CodeRush. What can I say?

I may be a little less on the objective side, having used CodeSmart for the past several years, but any tool that claims they are the only tool to have a “code templates“ feature, either is lying or have no idea what is in the market.

Hell, CodeSmart have had this functionality for at least 3 years that I know of, even back in the VB6 days.

It actually offends me as a developer that CodeSmart isn't even on their list of competitive features table. Heck, you have Resharper there, but that's not even out of Alpha version, and you have Visual Assist, which , to my mind, has been (for other than C++ dev) almost non existent in features, but where the heck is CodeSmart? It's almost as if they are avoiding it on purpose. are you?

 

Disclaimer: I do not work for AXTools, maker of CodeSmart, I'm just a huge fan of their software and have been using it for a long time. As a happy customer, I always show it to people and they love it. Remarkably, its still not very well known.

 

Anyway, here's my list of “real world” comparison features with CodeRush and CodeSmart.

The 4 most important things I use with CodeSmart are:

CodeRush does a slightly better job of templates, because you have active field markers in the expanded text that you can change easily after the expansion actually occurs. I'd love to see this in CodeSmart, but it's not heartbreaking.

 

2. Consolidated project view + Class view - CodeRush has nothing like this

3. Extended find & replace - CodeRush aint even close.

4. Code builders - Same as above

 

As for CodeRushe's features: Most of them are eye-candy, and are just as useful as they sound. Nice to have, nothing more.

 - Markers,i.e. “better bookmarks”. OK. what else?

- selection expansion - I like it. would like to see it in CodeSmart. saves time.

- Quick - nav: already have a quick solution for this, and it's free: QuickJump

- Spell checking: got it in CS

- Flow evaluation: don't have it, nice to have but not earth shattering

- live error highlighting: I'd like this a lot!

- Smart cut/copy: sorta have it already. I wonder just how many people use this.

- Duplicate line: erm.. macros? hear of those?

- Add-in extensibility: coolness. I wants it.

 

Now, take a frigging look at CodeSmart's features and tell me it does not have better features. Really. I can see why there was no comparison to CS in the chart. I can live with “ We provide other features, but not these right now” but ignoring the competition as if they don't exist is an insult to my intelligence.