I am writing in C # so that the front-end is easier

This December, like the last couple of years, I participate in Advent of Code – the annual Christmas competition from the author of the popular Vanilla JS framework. This year I am writing in C #, because I already used all of the usual JavaScript front-end tenders last year. Only 10 days have passed, but I already feel how the life of front-endors around the world is getting better. Now I will tell you how this happens.

Background, or How useful it is sometimes to go to bars

Six months ago, at the HolyJS conference in St. Petersburg, I met with Andrei. He works at JetBrains, develops WebStorm and loves to talk about how to use WebStorm productively and how the language support in the IDE works.

In St. Petersburg, in the evening after the conference, I enthusiastically told Andrei how impressed I was with the experience of using Rider.

I am writing an API for a task. And I need to give the number of elements here in this garbage. I write “garbage, dot, Len”, the prompt shows me “Length”, I press Enter. Typed by me Len erased and replaced by Count. Gosha! I went to check again: erased Countstarted writing Lengthtooltip prompts LengthI choose it, it erases Length and writes Count. This is really magic!

Something like this I explained to Andrey my enthusiasm. If you understand my enthusiastic explanations worse than the IDE developer, then this is how it looks:

A month after the conference, Andrei sends me a message:

And the video:

So in WebStorm magic tips appeared that guess that the length of the set means size. You can check it yourself 🙂

Fresh impressions

Since I rarely need to use Rider to write code, I didn’t even know how many convenient little things exist in it. Many things evoke the feeling: “Well, how could that be?” I began to pay attention to it all and write to Andrey: “I want it too!”

1. The magic of choosing a name for an iterator

That is, Rider does not just create a convenient template for enumerating the collection, it also proceeds from the semantics of the collection name with a suitable name!

2. Wrapping the expression after the method in brackets

In a storm, adding a method to the beginning of an expression usually looks something like this:

That is, I always have to remove the closing bracket and take it to where it is needed. In Rider, this design behaves much nicer:

3. Adding indentation when wrapping a piece of code in curly braces

Many code editors have such cool behavior: you select a piece of code, put an opening round / square / curly / triangular bracket and the highlighted code appears in brackets. For many, many years in WebStorm this did not work. And from version 2019.2 it worked. There is only a slight difference between how this works in a rider and in a web storm:

That is, the rider adds padding to the content, but the storm does not.

4. The checkbox “Remember and do not ask again” when opening the project

My personal pain. I have a lot of projects open all the time. There are five in each moment of time. I create and edit a lot of them. And every time WebStorm asks me in which window to open a new project.

And what a happiness in the rider, where I answered this question only once and ticked off so that they would not ask me again.

Andrew told me that it’s not good, of course, that the UI is different, but if that is, then this is in the settings:

For what I wrote it

I have been writing code for 7 years and am used to enduring minor (and not so) inconveniences. I understand that developers also write tools for developers 🙂

These inconveniences did not seem critical to me, especially since going to the JetBrains public tracker and creating taskbar in English is too expensive for all kinds of little things. But now, when I tried Rider, my learned helplessness disappeared. Now I know that in a different way – that is, good and convenient – maybe. I don’t want to endure anymore, but I want to use convenient tools.

Therefore, I urge you to try tools from other camps, and also do not be shy to write about all the uncomfortable little things. If you use the IDE from JetBrains, then write to their public tracker. Well, or let's call the developers of JetBrains in a comment, thank them and ask for problems in UX 🙂