If anyone is ineterested I have access to some ReSharper discount coupons and extended trials.

see here for details: http://web2asp.net/2009/09/resharper-discount-and-extended-trial.html

None-the-less I am going to give CodeRush a try and see what it offers.

A little editing configs to avoid conflicts, and I have an IDE of awesome.

Well, as Arvid pointed out in his comment about my first (very frustrating) experiences with refactorings in .NET IDEs (especially Visual Studio), there is a tool called ReSharper by JetBrains. This brings nearly most of the power of Intellij IDEA’s…

One of my biggest pet peeves of CodeRush is Code Snippet Acronym Hijack (CSAH for short). It has gotten where I can’t type the word “No” any where without a object ob = new object() popping up!

But I like both products and have both running at same time. I had to turn off the features in both that clash and every once in a while VS will go to 100% CPU usage and stay.

I’m a R# fan, their 2.0 product is definately a productivity booster. I did as many have, downloaded CodeRush and gave it a go for the eval. It did have some nice features, the eye candy parts were a bit much of an overkill for me though, I’m sure I could turn this off if required.

I am not a template user so this was a bit of a miss for me, and I don’t really use R# LiveTemplates that much either.

R# Support for asp.net is good, as I am primarily a webdev this is a nice addition. The R# code navigation is the killer for me! I love it.

R# licensing is definately more entincing.

End of the day though, R# and CodeRush are like Coke and Pepsi, some people will never move vendors, others can drink either, some will try the other brand but continue to like their first choice and having both is a bit too much to drink…

If I had started on CodeRush first my story may of been different, who knows!

It would be nice if R# had the code metric components people discuss, that would be neat!

But the little R# icon on the NHibernate page drew me in!

Unit Testing is huge. With CR I have to use testdriven or testrunner and R#’s harness is better and more stable.

Find Usage is huge and rename public members (cascading through projects and slns) is also frequently used in R#; Safe Rename is a good idea, but it doesn’t hit the pragmatic sweet spot.

CR’s template engine is great, but, to be honest, I get more done with the 20 or so templates I know and use in R#. It’s an advantage, but unless I invest the time to learn the kajillion more templates in CR, it’s not a material one–and I have to wonder what the return on that investment’s going to be. I don’t type that many keystrokes as it is.

What I used to love about CR dating back to Delphi was when you typed the first few letters of a variable, bam, it suggested completion and you were on to the next thing. It still does this, but it seemed like you to have the default VS IntellAssist crap on as well, and basically it only worked when I had it set so a popup was firing everything I typed a language element. Little too much.

R#’s formatter is second nature to me, CR has no answer.

Even more useful, R# identifies missing usings, and will auto insert the namespace for you with a prompted alt-enter. Again, using CR, this amounted to more manual work I had to revert to doing again.

R# formats my ASP.NET script pretty nicely in 2003, that was a plus as well.

The inline cyclomatic and loc metrics are nice, the screen is prettier with CR. But I gave it two weeks and I found myself missing R# more than I was loving CR. When some combo of CR and TestRunner starting locking up VS instances, I uninstalled both and went back to the peaceful easy feeling R# gives me.

I have a soft spot for CR, but it’s never really gotten back to the must-have status it had back in the Delphi days. Part of this, to me, is the vastly reduced number of community plugins and the CR team’s failure to look at an obviously successful product like R# and learn from its feature set.

If you have a better core engine and template system, why not offer the other major features? Hmm… duh?

Btw whoever mentioned CodeSMART… I just vomited in my mouth. Buggy and useless compared to these two solid tools.

Ian Olsen’s ReSharper vs. CodeRush post (and it’s subsequent follow-up). He makes some very useful points about the two programs. After my ReSharper demo licence expired recently I really empathise with this point:
I really miss ReSharp…