I just finished a trial of JetBrains ReSharper 3.0, an add-on for Visual Studio 2005 designed for code analysis and refactoring.

ReSharper’s main feature is automatic code analysis. When you open a code file, it will scan for and higlight errors in your code and show an error count and error locations on the sidebar. It also goes a step further than the compiler by highlighting warnings and making suggestions for improving code.

For many errors, it will pop up a lightbulb icon if it knows how to fix the problem. If you click this icon, it will give you a menu that will let you perform a quick-fix.

ReSharper is smart enough to warn about places where a NullReferenceException could occur and overrides intellisense with its own, more thorough version. It gives more parameter information, shows more class info, and takes intellisense to the next level in general.

Visual Studio’s refactoring options are a neat addition, but not overwhelmingly useful. ReSharper extends them quite a bit to add a lot more functionality. I never really made much use of ReSharper’s refactorings since I prefer to change things by hand.

ReSharper has quite a few features that I couldn’t imagine ever using, such as code generation, code templates, and build script editing.

Although it add a lot of features and functionality to Visual Studio, in a project of any significant size (such as the 116k-line Basternae codebase) it causes a drastic slowdown, rendering my development machine nearly unusable at times, especially when code analysis is grinding away on a large code file. It’s true that the codebase I’m working on isn’t optimal (huge classes, bloated files, plenty of errors, etc), but that’s why I’m working on it in the first place — to fix all of that.

It’s an ambitious tool, but perhaps it’s trying to do too much. Maybe future versions will be faster, but right now it doesn’t add enough value to the development process to justify the $149 price tag.

If JetBrains removed everything but the code analysis functions for a “lite” version that sold for $49 I’d buy it in a heartbeat, but as it is now ReSharper doesn’t speed up my development process more than it slows it down. I’ll look at the 4.0 version when it comes out, but 3.0 isn’t for me.