Moving back to working with C++ in visual studio can often be painful after working with Java. I find myself cursing the missing refactoring functions and code navigation that you take for granted in Java. Jetbrains resharper might be really good for VB and C# but where does that leave C++. Well recently we've started to use Visual Assist X which, dispite it's name, is a real lifeline and works like a dream.

It gives much better syntax highlighting and the refactoring-patterns that you might expect including Class Rename and Extract Method. Spellchecking of comments immediately improves the quality. A number of features are also available to allow easy navigation between the declaration and the implementation too.

It's made my life a lot easier.