I think it would be hard to argue that the JDT isn't years ahead of any of the other language extensions...

Resharper for C++ just got released:
It should really give VAX a serious amount of competition from what I've heard/seen: https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper-cpp/?fromMenu

Has anybody used the C++ version of Resharper yet? The C# version is one of the best $100 I've ever spent. I write better code, and I write it much faster,between the refactoring and static analysis tools.

All of the JetBrains tools seem to be pretty solid - IntelliJ blows Eclipse out of the water, and our front-end guys swear by WebStorm. We've also had good results using TeamCity for automated builds.

While learning game development, I've spent some time getting comfortable with basic C++ and OpenGL, but I've used Sublime Text for my editing. I'm curious how you guys handle C++ development in Visual Studio with its weird project format. Inevitably you end up with a lot of files in your project, but rather than showing you something which mirrors your directory structure, it gives you these weird filter folders. I started coding in C++ in Visual Studio and the way I had to manually fiddle with these filter folders just irritated me too much and I went over to Sublime Text instead. I felt like it was forcing me to maintain predefined search queries for my code instead of just showing me the damn files. Why does Visual Studio do it that way? Is there something that can automatically reconfigure the set of filters to match your directory structure? Are you genuinely happy having it just filter all of your cpp and header files into giant flat lists?

Strangely in C#, it forces the project view to match the directory structure, as opposed to it's flexible approach in C++ (which yes, defaults to stupid flat lists).

You can make it match your directory structure manually, by adding the files to matching places in the directory tree.

Personally, I'm currently using CMake to generate my project files for me, and it can automatically give them the correct (directory matching) layout.

However, I almost never use the "solution explorer" anyway. Most of the time I open files by typing the filename.

With VisualAssist, that's alt+shift+o [start typing the name] enter.

Without any plugins, you can go to the command window and type >of [start typing the name]enter.

The cool thing with visual assist is you can write several fragments for the name to match -- e.g. to open "renderer_d3d9.cpp", I can type "[alt+shift+o] ren d9 .c [enter]".

With every text editor, I also use everything which supports the same name/fragment matching stuff, and then drag-n-drop from everything into the text editor.

What about creating new files though? Does Visual Studio pick up new files that appear in the file system or do you have to force it to refresh?

Yes and no. You can tell the solution explorer to show files that are not part of the project, but they won't be included in your build.

You wouldn't want them to anyway. Your project in visual studio is essentially your make file. If you add a new source file, you need to tell your build system (CMake, MSBuild, whatever) how you want that file built.

.. if you program on windows it's virtually a necessity to use an IDE and it's the most common and most supported one, so you are kind of stuck with it.