I wanted to hold off writing this post, because I wanted to be impartial to the product as possible. However, when I first installed Telerik’s JustCode, I instantly knew that this was the productivity enhancement tool for me.
Let me back up a little, over the years I have given ReSharper and CodeRush more than enough latitude to impress me and after using them for 3 months or more at a time I always end up just uninstalling them. And I constantly repeated this process over and over again, start with naked Visual Studio, get antsy want to try something new install ReSharper, get fed up, uninstall, install CodeRush, get fed up, uninstall, repeat.
I probably repeated this process countless times over the past 5 years, and each time I got more and more fed up and discouraged that the best productivity tool was my fingers, mouse, and naked Visual Studio. However that all changed the day I realized that Telerik was creating a competing productivity tool which seemed to solve my major issues with ReSharper and CodeRush, namely:
- Performance, JustCode doesn’t slow down the startup process of Visual Studio, and it doesn’t slow down the performance of Visual Studio while using it.
- There are no annoying pop-ups that you can’t get rid of. (mainly CodeRush)
- They don’t try to override everything in Visual Studio, even things that work perfectly fine. (mainly ReSharper)
- The power options aren’t hidden way behind obscure keyboard commands.
The first 3 points above are superficial and hard to prove in a blog post. However the 4 point is very easy to explain. My problem with CodeRush and ReSharper is that unless you had inside knowledge or a ton of time to spend learning all the ins and outs of the software you pretty much started and stayed at a disadvantage. Just to be clear, I have spent countless hours watching the video’s, reading blogs, and slowly finding all the ins and outs of each productivity tool, and to be honest it shouldn’t be this hard. And I should following up to saying it doesn’t have to be this hard.
The instant productivity is apparent day-one, with JustCode, if you have absolutely no time to learn the ins and outs or the keyword shortcuts or you just don’t care, you don’t have to worry because every option available to you for the specific piece of code is available in a context menu that shows up when you hover over the a relative piece of code:
These different letters that show up are essentially your best friend, and they stand for:
- C – Create, for generating and creating related code.
- R – Refactor for refactoring the current code.
- N – Navigating the project.
- T – Testing
Under each of these menus is a context sensitive menu for all the options available to you to create, refactor, navigate, and sometimes test your code that you are hovering over. All this being said, if you have the time and the inclination to learn the keyboard commands, you should, because it just adds a speed component to the same productivity you have by clicking around with the mouse.
The other great thing about the JustCode approach is that it is not totally in your face always reminding you that you are running JustCode such as CodeRush and ReSharper do. Maybe this is a bad marketing decision to not constantly remind the customer of the product they are using, but to me the out of the way approach of JustCode is a positive bonus.
JustCode is essentially my friend that only pops up and says “I can help you out with that problem” when I request the help, instead of the annoying friend that is always hanging around reminding you they are there and interjecting unhelpful non-sense when you don’t need their help. Just like Clippy did in Microsoft Office.
tl;dr
I cannot say enough good things about Telerik’s JustCode. If you want a comprehensive productivity tool for coding with Visual Studio that stays out of your way until you ask for its help then JustCode is just the tool for you and it will make just coding a pleasurable experience. (sorry about the play on the word just)
You can download a free trial version from here: http://www.telerik.com/account/your-products/trial-product-versions/trial-single-download.aspx?pmvid=0&pid=717
Try it, you won’t be disappointed.
Telerik JustCode
I’ll agree that it can take a while to learn all the goodness in ReSharper. But when you do you are in total heaven. I have to disagree with any comments about resharper being obtrusive. You get a little squiggle under potential errors/improvements. The example you show above looks a lot more in your face. Alt + enter in resharper brings up a much more native-looking dialogue.
If you loved ReSharper, and then said this was better, a lot of people would listen. The fact you didn’t like ReSharper indicates a difference in personal preference. And that’s totally fine. But probably won’t do too much for us ReSharper fan boys.
Not really trying to convince fan boys to move products. By the very name “fan boy” means that it is a Sisyphion exercise.
Also to counter your point, You said it puts a squiggly line under everything it wants to get your attention on. I don’t know about you but that is always in your face. Where JustCode only pops up when you ask for it’s help. Second, my main problem with ReSharper has always been the performance of the tool is horrible, and it tries to override functions in VIsual Studio that work just fine, such as the intellisense.
The JustCode example from above only shows up when I hover over the object, and click the smart-tag asking for help. So it is a total 180 from how ReSharper and CodeRush decide to implement their products.
Lastly, you shouldn’t be relying on a tool so much that you forget or never learn how to everything yourself. The point of a productivity tool is to speed up your productivity, not do your job. I liken it to a construction worker always using an electric screw driver and if his electric screw driver breaks down suddenly he can’t do his job because he never learned out to use a plain old manual screw driver.
I put this challenge out to everybody, you say you need to learn the goodness of ReSharper, well here is my challenge learn the goodness of your brain using naked Visual Studio for 3 months. After 3 months of naked VS, you will be much more productive in ReSharper and find you don’t need all the “goodness” and really only require the 25% that speeds up your productivity. This happens when you stop relying on all the refactoring that ReSharper does for you and start thinking about your design ahead of time.
Try naked VS, you will learn a lot about your self as a developer.
The thing about Resharper is that it really does take away a hefty load that the goodness of my brain had to be focused on the generate excellent code. Now I’m able to move higher up the ladder and let ReSharper handle much of that load.
You can choose to work in the trenches and be very good at it, better than ReSharper, or you can choose to move up the ladder and leave the trenches to pretty good robots.