Microsoft does great work in researching static code analysis, I only remember their auto-complete ten years ago for C++ code and it was miles ahead of anything else. It pops up in just the right moment and it just feels like a genuine "code assistant" instead of just an auto-complete. Unfortunately I don't really trust MS with developing great OSX software (see MS Office for Mac) so I'm not sure I'd want Visual Studio. But if they could pull of a proper port, it would be awesome.

Excel for Mac doesn't have the "Evaluate Formula" function and the Name Manager is crippled... (to name a few issues) Makes it really hard to do complex and robust development.

The auto-complete is truly wonderful. XCode's isn't too bad (but does anyone know how to get it to pop up the parameters in a function, same as VS Ctrl-Shift-Space????) but the real stinker I had to use was Borlands Codegear 2007. That whole think was rubbish and engaged in colossal disk-churning for auto-complete. The linker crashed and the IDE was buggy as anything. A shame.

But VS auto-complete was a breath of fresh air afterwards.

If you haven't already - try AppCode out, it's superior to XCode in so many ways, and the functionality you've asked for is there (Ctrl+Shift+P).

I really want to like AppCode but I just can't deal with the non-native java UI

I totally agree. I never pay for Java apps.

MS Office for Mac is pretty well done IMHO

While I really like using MS Office 2013, I just can't use MS Office for Mac. It doesn't seem to integrate with the OS very well. I hope that the next version is better - hopefully retina screen support

MS Office for MAC received retina support in one of the last updates. Try updating your suite.

I agree, it's painfully slow for anything but simple tasks. My former company (in)famously does everything in Excel (including Gant and flow charts), and being the only guy with OSX the load times were terrible, the UI sluggish and it crashed often. I was really quite surprised how snappy the UI was when looking at a coworker's windows box.

It's fuzzy and instant. If you type "flow" it will treat it as if you searched for "stream". You don't need to know what things are named. You just search for what you think it may be and 9 times out of 10 intellisense will find what you're looking for. It's like having Google doing autocomplete for you.

I can't speak for IntelliJ (can never get the damn thing configured correctly), but Eclipse's autocomplete leaves a lot to be desired. This may be configurable, but my experience has been that it's finicky about when it will trigger.

I appreciate Eclipse's openness (and I tend to work with open source languages), but I must admit that purely examining the quality of the tool, Visual Studio is leagues ahead.

And Erich Gamma moved to MS three years ago...

Yup, part of the visual studio team. For others, watch him describe Visual Studio Online to Scott Hanselman on Channel 9.

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/azure-friday/erich-gamma-intr...

MP4 hotlink: http://media.ch9.ms/ch9/793e/d1b6ebda-d31b-413e-983e-1c698a8...

C# support in IntelliJ would be a dream come true!

(yes, I know about ReSharper - but that's just lipstick on a pig)

Pig? VS is considered one of the best IDEs out there. On par, if not better than IntelliJ.

If it was better, it would not need ReSharper.

I use both on a daily basis, and VS + Resharper beats the crap out of IntelliJ, IMO. My opinion might be different if I had to pay for my licenses, but independent of cost, VS wins.