Rider

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A community for the Rider IDE for .NET developers. https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/

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Pros and Cons of using Rider over Visual Studio (programming.dev)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Around two years ago I was on a really small team, just two or three developers, and the other developer decided they wanted us to use Rider. Because I didn't have a preference, I used Rider and rather enjoyed it. However, that developer has since moved teams and now it is just me (for the time being).

So I was considering moving back to Visual Studio or even switching to Visual Studio Code, but I wanted to see some arguments against this.

Here is my list so far, but it's probably out of date since I haven't used Visual Studio in a long time.

Pros of Rider:

Much faster than using ReSharper
Less sharp interface with a better font
I'm used to it at this point
I have a Nyan cat loading bar which is kind of fun

Cons of Rider:

Enterprise license is expensive (probably)
New versions of C# aren't immediately supported
Refactorings are becoming less necessary with the rise of AI assistants
Don't really like their source control manager

Wanted to hear what other users think. What keeps you using Rider?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I haven't used VS in quite a while as well. This is just quick thoughts, might be missing some things, this is just what came immediately to mind, I might edit this later:

Pros:

I personally like the source control manager, especially the diff feature where instead of having + - lines below each other, you visually see the before and after code and where those lines went
the UI is way less cluttered with stuff (at least it feels that way and that's important).
I really like the way you can switch projects when you have multiple windows opened, that's really useful when I study a new codebase and have to switch from one project very often. It just finds the window where that project is opened and brings it forward
this might be just getting used to it thing but I like jetbrains' code launcher (run/debug/specific config) way more than VS
I haven't used VS with databases but I REALLY like the way rider's (and JB in general) works. Double click database table to get a quick select with easy WHERE and TOP inputs, you click and edit specific field, add/remove rows and then inspect+submit that query and edit the database without writing a line of sql (which you still can do if you want)

Cons:

I had some troubles with the templates where I was missing stuff that VS had (the only example right now I have is standalone react app with .esproject). This might be a skill issue but I feel the getting of custom templates should be easier and more straightforward
there are definitely more cons, I just can't think of any new ones right now, I will edit this comment if I can think of them

Misc?:

jetbrains have for the most part (the whole ai hype) very customer friendly pricing policies
- fallback licences
- student/FOSS devs have free licences for non-commercial stuff
- ALL IDEs for the price of two It could be considered kinda expensive. I personally don't mind, mostly because I really enjoy all the value that rider provides for me

I wrote this thing on phone, I have no idea if it's readable lol