getting better... Today was a breakthrough day for me (Thank you Rory Becker and Mark Miller)! I think I turned the corner on my experience. I’m think I’m as productive with CR/RP now as I was with R#. I’m only missing 2 things... both of which are livable right now: Find Usages (which I can use the Find References mechanism), and R# File Templates (but CR’s templates are WAY better... so I need to learn a few more of those... I have a number committed to memory already). Just 23 more days to go... but I suspect I'm going to be very comfy before that happens.

ReSharper 4.0 Beta!

Jay Kimble — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:54:02 GMT

I hadn’t seen this mentioned anywhere else. ReSharper 4.0’s Beta has now been released.

This is by far my favorite tool in my arsenal. I find how good of a C# programmer I really am when I have to develop without it.

The latest version has been updated for C# 3.0 (VS 2008 version). I could copy the rest of the feature list, but you can go read yourself. I have been using the EAP bits since right before the Beta Release Candidate and it appears to be really solid with the last couple of drops.