I'm trying to guage how popular and how used LINQPad is today. I'm just wondering if it's still a useful tool or not as VS and other tools have gotten better.
Furthermore, I am coding over LLBGen by working with LINQ to SQL. I see there is a plug-in for LLBGen and LINQPad. Still I wonder if LINQPad is really worth it or what benefits it can give me or if it's still highly suggested out there for ORMs, etc.
I'm just wondering if it's still a useful tool
ABSOLUTELY!
Use it more days than not. A lot of times, I find trying a little snippet out in LinqPad quicker than reading a doc (i.e., today I wanted to know what Exceptions would be thrown by a framework method under various inputs - LinqPad answered that very quickly).
I use LINQPad all the time. Not just for LINQ but also as a sort of C# interpreter scratch pad. Even with Intellisense sometimes I need to quickly try out a command to see if the results equal what I'm expecting when writing code. I can quickly type in a line or two in LINQPad and see what happens. I often keep it open while developing in Visual Studio and switch over for these quick and dirty tasks.
I use it a lot, with autocompletion. Great for testing regex-patterns or other small snippets with. The Dump()-method give a very readable output when trying various linq-queries. Especially in combination with F8, which open the result on the second screen.
Update: LINQPad also supports writing full classes and methods in the same file by selecting "C# program" as language. It can replace throw-away concole-applications.
I have gotten to a point where I use LINQPad a number of times a day. I guess I am pretty much fine with not having intellisense, because now-a-days I don't find it that tough to remember the syntax, LINQ included. So I normally I won't be at a point at which I am scratching my head for intellisense to come to my rescue! Using LINQPad certainly does save a lot of time for me. Just think of a scenario where I have to change the variables for some calculation number of times and see the results. This would never be a fun thing to do w/ VS. But LINQPad makes my life simple, because the maximum I have to do is change the variable values and hit on F5! I also have the results in text format just below. So according LINQPad is not going to go for a few years to come!
The main reason I use LINQpad is because my main code base has Code Analysis (FxCop) and Source Analysis (Style Cop) and all Warnings as errors enabled. When I need to quickly prototype or proof-of-concept something it isn't always practical to do it on the main code base as it can take too long to get the code to a state where it builds.
Once I'm happy, if needed then I can copy the code into my main code base and refactor to meet the project's guidlines and rules.
