Is it really worth purchasing R# for VS2010?

Question

I heard that R#5.0 (still in beta) will support VS 2010. My question is VS2010 == VS2008 + ReSharper ?

I know there are many improvements to VS2010, so I \'m not sure we

Answer 1

My question is VS2010 == VS2008 + ReSharper ?

Oh hell no. VS2010 has more features than VS2008, and some of those feature ideas were stolen from ReSharper, but vanilla VS2010 is still a long way behind VS2010 + ReSharper 5 or even VS2008 + ReSharper 5.

From a quick glance at my 31 Days of ReSharper blog posts (written back in the R# 2.5 days), here are just a few ReSharper features that are still not present in VS2010: (Please correct me if VS2010 does have any of these -- I haven't actually used it that much without ReSharper!)

• Unused code highlighted in gray and with quick-fixes to delete the unused code for you (this is just one of many hints and warnings R# does that VS does not)
• Visual indication of where you have hints, warnings, and errors in a source file (colored stripe next to the vertical scroll bar)
• Integrated unit-test runner that's not locked down to only MS's test framework
• Shared settings for code formatting, code templates, etc. -- check these settings into version control, and they'll be picked up automatically by other computers (no manual export/import)
• Go To Type -- a pop-up window where you can enter a type name (or part of the name) and jump straight to the right source file
• Navigate to derived types / overriding methods
• Code Structure View -- view a list of members in your type, and drag/drop to reorder them in your source code
• R# will suggest variable names for you
• You can invoke an Intellisense dropdown that shows types from all namespaces (and then it adds the using for you)
• It's eerily good at guessing what you meant when you tell it to fix an error for you
• Remove unused braces and Invert If
• Generate Code (I particularly like Generate Equals and GetHashCode, even though I use them very rarely)
• Viral Rename (if you rename a type, it'll also suggest that you rename any variables that were named after the type)
• And best of all, Safe Delete.

Safe Delete rocks.

And that's just the features that R# had in 2.5 when I wrote the 31 Days of ReSharper. They've added plenty of new features since (I just don't have a comprehensive list handy). A couple of my favorites are the background solution-wide analysis, which will tell you in nearly real-time if you have compiler errors anywhere in your solution, and Inspect > Value Origin, which is just wicked cool.