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.NET developers out there! Need your opinion here!

I am now using Visual Assist X, a decent piece of software, indeed. But the .NET bloggers seem to prefer Resharper more. I might want to consider a switch over, but before that I want your guys opinion first.

kay.one
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Graviton
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3 Answers3

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Resharper is much better for C# code (and supposedly VB.Net, but I haven't tried that). Unfortunately there is no support for C/C++, so if you need that, you might want to keep Visual Assist around.

They don't coexist very well, unfortunately, so you may need to unload one, then load the other, when switching between C/C++ and C#.

To see the magic of Resharper, I would recommend watching the "Resharper Jedi" video.

wilhelmtell
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Rasmus Faber
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    Compatibility issues between Visual Assist and Resharper are addressed in Visual Assist build 1812: http://www.wholetomato.com/support/history.asp#1812 – sean e Feb 18 '10 at 18:44
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    C/C++ support is incoming for Resharper as well http://blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2014/02/26/resharper-for-c-eap-goes-public/ – eandersson Jun 24 '14 at 10:54
  • This answer needs updating - ReSharper for C++ has been released quite a while now. – aevitas Aug 11 '15 at 13:24
  • Comparison between ReSharper C++ and Visual Assist X (https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper-cpp/documentation/resharper_cpp_vs_visual_assist.html) – Gayan Pathirage Dec 10 '15 at 12:21
  • don't know since when, but now Rider supports writing code in C++ too, it's responsive enough and gives basic refactoring tools (i.e. move functions up/down or rename fields etc) – Cool guy Jun 09 '23 at 07:53
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C/C++ = Visual Assist X.

For me, C# = ReSharper + Visual Assist X.

Needless to say, ReSharper is much more powerful for C# development, than VA. But there are some features, like ability to show just methods in suggestions list, or highlight nearest scope that are in VA, but no equivalent in R#. I use both. Looks like they live pretty well together: i use default settings for VA, and i had to select ReSharper-->Options-->IntelliSense-->General-->Visual Studio to enable VA version of IntelliSense instead of ReSharper's one. I also customized identifiers colors in ReSharper, now they look like VA default colors, but show additional information (like Mutable Local Variables are bold).

Dima Stefantsov
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I know you only asked for a comparison of Resharper vs. Visual Assist but if you are doing .NET development you may also want to consider "Refactor! Pro".

I remember using VA years ago when doing Visual C++ development (and earlier than that the infamous CodeWiz) but with .NET development I get the impression that the majority of developers seem to use either ReSharper or Refactor!.

Refactor! also integrates with a code-generation tool called "CodeRush" and I've seen them both used very effectively together with Testdriven.Net (check out the Summer of NHibernate screencasts).

Personally I use Resharper and I am very pleased with how much it has increased my productivity but I'm sure you'll get equal benefit with Refactor!.

Hans Løken
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