Refactoring in Visual Basic

  • Article

Refactoring is a hot topic and something many developers are expecting to be available straight OOTB. Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 gave C# developers a whapping 6:

  • Rename
  • Extract Method
  • Remove/Reorder parameters
  • Promote Local
  • Extract Interface
  • Encapsulate Field

The Visual Basic team went one better (actually 10 better) in Visual Studio 2005 by partnering with Developer Express Inc. to offer a free download of Refactor! :

  • Rename
  • Reorder Parameters
  • Surrounds With
  • Encapsulate field
  • Reverse Conditional
  • Simplify expression
  • Move initialization to declaration
  • Split initialization from declaration
  • Move declaration near reference
  • Extract Method
  • Extract Property
  • Create Overload
  • Introduce Local
  • Introduce constant
  • Inline Temp
  • Replace Temp with Query
  • Split Temporary Variable

And then along came Visual Studio 2008 and another 14 (9 of which work with Visual Basic 2005 as well):

  • Create With Statement
  • Inline With Statement
  • Widen Scope
  • Extract Interface
  • Move Type to File
  • Introduce Parameter
  • Remove Unused Parameter
  • Method to Property
  • Property to Method(s)
  • Extract XML Literals to Resource
  • Make Explicit
  • Make Explicit (and Name Anonymous Type)
  • Make Implicit
  • Name Anonymous Type

Thanks - make my life a lot easier (although I  do have some stability issues with the beta of SP1 of 3.5 installed)!