New IDE for Unity - why switch now?

Disclaimer 1: I am not employed at JetBrains or Microsoft nor was I incentivized in any way to write this article.

Disclaimer 2: This is not an attempt at a comprehensive comparison of all available alternatives – simply a subjective description of my experience with Visual Studio for Mac and JetBrains Rider.

I’ve been using MonoDevelop from the very beginning of my adventure with Unity. I’ve used it to code (and mess up too - see the side note at the end) quite a few projects.

In the peak of my relationship with MonoDevelop (I call it a relationship because there were days when I spent much more time with it than with my wife...) a colleague told me about JetBrains Rider for Unity (back then it was still free), but I felt MonoDevelop did not slow me down so I said… “meh” and remained loyal.

Then, many projects later, came January of 2018 and Unity officially announced dropping future support for MonoDevelop.

Speechless at first... I decided was time to put the tip of my pinky a few centimeters outside the comfort zone. I installed Visual Studio (for Mac) and used it for a few months.

And… I liked it very much!

Well, it needs some manual tweaking to work ok with Unity (like this ProjectFileHook to suppress the constant CS0649 warning) and I had to reprogram some muscle memory because of how different the code completion works. But many code inspections, intelligent variable naming proposals and Unity messages in Intellisense (no more copy-pasting of that OnCollisionEnter() from Unity docs!) made me put Visual Studio in front of MonoDevelop on my list within just a few hours.

After becoming almost a pro in going out of the comfort zone (“almost” being the keyword here), I was ready to try JetBrains Rider (there is 30 day free evaluation) to see if it’s worth the price tag.

A few days later Rider became my number one choice for IDE. And here is why:

Automatic inserts of “using” statements

If you’re using MonoDevelop the following will sound familiar: You want to reference Image or TextMeshProUGUI classes and your autocomplete does not cooperate with you. You suddenly remember you need to write “using UnityEngine.UI” or “using TMPro” at the top (import assemblies).

In Rider you can forget about all that hassle. Autocomplete works even for non-imported assemblies and when you hit Enter, Rider automatically inserts the “using” statements into the appropriate place in your file. Bam!

Rename a class/file without breaking the .meta files in Unity

I’m a maniac when it comes to naming so Ctrl+R is one of the most common shortcuts I use. If you rename a class that derives from MonoBehaviour from within the IDE you usually break your project in Unity (the .meta files don’t get updated and as a result the “referenced script is missing”). This always forced me to rename the file in Unity Editor first and only afterwards rename the class in IDE.

Renaming a class in Rider updates the .meta files in Unity accordingly. Nothing gets broken!

Saving a file in Rider triggers pre-compilation in Unity

Normally (at least on Mac) Unity makes its own pre-compilation only when you focus on Unity Editor window. This means there is around 10 second of lag between saving the file in the IDE and playing the scene back in Unity. 

Rider notifies Unity when saving a file so Unity does the pre-compilation even when not focused. If you use multi-monitor setup (and you really should!) this means you can see Unity generated errors and warnings even while still working on a file in IDE. In many cases it also means the 10 seconds lag is gone allowing you to iterate (coding -> playtesting -> coding) faster.

The power of Alt+Enter (ReSharper)

Well this one is super important, but naming all the cool automatic refactorings the Alt+Enter combo can do for you is impossible – there are just so many. My advice is – try the evaluation period and see for yourself.

Rider teaches me to be a better coder

ReSharper and code analysis has taught me so many code tricks. Like:

You can always navigate to the docs to see “Why is Rider suggesting this” and there is a very neatly written article for every single code inspection. It’s like having a more experienced buddy right there at your side at all times showing you some neat tricks and explaining them.

And a few smaller (but oh so sweet) features:

Automatic string concatenation in the next line

Let’s say you are writing a rather long tooltip description and you want it to have multiple lines in your code. Rider knows when you are writing a string so you just hit Enter and it will automatically add the "+" and additional quotation marks.

“Serialized Property” renaming

I like defining getters and setters, but I also like tweaking starting values from Unity inspectors. So I often use this kind of construct:

[SerializeField] private float _maxHealth;
public float MaxHealth { get { return _maxHealth; } }

So normally when I want to rename the field to say “_maxPlayerHealth” I would do that and, for consistency (read “calming my inner crazy person”), I would have to manually rename the public property too.

Rider knows these two are closely connected, so when renaming one it automatically renames the other accordingly.

It’s much easier to tweak settings in your color scheme

Let’s say you don’t like a color of some group of expressions in your color scheme. In MonoDevelop and Visual Studio you have to manually figure out which setting of your color scheme is responsible for the undesired effect. That sometimes is next to impossible.

In Rider you can assign a shortcut to a function called “Jump to Colors and Fonts”. This will jump to the exact color setting of the expression you caret is over.

Rider is not without a few cons too:

There are also a few other things Visual Studio does better:

And, to be a bit more comprehensive, a few bugs I've found in Visual Studio (for Mac):

Conclusion

MonoDevelop – my old chap… You were there for me when I started to learn Unity. I had so much fun with you. You were also there to witness the dark ages of my coding (see side note below)… Now, I’m sorry, but its time for you to go...

Anyway, if you’re still clinging to MonoDevelop (which means you are like me in the past) I suggest you take a leap and try either JetBrains Rider or Visual Studio ASAP.

Visual Studio is definitely a step forward from MonoDevelop and for most indies it is free to use (the full-featured Community edition).

Rider isn’t free (see pricing here). But if you are reading this you are probably either a professional, semi-professional or a very-engaged-hobbyist and you spend on average a few hours a day in your IDE. If so, than I reckon paying for software that saves you quite a bit of time each day and that also teaches you some neat coding tricks is an investment that will break-even within just a few weeks.

Thanks for reading.

Jan Mysior

@JanMysior