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Man shrugging, trying to figure out why intellisense isn't working

Visual Studio IntelliSense Not Working? What To Do.

December 11, 2018Carlos Schults12

There are certain tools that have become indispensable for developers in this day and age. These tools often start as “nice-to-haves” but quickly graduate to “must-haves” due to the benefits they provide. Once you get used to relying?on them, it’s terribly frustrating when you’re prevented from using them for some reason. And there’s a very specific tool in that category I want to talk about today. It’s called Visual Studio IntelliSense.

This intelligent code completion tool present in Visual Studio is definitely a must-have for a .NET developer. The .NET Framework BCL (Base Class Library) is just too large for a human?brain to grasp. There’s no way you could remember all those classes, interfaces, and methods. Being able to put a period after some variable and get a nice list of all the possible members you can call isn’t only a nicety: it’s a survival need. So, what to do when you need Visual Studio IntelliSense but, for whatever reason, it’s not working? That’s what this post is about.

We’ll start out by doing a quick overview of Visual Studio IntelliSense. We’ll cover a little bit of history, plus a few definitions, so you can grasp why this tool is more than a simple autocomplete. Then we’ll proceed to cover the different solutions you can try to get you out of this nightmarish scenario.

We’ll then close the post with quick advice on how to get IntelliSense to work for your own classes and types.

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Automated Code Reviews: 5 Manual Checks You Can Automate

December 4, 2018Mark HenkeNo Comments

I am curious about how infrequent automated code reviews seem to be in the workplace. As software?developers, we pride ourselves on our ability to automate?away other people’s problems. Much of what we do is scrutinizing manual work done?by our customers?or business?stakeholders. We find tasks that could be performed more efficiently, automate them, and the customer hopefully praises our efforts.

Yet it seems?that we rarely scrutinize our own work. Manual code reviews run rampant on many software teams. We take our “expert opinion” and turn it into either a mental or written checklist. Then we apply the checklist through manual labor, looking over one file at a time. Oftentimes we miss things; perhaps we’re tired or distracted by other tasks.

Why not do to our own processes what we do to others: automate them? After all, computers will be better at handling some of these checklist items than we are.

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How Much Time Do Programmers Spend Debugging? Too Much

November 27, 2018Mark Henke1

We’ve all been in that situation where you’re streaming along, banging out some sick code for a new feature. You’re excited to see how many minds you’ll blow when you demo it. And then you see a blip on your radar. Something is going wrong with your production system. Oh no. You give it a cursory look and you realize you don’t understand what’s going on. At this point, you know your day is shot. Why? Because you already know you’ll need to spend too much time debugging.

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C# Struct: Definition, Examples, Best Practices, and Pitfalls

November 20, 2018Mark HenkeNo Comments

Ahh, C# structs: a classic carryover from the C/C++ days. Have you ever used one? Wondering how they work? Well, they are similar to classes with some substantial differences. Structs have niche value to us as C# developers. You don’t often need them, but there are some things they do better than classes.

They also come with some caveats. Let me walk you through all this through a series of code examples.

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4 Reasons Why We Need Code Comments

November 13, 2018Mark HenkeNo Comments

Why do we need code comments? I would not be surprised if your first answer is, “We don’t.”

I get it. Senior developer after senior developer has taught us that “comments are bad.” And we cheerfully nod our heads, saying, “I am smarter for not using them.” We grin smugly when we see one of our juniors make the “mistake” of using comments in their code.

But as much as we sometimes abuse them, we still need comments.

I know comments don’t affect the code’s behavior. I understand how they can get stale and stop making sense. I am all for writing clean code, and I do my best to ensure my variables, methods, and class names describe their intent as accurately as possible. If I see dead code lying around in the comments for a while, I delete it.

But here is the bottom line: we need code comments because there are some things they do better than plain code. Here’s why.

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CodeIt.Right Rules Explained, Part 20

November 6, 2018Carlos SchultsNo Comments

Time for yet another deep dive into three more CodeIt.Right Rules. For those of you who don’t know about our CodeIt.Right Rules series, here’s a brief explanation.

CodeIt.Right is one of the tools offered by SubMain. It’s a static code analyzer tool or, more specifically, an automated code review tool. CodeIt.Right works by checking your code against a set of rules and giving you instant feedback on how to solve potential problems. It even offers automatic fixes when applicable.

In each installment on this ongoing series, we explain three CodeIt.Right rules, usually picked from as diverse a category?as possible, to showcase the flexibility and breadth of the ruleset.

Readers of this series know that we like to start these posts by stating two things:

Never implement a suggested fix without knowing what makes it a fix.
Never ignore a suggested fix without understanding what makes it a fix.

Yeah, you could simplify this down to ?always understand a suggested fix.??But I choose to not put it that way since I want you to really think and consider your options. If you decide to ignore a fix, do so understanding the consequences. On the other hand, if you accept a suggested fix, do it with a full understanding of how that’s going to benefit your application.

With all that in mind, let’s get to today’s rules.

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The Case for Web Forms, Even in 2018

October 30, 2018Mark Henke20

It seems easy for people to say things like “LOL, Web Forms” or “Web Forms is dead.”?Web Forms sometimes?gets very little respect from the .NET development community. We look forward in time, forgetting the giants on whose shoulders we stand. It was the?dominant way of making websites in .NET for many years. Is it really a remnant of a bygone era? Or does it have a vibrant existence in places oft overlooked?

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Web.config: What It Is and 5 Common Mistakes to Avoid

October 23, 2018Mark Henke2

We as software developers have created several disciplines for coding: test-driven developments, clean code principles, and screaming architecture, to name a few.?However, we often find our web.config files can sprawl out of control.

We just don’t pay as much attention to our configuration as we do to our?classes and methods. The good news is that many mistakes are easily avoided, and with a little discipline we can put our configs on par with the rest of our codebase.

In this post, I’ll show you how. We’ll look at five of the most common configuration mistakes and how to avoid them.

Want to prevent runtime issues and design problems?

Download a free trial of CodeIt.Right and get an instant, automated code review.

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Spelling_Errors_Code_Written_in_Child_s_Blocks_Spelled_Wrong

Should You Hold Spelling Errors Against Developers?

October 16, 2018Eric GoebelbeckerNo Comments

You’re checking out some code. It’s been a long time since you looked at this project. Or maybe it’s the first time. You point your editor at an interesting file name and double-click to open it. Your coffee is warm, your mind is clear, and you’re ready to go.

And there it is, sticking out like white socks in sandals. A spelling error.

How do you handle it? Do you fix it? Do you ignore it? Discuss it with the author? Bring it up during lunch when he’s not around?

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C# Switch Statement: What Is It, How to Use It, and Why You Should Beware

October 9, 2018Carlos Schults1

Time to cover yet another construct of the C# language. In this series, we’ve already covered the C# list, array, and string, to name a few. Today’s post is a little bit different, though. Its subject isn’t a data structure or type, but instead, a decision structure: the C# switch statement.

In this post you’ll learn all about the switch statement. What is it, how should you use it, and when should be careful using it?

Le’s get started!

Want to know if you're getting it right as you learn C#?

Download a free trial of CodeIt.Right and get an instant, automated code review.

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