More than a text editor

Recently I started using Visual Studio 2010, if you follow me on twitter you probably know that this hasnt been a nice transition for me (apologies for the cursing btw)  I ve had many crashes, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone, not only a quick search in twitter will reflect this (see image below, the only marked twitt is about a fix for something) , but a some of my co-workers had one or another problem.

It would be naive to think all the issues have the same source, and I know that many are related to the plugins ( I use Resharper with xUnit extensions and AnkSvn). What I’m trying to say is that this post is not  to bash Visual Studio,  to be fair the IDE is pretty flashy, shiny, even amazing…. but you know what I want options,  something I can rely on and that I can bend to my will. Lets elaborate on that.

Using resharper means I’m used to using shortcuts, templates and whatnot,  I know I should be able to bend an IDE to do what I want so I can code faster, be focused on what I’m doing. **On the other hand **I can also see that having a comon IDE within a group means we can share tricks and learn about each other practises.

So today I saw this post by Rob Connery and I cant help but wonder, Is Vim the right way to go?, no idea but I know I’m ready to give it another try.  However Id iek to set my expectations. I think what I would like is a more modular VS  (where I can turn things off).

Although it s a pain, the Add Reference Dialog **speed is not my main issue,  it takes so long to add a reference that at least it makes me think “Do you really want to add that dependecy?**” I would prefer if it wouldnt happen tho.

So, what do I want ouf of my IDE:

• To write code, quickly

• to rely on it, if it crashes, updates, looses references that It handles it elegantly

• To get feedback about the code I write  quickly

• yes to  intellisense , I’m a terrible typist (maybe I should change that?) and it helps when you have long explicit variable names (sometimes I go overboard with this until I find better names)

• to be able to change the way the code looks

• to format the code to my will, even if it s stupid, I want to be able to try new things

• to be able to do simple **and **complex refactorings easily and that their result is obvious before we event start the operation

• good ctrl+z support

• to leverage what I know, and induce me to do smarter things, after all the IDE has intimate knowledge about the framework I’m using

• that I can carry around my settings (shortcuts, templates, etc really easily)

am I dreaming? Possibly, but lets see whats possible