[Request] - Inline Namespace Writing

[Stacey]

After very extensive evaluation between JustCode, ReSharper, and DevExpress RefactorPro!, my team and I have elected to go with JustCode as our new development enhancement platform. We love the design of it, and most importantly, we love the JavaScript features.

We have a very specific request - even though I know we are not entitled to make such, I don't feel any company can add features that they don't know their customers want , so I feel compelled to post it.

One thing we dislike about JustCode is that if you are typing up a class name that is in a namespace you do not having a 'using' declaration for, It gives the option to add the 'Using [namespace]'. This is pretty handy, sort of - but sometimes we'd rather not do that. Instead, it would be nice if it could simply do like Visual Studio does innately and give us the option to prepend the namespace right onto the line. While we can leave the Visual Studio tooltips enabled and get this feature, it becomes a bit frustrating when hovering over things, because oftentimes it is hard to tell which tooltip you'll get - and getting the one you want can be annoying when you have a particularly high resolution and smaller fonts. Please understand, this is a request, and is not influencing our purchasing decision.

Example given.

var stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
Here, JustCode would prompt us to add 'using System.Text'. We'd like it if it gave us the option to just change the code to this.

 var stringBuilder = new System.Text.StringBuilder();

This may already be in JustCode, but we haven't discovered it. We've searched the documentation quite a bit and read the options - so maybe it's hiding under a terminology we're unfamiliar with.

[Deyan Varchev]

Hi Stacey,

 Thank you very much for the great words. We try to do our best and greatly take into account our clients needs. We already have some plans for the stuff we are going to add to JustCode and your request is already in our TODO list. We plan to release a Service Pack in a few weeks and your feature will be included in it. 
 Can you share with us any particular reasons why you chose JustCode instead of the competing products? If you prefer not to post those in the public forum, you can send a private support ticket.

 Thank you in advance and if you have any other questions or suggestions, please feel free to send them over.

All the best,
Deyan
the Telerik team

[Stacey]

I am plenty comfortable posting the reasons.

I like JustCode because it felt clean and professional. However, the choice was actually very difficult.

• ReSharper accomplished most of what I wanted, but its menus felt very bulky and cumbersome. The way it went about doing some things felt obtrusive and invasive. ReSharper's manner of letting me format how it auto-formatted code was a huge factor that JustCode lacks. 
• RefactorPro!  (etc) was just too invasive in general. I really liked the ability to change scope modifier by a small dropdown next to an object though. This feature alone was so useful that it weighed very, very heavily for RefactorPro.
• JustCode did JavaScript refactoring. This was incredibly useful. Additionally, the "Move to Namespace" feature was very bug-free, and saved me a great deal of time. I also loved the way I could customize spans of code by coloring. I love the 'dropdown' system in place for picking features. (I really, really liked the scope modifier in RefactorPro, though, won't lie). JustCode also did not try to 'overload' me with too much information. One thing I felt RefactorPro failed at was giving me way, way, way too many options all up front. More than I would ever need. JustCode seemed like it was designed for me to open up my IDE, start coding, and use the Enhancements when I wanted them. Not restructure the way I develop just to suit the IDE enhancer.

I really dislike the "Typing Assistance" of JustCode. It feels clunky and unplanned. It does not feel as if it assists, it feels as if it intrudes. For example, if I turn on "Typing Assistance", I will do the following..

public int PropertyName
{

At this point, JustCode suddenly changes it to look like this..

public int PropertyName{
       [] My Cursor is Here.
}

Now I'm twice annoyed. It moved my bracket, and now, when I am done adding my code, I have to reach over for my mouse again and click at the end of the brace. ReSharper would let me type 'through' the brace. If you're looking for a new feature, I would love to see improvements in this area.

[Deyan Varchev]

Hi Stacey,

 Thank you for sharing this with us. First let me address your problem with the Typing assistance. Its main purpose is to actually assist you by saving you key strokes and if you experience any problems with using it, we definitely want to improve that. We've published a blog post with some details on how Typing assistance works that you can have a look if you haven't already. I captured a short video that shows how it works in action here. Its more or less covers your scenario and there I didn't experience any problems or incorrect brace positioning. I guess what you are getting is because of a different typing pattern that you use. It will be of great help if you can send us detailed steps to reproduce the problem.
 
 Now let me share some thought on code formatting. Currently JustCode has a build-in formatting functionality that covers a good number of use cases. We admit that we are still a bit behind the competition there. However this will change very soon. We are already working on some great improvements in code formatting and early next year you will be able to have what you are missing. 

 We really appreciate our customers feedback so don't hesitate to send it over.

Kind regards,
Deyan
the Telerik team

[Stacey]

Most of the features in it are good, but the Bracket Completion is very obnoxious. Not it actually makes more work for me to do because now I have to go back and click around, add linebreaks, etc, and then click behind the newly created closing bracket. 

I can see why it would be useful for method declaration and class declaration. But for inline object initialization, it's a real pain. For instance, if I am typing..

var items = new List<Item>
{
--- 

Okay, so now the JustCode Typing Assistance tries to take over. It changes my code to read..

var items = new List<Item>{
  |Cursor is Here|
}

That's okay. I can live with that one. Now I keep going..

var items = new List<Item>{
  new Item {
}

Now here is where JustCode gets in my way.

var items = new List<Item>{
  new Item {
    |Cursor is Here|
  }
}

My cursor is where I want, but now I've got to type in my values - stop - grab the mouse, or just hit a bunch of arrow keys - click after the closing bracket, and then keep going. Repeat for each entry into the list. It gets tedious. So much so that I've just had to turn Typing Assistance off completely. It'd be nice if it gave some control over it. For instance, I'd rather put my opening brackets on the next line, rather than the same line. etc. 

I've actually tried changing it to "On Closing Bracket" and it just seemed to kind of ignore that.
I wouldn't mind if it I could tab through the auto-created closing brace. That would make it pretty useful, actually. I've had 2 carpel tunnel surgeries and dozens of epidural injections for arm, wrist, and elbow damage from 16 years of programming. It seems like a 'stupid' complaint to most people, but to me, something that saves me keystrokes, reaching for the mouse, and pain in general - that definitely grabs my attention fast.

This is a minor gripe, of course. It's still an outstanding product. The new updates are working quite nicely.

[Tsviatko Yovtchev]

Hello Stacey,

 I beg your pardon about the late reply. It's been a bit hectic around here as the holidays approach.

I do understand your issue with the opening braces being put on the same line when initializing a collection (I too am not able to reproduce that issue when declaring a property. Maybe you could send us a code sample on that?). We actually have an option for that and it seems we are not taking it into consideration. I am creating an internal issue about that and the chances are it is gonna be fixed in our next official release.

I am not so sure I understand your other issue completely. Can you provide one more step after the last one? Also, it'd be nice to have a chance to see how you want that code to look like when completely finished. Could you do that for us?

Best wishes,
Tsviatko Yovtchev
the Telerik team

[Stacey]

Sure, I guess I wasn't very clear. You'll have to forgive me, I don't have the funding or access to a lot of the fancier stuff that lets me make videos or animated gif files like on your demo site, so you'll have to make due with my paltry typing. ( I still love this forum editor - have you guys considered a 'Code' formatting feature like you see on StackOverflow? It would make scenarios like this a lot more fun. )

I'll outline the entire process as concisely as I can.

Let us assume I have a class 'Item', and I go to initialize an ICollection of this class.

var items = new List<Item>
{
 |[Enter Key]|

Okay, so now the JustCode Typing Assistance tries to take over. It changes my code to read..

var items = new List<Item>{
  |Cursor is Here|
}

That's okay. I can live with that one. Now I keep going..

var items = new List<Item>{
  new Item {
}

Now here is where JustCode gets in my way.

var items = new List<Item>{
  new Item {
    |Cursor is Here|
  }
}

This works okay, for the moment. So I keep typing..

var items = new List<Item>{
   new Item {
     // I type in item parameters
    [Hit Enter]
    [Cursor is Still Here (Well Yeah, I only hit Enter)]
    [I try hitting Tab, Expecting to "Tab Through" the closing '}']
    [ This is the part where JustCode has become obtrusive ]
  }
}

At this point, JustCode is now being obtrusive, since now, to add another item to the collection, I've got to take my mouse, click at the end of the automated closing brace, and start a new collection. This takes all of 3 seconds, yes - but 3 seconds compounded over, and over, and over, and over - you can start to see where it is being a nuisance. 

The brace completion doesn't work as you guys intend in this scenario, because the closing brace is on the following line. What I would like is one of the following.

• Hitting Tab will 'pass through' closing braces, unless I hold a shortcut key while doing it.
• I can specify when JustCode will automatically generate closing braces. Sometimes, the way it works is just what I want.

For instance, if I am typing out... 

var member = memberRepository.Retrieve(id [[Cursor is Now Here]][JustCode Generates the ')'])

This situation is ideal (and I believe it is what you guys intended when you made this feature).
When I hit "Tab", my cursor passes seamlessly through the closing ")" and I can continue on my way as intended.

Additionally, the layout it picks for braces isn't really my preference - but this isn't game breaking. If I had my way, my code would come out as follows..

var items = new List<Item>
{
   new Item
  {
     Name = "Item 1",
  }
};

JustCode just 'assumes' I want my opening braces on the same line as their declaration statements, which is understandable, a lot of programmers do type this way. I don't. (Obviously that's not the debate, as you and I both know it's an argument as old as code itself)

One of the appeals of ReSharper is that I could control this behavior a lot more. I would really enjoy seeing it in JustCode - however I do understand it's a pretty momentous task to undertake. For the time being, I just turn "Typing Assistance" off. 

[Tsviatko Yovtchev]

Hi Stacey,

 I do see what you mean now. Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed explanation. By the way, we do use the freee version of this video capturing tool for such demos (http://www.techsmith.com/jing/). That one is free and it has worked for us so far. You might consider using that or something of that kind. Having something of that kind could save you a ton of time.

Yep, that's a problem and it has to be fixed. I am creating an internal issue for it too but the chances are we won't geet as far as this by the end of the quarter here (that'd be end of March). Sorry about that. We have tons of other stuff already planned for that period.

Anyways, you should be able to monitor the progress of both issues. Once they get done, please, update your copy of JustCode.

Greetings,
Tsviatko Yovtchev
the Telerik team

[Stacey]

Much thanks. I'll actually be putting in my order for JustCode here at the end of the week (using this business account instead of my personal one). 

I'm really glad this issue is going to be fixed, it's been pretty much one of three deciding factors between JustCode and ReSharper.