Sharpen is a Visual Studio extension that intelligently introduces new C# language features into your existing codebase. It makes your code shorter, simpler, more expressive, more performant, and more readable, in one word - sharper.
Sharpen identifies places in your code that will benefit from introducing new C# language features. It helps you to learn new C# features quicker and critically refactor your existing code to modern C#.
Learn new C# features faster by applying them to your existing codebase.
Sharpen points you to places in real-life production code - your production code! - where you can learn and apply modern C#. This is a far cry from simplified and artificial code samples often used to explain new C# features. Sharpen allows you to learn and understand modern C# in the context of your own code.
Sharpen provides you with meaningful recommendations and considerations for modernizing your code. It relates those recommendations and considerations to particular C# versions and their language features. Recommendations and considerations supported at the moment are listed below, sorted by the language version. Each new version of Sharpen brings additional recommendations and considerations.
Learn to ❤ C# but not blindly. Take love with a pinch of salt ;-)
Sharpen brings a critical view of C# features. It recommends applying them only if their usage will result in a "sharper" code. Sharpen is not shy of saying No! to a language feature.
Consistency matters. And your preferences, as well.
Once configured on your project, Sharpen ensures that usage of C# language features remains consistent over the whole codebase.
Safely refactor your code by a single mouse click.
Sharpen can refactor your code on an arbitrary scale: single place in code, single file, or a whole project, or solution. At the same time, it gives you full control over the scope and nature of the refactorings.
Are you still having BackgroundWorkers in your code?
It's time to replace them with async-await! Sharpen is equipped with an intelligent heuristics that recognizes potential improvements of your code on a broader scope.
Are you tired of searching for new C# features in random blog posts?
Sharpen comes with extensive built-in documentation on C# language features. It's a one-stop-shop for everything you ever wanted to know about the design and evolution of C#.
Note that in the current version of Sharpen the following features mentioned in the above chapters are still not available:
- Extensive documentation.
- Recommendations.
- Refactoring.
- Configuration.
You can install Sharpen directly from Visual Studio by using Extensions dialog or you can download it from the Visual Studio Marketplace.
Sharpen is a volunteer effort. Covering the whole C# evolution is a humongous task that cannot be carried out by a single person. So pitch in and join the development! :-) Before contributing, please make sure to read the contribution guidelines.
All notable changes to the Sharpen extension are documented in the changelog.
Sharpen is licensed under the MIT license.