I’ve started a new project in Visual Studio 2010 because I want to take advantage of the new features in ASP.NET MVC 2. The features I am really interested in are Areas and the support of the new client side validation libraries that utilize the Data Annotations attributes. I sat down and set up my new solution as usual. Everything at this point was going great. Rolling up my sleeves, after several minutes of coding the ReSharper 5.0 nightly build started barfing on me. The shortcut keys barely worked and it would constantly freeze VS2010 when viewing Html pages. Ultimately, I realized that ReSharper 5.0 was not ready for VS2010, although it works great in VS2008. Now I was faced with the cold reality of having to uninstall ReSharper, for the greater good of the project. I haven’t coded a project without ReSharper in about two years, but now I am venturing forth until ReSharper 5.0 can catch up with me. Below, I’m going to list the things that I miss most about development life with ReSharper.

Visual Studio 2010 Without ReSharper

1. Development Time Error Checking

Resharper tells you that you’ve made a mistake before you ever compile your solution. It is constantly compiling you application in the background and making sure everything is still gravy. This keeps you from hitting f5 or Ctrl+Shift+B every ten seconds. This has to be the feature I miss the most. This is definitely a feature Microsoft should look into building directly into future versions of Visual Studio. Wouldn’t you like to know that you typed something wrong  the second you type it wrong? In addition to finding your mistakes, it places a nice little sidebar to tell you where you can find where you went wrong.

2. Solution Wide Searches for Dependencies

Resharper is really smart about what classes you are using. It can search through your entire solution and add any dependency to your existing project. This greatly reduces the need to right click on a project and click the “Add Reference” option. It even remembers third party assemblies and can add them; assemblies like NUnit or Enterprise Library.

3. Ctrl + Click = Magic

ReSharper lets you hold down the control key on your keyboard and click on a class name, which instantly takes you to the source of that class. Can greatly speed up you navigational abilities.

4. ReSharper Test Runner

ReSharper has a great test runner which runs almost all unit testing frameworks. The alternative for me right now is running tests using TestDriven.Net and Gallio, which isn’t too bad but it isn’t as nice a workflow as using ReSharper.

5. The Super Shortcut Alt+Enter

Alt+Enter, remember that key combination if you want to be a coding ninja. A super shortcut in ReSharper that understands the context you are in and shows you appropriate actions. Want to remove unused namespaces? Move your cursor to the namespaces section of your code and press Alt+Enter. Want to use var instead? Alt+Enter. Want to rename a file to match a class name? Alt+Enter. Want to move a class to a namespace? Alt+Enter. Want to rule the world? Alt+Enter (coming in ReSharper 6).

6. Smarter Templates

If you use code snippets in Visual Studio then you owe it to yourself to look at the templates in ReSharper. You can create really smart templates that include things like namespaces, filename, and much more. This feature has save my fingers countless hours of typing.

Conclusion

I miss ReSharper, but the advantages to using VS 2010 greatly outweigh my selfish need to be comforted by a productivity tool. Until ReSharper 5 becomes more stable I will have to wander the development wilderness alone. Lets hope that isn’t too long.