JetBrains' latest release of ReSharper, a refactoring tool and plug-in to Visual Studio, extends language support to Visual Basic .NET, XML and XAML, backed by comprehensive cross-language functionality. It also brings a host of new productivity-enhancing features to Visual Studio developers, such as a more in-depth code analysis for C#, a C# unit testing solution, efficient handling of to-do lists, and new navigation and search commands.

In addition to detecting new warnings and errors on-the-fly, ReSharper 3.0 offers code suggestions as well. This feature is based on intelligent code analysis, including indication of actual and potential errors as well as questionable code design choices, while the developer types into the IDE.

Version 3.0 also come with productivity enhancers across all the covered languages. New features include “Go to Symbol” navigation, Unit Test Explorer (a reworked Unit Test Runner), and a smart To-do list for keeping track of all to-do notes that works even for closed source files with To-do notes in them.

ReSharper 3.0 offers full coverage of VB.NET, with multiple features that complement and extend those provided by Microsoft Visual Studio. Such features include quick navigation and search, automated code refactorings, full-fledged code assistance, code completion and generation, code templates, and context actions.

ReSharper 3.0 ensures interoperability when working with mixed C# and Visual Basic projects: usage search, refactorings, quick-fixes and context actions take into account code written in either language. XML features include type completion, various ways to navigate between tags, navigation to referenced types, basic code assistance, and live templates support.

XAML features in ReSharper 3.0 come with XML editing in XAML code, code completion, several refactorings, and on-the-fly error, syntax and semantic analysis.

What do you think of the current state of C# and VB developer tools compared with Java IDEs?