Visual Assist does indeed rule, but I think the main reason I use Visual Studio exclusively is that you can’t do Xbox 360 dev in anything else very easily.

If it works better for you, you should use it.

I’m with The Head, VIM for the win hands down doing all that stuff. Use the plugin with VS and you’re in the best of both worlds.

I’d like to argue the other point though. I think that bad programmers are VERY emotional beings. They’re idiots if they don’t listen to other arguments and find ways to learn in the hope that they’ll improve.

Cheers

WTF? I know what you mean by this but I can’t help think that the term “emotional beings” is too generous. Interestingly, I’ve worked at a company that was internally two separate groups of different ideologies. New blood would eventually figure out there are two groups and then joined the group that most fitted their ideology thereby polarising the groups even further. You can see this happening at any company to some degree, including where we work now.

Bearing in mind that (last time I checked) I’m not actually editing any C# or XAML, I think my nose remains intact, and my face remains unspitten.

Now, if you can suggest an editor I can use to edit Ruby, Python, Scheme, Common Lisp, C, C++, Makefiles and plain text, which runs identically on Windows, Linux and OSX, and which gives me the same regex-based search and replace capabilities as Vim (plus the abilities to jump to function definitions and auto-complete in all those languages and more), then hey, I’m all ears…

Jon, Although VI is damn cool; You’re using the wrong tool for the job when you’re coding C# and XAML that’s for sure. I’m sorry Jon, but you are cutting off your nose to spite your face there. (I’m talking standalone VI here, not the vs integration.)

I will try some ruby in Vim though, I take your point about the languages being so verbose. I also know you are a language geek so really appreciate such things. I’ll let you know how I get on.

OJ, I didn’t want the discussion to be so religious it dissolves into nonsense. I was told recently that programmers are VERY emotional beings. When they can’t rationalize something they resort to an almost primitive and often bi-polar state. All the good religious debates, certainly with programmers are unfortunately doomed to this.

I’m certainly better off for using these tools. I don’t think anyone can doubt that, or can they? But the right tool for the job wasn’t quite what I was getting at. I mean does my reliance on intelisense-like tools shape which languages I code in. An example being; I can’t be bothered with PHP at the moment because it doesn’t have any such tools. I really don’t want to learn the API or even the language the old fashion way. It’s like stepping back in time. So am I now worse off? Lazy perhaps? Before I certainly would have given it more effort a few years ago than I’m prepared to do now.

Anyway, It’s probably about time that I started running with ViEmu. Maybe I’ll install it tomorrow.

Anyways Sirs, always a pleasure.

This kind of topic appears at almost every place of work. I’ve had a lot of different jobs in my career and it’s never failed to come up in conversation at any of them. That includes the place I am at now.

This time round it started when someone saw me install ViEmu (which, FYI, is the VIM emulator for Vis Studio that you mentioned). I am a bit of a VIM fan and adding this functionality to VS gives me the productivity boost that I need.

Unfortunately the people I work with consider anything to do with Vi or VIM to be “legacy” or “something that is done on Unix”. Yes, I must work with some idiots. They all get on their soap boxes and proclaim that I’m using the worst tool ever. Why would I want to do that? Why am I not using Resharper, which is obviously the best tool EVER.

Simple answer: I am using the tool that works for me.

I think everyone else should do the same. So what if you’re tied to Vis Studio? If you’re not going to be operating outside of that environment, then tell all those “don’t use MS product” evangelists to get stuffed.

Use the tool that’s right for you. If someone tells you otherwise they’re either stupid, or just jealous that they can’t use the same tools (lots of anti-MS people fit into both categories).

Enjoy Visual Assist while you can

You’re right that Vim doesn’t do any symbol parsing – it doesn’t need to, as it interfaces really nicely with ctags. It’s not too hard to set up a tagfile which gives you very similar functionality to your beloved Alt+G. Don’t assume that just because you don’t know how to do something, it can’t be done.

One other point – it’s only languages like C# and C++ which are so horrifically verbose that they mandate the use of these fancy autocompletion tools – try writing a small C# app, then knock up the equivalent code in, say, Python, Ruby or Scheme – I guarantee(*) the code will be about 1/3rd of the size.

(Not to mention that Vim does handle autocompletion too, but in a slightly more generic way which works across any programming language which you care to edit, without needing to know anything about the semantics of the code.)

THERE IS NOTHING THAT VIM CANNOT DO!!1

(*) by “guarantee” I mean “don’t guarantee at all, contents may settle in transit, your mileage may vary, the value of investments may go up as well as down…”