Visual Studio performance and add-ins

Question

Do the useful add-ins (Resharper, StyleCop, etc.) to Visual Studio speed up your work? Or tools need too many resources and you have to wait until each add-in completes execution?

[Update]: By the way does some body notice whether performance of IDE + Resharper is better for solutions that contain web sites or web applications?

Answer 1

I can speak very strongly that resharper definitly does speed my productivity greatly. Past versions of Resharper have had some bad performance issue with the IDE but I have had no issues with the most recent version.

Answer 2

I use some add-ins as long as they don't affect the performance of Visual Studio. To that end, tools like StyleCop, MZ-Tools, and Visual Studio Commands are the clear winners.

The problem I have with tools like Refactor! and Resharper are that

1. They degrade performance, particularly for large solutions.
2. You become dependent on the shortcut keys, etc. they provide and become completely useless when working on another environment that doesn't have them installed.

Yes, tools like Refactor! and Resharper are excellent for what they do and can increase your typing productivity but I don't think the gain is worth the dependence. This, of course, depends largely on how you use them. For things like refactoring method parameters, changing fields into properties, etc. they can be very useful and potentially save a lot of time. Again, while it can save a lot of time it is still important to know what these tools are actually doing for you so you can still be productive without them.