Get them some JetBrains tools. It’s definitely the easiest way. Yesterday JetBrains released new tier of their .NET-oriented product versions and it’s a great opportunity to advertise some of them as they are really worth of praise.

Some of you may know this company already, I personally know their products since 2002/2003 - that’s the approximate date of my first experience with Java IDE named IntelliJ IDEA (I’m not sure, but I think it was known as RealJ those days). It was by faaaar the best IDE for Java and most likely the best IDE cross-technology in those days. I had to give up using it due to high license costs (at least high for a student), but it wasn’t a pleasant decision. Time has passed, I’ve moved from Java world to .NET world, but JetBrains still makes the best tools for developers around the world. The most noticeable ones are:
  •  ReSharper (http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/) - the reigning king of IDE enhancers. Brings your Visual Studio (2005/2008/2010) to the next level and makes it the most powerful IDE on the planet. It’s fast, it’s robust, it’s comfortable. Powerful refactoring options, even more powerful code navigation capabilities and tons, tons of code improvement suggestions. Direct competitors are: DevExpress’es CodeRush, Telerik’s JustCode and Whole Tomato’s Visual Assist X. They are far beyond ReSharper (in my not-so-humble opinion, however I’m sure you’ll easily find people who disagree).

  • dotCover (http://www.jetbrains.com/dotcover/) - code coverage tool for unit tests. Clear and does its job well. But really awesome is that it’s closely integrated with ReSharper - that makes using it a true pleasure. Direct competitor: NCover (great tool, but it’s more expensive and seems more suited for build machine coverage runs).

  • dotTrace (http://www.jetbrains.com/profiler/) - quite simple, but still very useful performance profiler (for a reasonable price), supports sampling, tracing and line-by-line profiling. Gathered data is presented in a very convenient way - you can drill, filter and group data (each thread separatelly or merged alltogether). It saved me twice already and each time I was able to find the root cause of the problem in less than half an hour.
Just to emphasize how good those tools are - I’m used to have them that much, that I’ve bought my own commercial licenses, so I don’t have to uninstall them when I change project / have to prepare a tech demo / proof of concept / etc.
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