I watched the CLion sales pitch video after reading the recommendation. Binging around for the features shown I then discovered Visual Assist[1] which seems to add comparably nifty code completion/generation etc features to Visual Studio. I'm demoing it just now, it's definitely worth a look if you have an itch that needs scratching.
It's better to add bells and whistles on top of a rock solid foundation such as VS than the other way around imo.
I used Visual Assist X with VS2008 actually. Functionally it made things better but UX-wise it was a bit sluggish and glitch from what I remember. If I get a chance I'll check out the newer versions (thanks for mentioning it) but somehow I expect something again similar this time around haha.
It's better to add bells and whistles on top of a rock solid foundation such as VS than the other way around imo.
[1] https://www.wholetomato.com/