Integrated Development Environments. These are the programming tools that most of us have come to almost take for granted. They provide the ability to write, debug, edit, and otherwise develop our software within a cohesive software product. You can find Development Environments for nearly every language platform. Microsoft Visual Studio can handle C#, VB.NET, F#, and C++ out of the Box, while also providing a wealth of other language capabilities through aftermarket software. Java has Eclipse and Netbeans, just to name two- the list goes on.

However, for every IDE user, there is a person who ‘looks down’ on the lowly IDE user; “they aren’t actually writing code” they grumble into their bag of cheetos- they are simply selecting things from an autocomplete list. These types of people are, perhaps in a statistically significant way, usually users of *nix based systems. They extoll the virtues of their favourite text editor- emacs, vim, nano, and look down on IDEs, which they will sometimes refer to as “glorified text editors”.

If my patronizing tone in the previous paragraph was not obvious- or if you’ve never read one of my programming-oriented blog entries, I’m firmly on the side that supports and uses IDEs, wherever they are available. The arguments against them are often lame; arguing that getting used to a feature like autocomplete or parameter lists, or dynamic help windows, and tips and whatnot make us “soft” is absurd- the same could be said of keyboards- by extension it just makes inputting data easier, so clearly we should be flipping switches manually. My point is that IDE software aims to make the task of software development easier, and more productive. And IMO it does this is spades.

There are even add-ins for many IDEs that basically provide all sorts of world-class capabilities in the IDE. Resharper is one exceptional such plugin that is available for Visual Studio- at this point, if it’s missing, it’s like I’m missing an appendage. It has made my work in Visual Studio so much more enjoyable and productive, that I almost feel it’s a crime not to have it installed. Similar addons are available for all sorts of IDEs; even Visual Basic 6 has things like MZTools(Free) or AxTools CodeSMART(Commercial).

Of course, IDEs lose a lot of their edge in certain languages, particularly those that lean towards the dynamic end of the spectrum. So much information about the program relies on run-time, that it’s a tricky proposition for a piece of software to try to figure out what is going on and provide any sort of tips or suggestions. Unsurprisingly, most of those that find IDEs childish use languages such as Python, Perl, Ruby, and PHP; I myself do not use an IDE for these languages either; primarily because I couldn’t find one (VS 2012 has an add-in available called “PHP Tools” that apparently brings support for PHP, though I do not know the extent of it’s assistance). However, if there was a software product available that provided the same level of assistance to languages like Ruby and Python as I currently get from Visual Studio or Eclipse, I would jump on it like Mario on a Goomba.

We ought to think of the software as not only our tools, but our own assistants. Most people wouldn’t raise any objections about being given a personal assistant for their work or daily tasks. In the case of Resharper specifically, that assistant is also an 11.