I was working with someone who doesn’t have ReSharper today and I noticed for the first time that I have developed some feature addictions because I actually winced when I watched him fully type out a property and then manually do an “extract method” refactoring.
This surprised me since I have only really been consistently using ReSharper for the last month and am still far from my goal of becoming a ReSharper Jedi. Nevertheless, the dozen or so keystrokes that I have mastered and consistently use are making a noticeable difference in removing some of the coding noise that usually distracts me and slows me down while coding.
In keeping with the lucky seven theme from my last post, I decided to share seven favorite features. In other words, if there were suddenly a terrible ReSharper feature shortage and the Programming Gestapo started forcing everyone to ration their features, this is what I would choose.
(NOTE: All shortcut keys are according to the VS Bindings)
- Auto-inserting using statements (alt + return at prompt) – This is by far my favorite feature. How does it know what I wanted so quickly?
- Generating properties, constructors, & overrides (Alt + Ins) – For properties, it lets you choose from a list of private variables without properties. For constructors, it lets you choose from a list of possible properties to use as parameters.
- Identifying Dead Code (text colored gray): No more excuses for letting unused code clutter your code base.
- Extract Method (Ctl + Alt + M) – It figures out which parameters you’ll need to pass in and replaces the highlighted text with a call to the new method.
- Rename (F2) – This is a LOT smarter and quicker than the Visual Studio Find & Replace.
- Find Usages (Shift + Alt + F12) – This also beats the pants off of Find & Replace for doing impact analysis.
- Go ToType (Ctl + N) - I like how it pops up at my cursor, filters the list while I type, and shows the location of the files.
I fully expect this list to change as I get more proficient with the tool and as I start working on a 2.0 .NET project instead of a 1.1 project so that I can use the latest version of ReSharper.
Which seven features would you choose? If you had to recommend one killer feature that I am missing out on, which one would it be?
Popularity: 6% [?]
