Coding Horror: Resharper for VB.NET

February 02, 2005

Resharper for VB.NET

Inspired by Jeff Key's "if loving Resharper is wrong I don't wanna be right" soliloquy, I emailed JetBrains to see if they had plans to bring Resharper-- currently a C# only tool-- to VB.NET. This was their response:

Of course there will be support for VB.NET, but it will be available only in ReSharper for Visual Studio 2005, which will come out just after the official release of Visual Studio 2005.
Andrey Serebryansky
Support Engineer
JetBrains, Inc

This is news to me-- good news! However, I did enjoy the unintentional irony of Resharper's most "powerful and helpful" feature:

One of the most powerful and helpful features in ReSharper is its ability to quickly detect and highlight errors in code, without the need to compile it. ReSharper automatically analyzes your code while you work and will highlight a variety of possible syntax or logical errors. It can also detect and emphasize statements or constructs that you should be warned about (e.g., unused or uninitialized variables).

Smells like ~~teen spirit~~background compilation, something VB has had since 1997. Does it increase productivity? Absolutely. Just ask Jeff Key.

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Comments

So are we saying here that (from an IDE standpoint) with Reshaper installed, C# is as easy to code with as vb.net?

It might just get me to code C# more often!

Andy on February 2, 2005 07:29 AM

This is great news. Too bad it's not until the whidbey timeframe, which only leaves us lowly vb.net developers of hopes for Refactor! that I know of in the 2003 IDE, but good news nonetheless. Glad to see 3rd party vendors picking up the refactoring slack, as long as we can get mgmt to see enough value to purchase :)

Aaron Junod on February 2, 2005 07:47 AM

If you need it that bad, DevExpress is coming out with a new refactor tool, which will support C# AND VB.NET and ultimately any .NET language. Saw Mark Miller from DevExpress present this at a .NET user group presentation; very very cool product.

Also, http://www.xtreme-simplicity.net/ is coming out with support for VB as well.

If you really want to type C# easy now, try the $99 VisualAssist from wholetomato.com. Great product... <not affiliated with anyone!> It works with VB and C#, not to mention HTML, JScript! I love this thing...

HTH,

Leigh

Leigh Kendall on February 2, 2005 08:17 AM

Well, no sweat -- you can wait until VS .NET 2005 comes out, or you can join our EAP for the ReSharper IDE that will start around the release of VS .NET 2005 ... the ReSharper IDE will have all of the same cool features as the VS .NET 2005 ReSharper plugin, plus all of the other cool bangs and whistles that we generally put into our products ...

The Plugin for VS .NET 2005 & the IDE will have support for:

C# 2.0 (including Generics)
VB.NET
ASP.NET

David Stennett
JetBrains, Inc.

David Stennett on February 3, 2005 08:59 AM

I developed GhostClip popup help with intention to make programs like Resharper (and others) easier to learn and make it easier to code in Visual Studio. It can be used to popup and display help text, images, or code plus includes clipboard monitor. A free 30 day trial is available for download. I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks,
Curtis White
developer GhostClip
<a href="http://www.ghostclip.com">http://www.ghostclip.com</a>;

Curtis White on December 28, 2005 04:08 PM

They are a little late... The "Official Release" of VS 2005 has come and gone. Expected delivery on the VB edition of Resharper? End of year... maybe.

It's in the comments here:

http://blogs.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2006/06/resharper-20-help-available-online/

Eric D. Burdo on August 29, 2006 12:21 PM

Has anyone noticed:
C# == (VB.NET + syntax);
If anyone checks code samples (with translations from vb to c#), they are almost exactly the same.

Charles on December 22, 2007 02:10 AM