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Here is my list so far, but it’s probably out of date since I haven’t used Visual Studio in a long time.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

  • @Tamkish
    2•2 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