When it comes to developing software for the finance and banking industry, C++ is often the language of choice due to its performance, efficiency, and flexibility.

However, writing C++ programs in this highly regulated and fast-paced environment comes with its own set of challenges. From managing the complexity of legacy codebases to ensuring real-time performance for trading systems, developers face numerous hurdles. Regulations and stringent security measures, compliance with industry regulations, and the ever-present demand for high reliability and accuracy also compound this problem. 

In this blog, we will explore some of the biggest challenges C++ developers encounter when creating software solutions for the finance and banking sector.

Why use C++ in Financial Software

Banks and financial institutions are always looking to improve their trading infrastructure and upgrade their data-management capabilities. Having the best financial model mathematical models help generate profits and reduce risk in a highly volatile and time-sensitive market.

And it just so happens that C++, a low-level language, is the top choice due to its speed and efficiency, making it a preferred choice for high-frequency trading platforms, risk management systems, and other critical financial applications.

The challenges to becoming a programmer in the financial industry

When you’re a developer in the financial industry, it’s almost always a given that apart from being able to program, you would also be able to understand the math to validate various financial models. Some developers may also conduct research and hypothesize on new trading strategies themselves.

Becoming a quantitative analyst, bank developer, or high-frequency trader can be very lucrative career choices. However, it also means that there are stricter requirements and skill sets to be qualified.

As an aspiring developer, here are the key problems and frustrations that C++ developers in the financial industry should keep in mind:

Training requirements and developer skill set

• Steep learning curve
  You can be a decent trader and a researcher using basic programming and scripting languages such as Python. But on the other hand, knowing C++ from just a broad level won’t be able to help you as much since you won’t be able to utilize the low latency advantages. If you really want to implement models and develop applications for the industry, there is a certain level of optimization skills you need first.
• Understand modeling and simulations. It comes as no surprise, but there is a hefty amount of math involved in the financial industry. Financial algorithms can be mathematically intensive, requiring developers to have a strong understanding of quantitative finance and numerical methods.
• Need to invest in skills other than programming? Developers often need to implement complex models that simulate market conditions or risk factors, which requires a deep understanding of both finance and C++. However, this is less of a problem if you’re working with a diversified team of developers, traders, and analysts.

Programming requirements: Performance Optimization

• Low Latency Requirements
  Financial applications, especially in trading, require extremely low latency. Developers must continuously optimize their code to reduce execution time to microseconds or even nanoseconds.
• Resource Management
  Efficient memory management is crucial—each unoptimized bit of code can amount to micro delays that can be the difference between a winning and a losing trade. C++ developers need to carefully manage resources, avoid memory leaks, and ensure optimal memory performance in their code.
• Accuracy and code correctness: Financial applications often rely on parallel processing to handle large volumes of data. The source code and the project itself may not be massive, but the intricacies involved must be accurate because of the sensitive nature of market prices. Still, managing developer mistakes and errors in C++ can be challenging and error-prone.

Programming requirements: Performance Optimization

• Low Latency Requirements
  Financial applications, especially in trading, require extremely low latency. Developers must continuously optimize their code to reduce execution time to microseconds or even nanoseconds.
• Resource Management
  Efficient memory management is crucial—each unoptimized bit of code can amount to micro delays that can be the difference between a winning and a losing trade. C++ developers need to carefully manage resources, avoid memory leaks, and ensure optimal memory performance in their code.
• Accuracy and code correctness: Financial applications often rely on parallel processing to handle large volumes of data. The source code and the project itself may not be massive, but the intricacies involved must be accurate because of the sensitive nature of market prices. Still, managing developer mistakes and errors in C++ can be challenging and error-prone.

Programming requirements: Compliance and Regulations

• Compliance with regulations
  Apart from being mathematically complex enough as it is, financial software must comply with stringent regulations within the company and the government. Developers need to ensure that every bit of their code adheres to compliance requirements—this can vary by region and change frequently.
• Auditability
  The code must be auditable, meaning that it should be easy to trace and understand how financial decisions are made by the software, which adds another layer of complexity.
• Vulnerability Management
  There are many available libraries and third party extensions for C++ developers. Developers, however, need to stay on top of potential vulnerabilities in C++ libraries or the codebase itself to prevent exploits.

Tips for facing these challenges

• Study the math, polish your C++
  As mentioned earlier, you can be a pure developer and just implement whatever algorithms that are supplied to you. But to become a better analyst and interpret trends yourself, you need to equip yourself  with more than programming skills.If you’re looking to familiarize yourself with the concepts, there are many great resources available such as Investopedia. For specific use cases or general C++ skills, a good old reference book (such as those from Scott Meyers or one from Bjarne Stroustrup himself) will always be great options.For references regarding high performance C++, there are also great resources online such as:
  • Algorithmica’s Algorithms for Modern Hardware e-book by Sergey Slotin et al
  • Performance-aware Programming series by Casey Muratori
  • Optimising C++ by Agner Fogg: probably the classic C++ optimisation bookThere are two published books with relevant titles which we have not read or evaluated. They are Developing High-Frequency Trading Systems and C++ High Performance. Both are published by Packt, and again we note we have not read these books.
• Invest in understanding above and beyond your tasks

Banks and financial institutions, especially top ones, will only hire the cream-of-the-crop devs. Average devs with pedestrian level finance knowledge will be less appealing for the simple fact that for an expensive role, financial firms expect the maximum returns. 

This often means that being a financial developer entails learning and understanding current market trends, calculating opportunity costs, and economic theories yourself—not just the technical aspects of implementing them into an algorithm.

• Get all the help you can

Take note of tidbits of knowledge you’ll pick up on the spot from existing codebases accessible to you. Colleagues may also come to you directly and give you advice on how best to tackle certain financial puzzles.

As for developer tools, they are oftentimes underestimated in terms of how helpful technology can be when you’re developing software and finance algorithms. Having a conducive and smart development environment can be the small difference between a timely implementation hauling your company massive profits, or an unfortunate missed opportunity.

Try to invest in software that allows you to focus and concentrate on the core work such as thinking and planning. For example, there are many productivity tools available online that seek to help developers monitor their code’s quality. There are also tools that help in maintaining or refactoring code bases. These are all tools that can help you stay on the cutting edge.

Protip for those coding in Visual Studio C++

Visual Studio remains the premier IDE for C++, especially serious C++ programming such as financial services. That includes deploying to Linux. Visual Studio is a robust IDE for developing C++ financial programs because it offers powerful debugging and code analysis tools, which are crucial for maintaining high-quality, error-free code in critical financial applications, plus strong performance and profiling tools. 

It provides extensive support for modern C++ standards and libraries, ensuring compatibility and performance optimization. The IDE integrates well with various version control systems, enabling smooth collaboration and code management among development teams. Additionally, Visual Studio’s extensive ecosystem of extensions and plugins allows developers to customize their environment to fit specific financial industry requirements.

There are general plugins that augment the entire IDE with faster processes and more intuitive workflows. For example, Visual Assist, one of the most popular VS extensions, provides faster ways to navigate projects, convenient one-click solutions to maintaining code, and additional syntax support not available in the default VS IDE. Here are some specific features:

• Code Inspections
• Code Refactoring
• Open File in Solution
• Find Symbol in Solution
• List and Find References
• Special C support

When writing high performance C++ you’ll find yourself doing things like (for example) avoiding memory allocation, and Visual Assist’s set of refactorings can assist with all sorts of work that can move code around to assist your improvements. A trivial example is converting a heap-allocation to a stack allocation via the Convert Pointer to Instance refactoring.

You can’t underestimate how helpful it is especially in a high-stress and time-sensitive profession.

Those jobs are high stress and lots of crunch is expected. Our navigation features get you around much faster than the built in tools Open File in Solution, Find Symbol in Solution and Find References just works that much better and faster.

Conclusion

Becoming a programmer in the financial industry is no small task. There are many significant challenges presented to you both as a programmer and as a learner.  It is a constantly evolving profession—like a perpetual hackathon. You have to stay on top tech and industry trends to ensure your company is getting the best results it can. 

Study beyond your delegation. Utilize all the tools at your disposal. And most importantly, persevere. 

The post The biggest challenges in writing C++ programs for finance and banking first appeared on Tomato Soup.

What are code inspections?

Code inspections is a feature in Visual Assist that automatically checks source code for issues and code smells, and suggests the appropriate fix. The main benefit of using code inspection is better overall code quality with minimal effort.

Code inspections work by utilizing code checkers, sometimes referred to as static analyzers. These are tools that analyze your source code passively—it happens as you type your code. You do not need to actually compile and execute your code to detect a problem (i.e. finding bugs and errors using run-time techniques such as testing).

Code issues are underlined in blue. Line information and a description of the issue is also shown in the VA Code Inspection Results window.

It looks for common patterns, broken coding conventions, and potential bugs in the code using algorithms and special techniques. The purpose of code checkers is to catch problems early in the development process, which can save a lot of time and effort later on. 

What issues can it detect?

The issues and code smells that can be detected vary widely from stylistic infractions on coding convention, all the way to system critical errors.  Here are some of the common fixable issues:

• Detecting and updating obsolete coding syntax
• Highlights possible readability issues and broken coding conventions
• Checking type-related errors (such as making invalid type conversions or assigning values of incompatible types, using uninitialized variables, or.)
• Wasted resources due to inefficient memory allocation/deallocation.
• Other issues of non-obvious, but potentially dangerous, incorrectness

Visual Assist’s code inspection feature is based on LLVM’s /Clang-Tidy code analysis engine so you can be sure that it covers a variety of checks targeted at finding security and API usage bugs, dead code, and other logic errors. Additionally, we extend the functionality through the use of ‘evaluated’ checkers (more below).

READ: More examples from a blog by Bartek from C++ Stories

Evaluated and unevaluated checkers

Code checkers are added gradually to the list of Visual Assist code inspections. All checkers that are in the list are thoroughly evaluated, checked, and tested. Evaluated checkers often include changed functionality that is not in the base clang-tidy, making them more reliable and safe. This is a key part of the value of the checkers we include. Using evaluated checkers guarantees that the code will be refactored properly and any suggested fix will not break anything.

On the other hand, unevaluated checkers are still based on Clang-Tidy’s extensive list but have not undergone the same quality assurance tests as its counterparts. Almost a hundred unevaluated checkers have been added in Visual Assist 2023.2.

Note that unevaluated checkers will still suggest the recommended fix and behave like normal checks, but users are advised to manually ensure that everything is working correctly. The benefit that this brings is that developers can know what and where a potential issue lies—which is oftentimes the bulk of the work.

Why use code inspections to fix issues and refactor code?

Running code inspections lists down issues in a window for you to examine before implementing fixes.

Code inspections read source code line by line, analyzing the structure, logic, and syntax. It pays attention to specific patterns or coding conventions that may indicate potential issues. As they encounter a line of code, it uses a set of rules and algorithms to determine if the code adheres to best practices or if there are any deviations.

Using code inspections automates a lot of the manual checking and verification that developers would traditionally do. With it, it no longer matters how familiar a developer is on a project, or how large a solution is—it all goes under the same level of scrutiny.

it provides some of the following benefits as well:

• Be able to utilize modern coding practices without actually knowing them.
• Improve code quality with minimal refactoring risk.
• Detecting potential code issues early.

WATCH: Understand how code inspections are evaluated

How to use code inspections to eliminate code smells

First, make sure to enable it by navigating to Extensions -> VAssistX -> Code Inspection (beta) -> Enable code inspection. 

Then you can either click on detected issues underlined in blue, use the Quick Refactoring Menu (Shift + Alt + Q) while on the highlighted issue, or use the code inspection dialogue to implement changes in batches.

WATCH: Code inspections in action

Visual Assist by Whole Tomato: Filling Gaps in Visual Studio for C/C++ and C# Developers

Visual Assist is a productivity extension for Visual Studio development work. It provides a set of intelligent refactoring, navigation, code highlighting and generation features for C, C++, and C# development. With its highly-efficient memory management and minimal UI, Visual Assist gives developers uninterrupted access to advanced features without slowing down the IDE.

Visual Assist is one of the definitive plugins that conceptualized and shaped most of the current features you see now in Visual Studio. And to this day it continues to develop user-centric design for maximum productivity and usability.

Download Visual Assist here.

The post Everything you need to know about code inspections first appeared on Tomato Soup.

In this blog post, we try to guesstimate the value of Visual Assist as a productivity and time-saving tool.

Why do developers need Visual Assist?

Before we dive into the numbers, we first need to understand why having Visual Assist is needed in the first place.

Technically speaking, VA is not necessary to code in Visual Studio. However, some developers can attest that there are projects that are almost infeasible to do without tools like VA. 

For instance, those working with large C++ source code may find that the IDE’s built-in features can choke on resource-intensive processes. In this case, users will greatly benefit from VA’s highly performant and context-aware features that have been specifically designed to support the areas where Visual Studio needs it.

Now let’s do some simple calculations with some hypothetical scenarios. You will soon find out that the opportunity cost in having Visual Assist is so low and the return on investment so high that there is simply no reason to ever code without it again.

Visual Assist for Developers

For developers, the benefit of having a performant and light coding assistant is pretty easy to understand. With VA installed, coding is simply faster and easier. With a slew of features designed to support even the highly complex C++ language, developers can focus on more important tasks.

The amount a developer spends wouldn’t define the usefulness of VA. A better metric to look at would be how productive it makes you or how much time it saves. 

In one of Visual Assist’s reviews, a game developer describes VA as “absolutely needed for professional programming in Visual Studio.” He explains how the features provided are basic—so much so that he was surprised that Visual Studio shipped without it in the first place.

A VA user testimonial. Read more reviews on G2.com

Disclosure: Ryan has since been recognized as a Whole Tomato MVP, but this review was submitted prior.

The value of Visual Assist for developers is that it makes development work faster and easier. It’s like investing in a good quality mouse—the regular one will do the job just too, but the added macros, extra buttons, and smoother experience in a premium mouse just feels better and more productive. You get the same results, just faster and with fewer inputs.

Visual Assist for Teams and Businesses

Project managers and developer leads are in a perpetual search of ways to make the most out of eight hours. These are the people whose decisions influence others, so they are usually more results-driven.

An analysis of our user surveys and focus group responses show that VA can increase productivity by around 20%. This means that having Visual Assist effectively reduces a 40-hour work effort to about 32 hours.

Here is an estimated-cost-savings matrix of an average project with and without Visual Assist:

Visual Assist can save teams 48-hours and $1,900 for a project that normally takes 10 work days.

VA helps maintain code by analyzing projects for technical errors and code smells. It catches issues as teams are writing code, saving them time during the testing and integration phase.

And since VA is regularly updated, the automatic prompts and corrections it suggests are always based on the latest coding and linter standards. Overall, it makes maintaining and testing code less tedious and time consuming.

These suggestions, no matter how minuscule, add up and save teams and businesses valuable time. They don’t have to spend extended periods of time manually checking code—meaning they can skip a considerable chunk of the development process.

Here are a couple of VA’s time saving features:

• Refactoring
• Code inspections
• Code debugging help
• And more…

It’s a bit complicated to estimate how efficient code maintenance practices and tools translate into time savings, but think of it this way: for each project, how much time does your team spend on finding, fixing, and testing errors, both minor and major,? 

Easily deploy Visual Assist

VA is a VS plugin and can be easily deployed. It does not matter if you install it before or during a project. Deploying with Visual Studio is a no-frills process with no additional investment for hardware required.

It has no known compatibility issues, so it should work with any other plugin you may have installed. Its features are customizable, so you can choose which functions to use and which to disable.

Get started with Visual Assist and experience a better and faster Visual Studio today.

The post How much time and money does Visual Assist save? first appeared on Tomato Soup.

#1 Navigation through the elements of the project

In a large project, there are a lot of classes and methods, which greatly complicate the process of finding the right place in the code for you. Visual Studio provides special features to simplify the work with such projects.

To search for class members, you can use the Class Navigation menu located in the upper right corner of Visual Studio. When you click on the triangle button in this menu, a drop-down list appears with a list of all members of the class. When you click on a specific member, you navigate to it in the code.

To navigate through code elements, you can also use the Go to All feature. It allows you to find the desired element and filter the type of elements to search.

Go to All feature searches code elements through the entire project.

#2 Navigation through definitions and implementations

If you want to look at the definition of a member implemented in some class, then this is easy enough to do. You just need to select the Go to implementation command in the context menu that opens when you right-click on the selected member. You can also use the F12 hotkey.

In some situations, it is helpful to go to some implementation of a class member. To do this, select the command Go to implementation or use the hotkeys CTRL+F12.

Another useful feature that improves Visual Studio productivity is the possibility to find all references for the selected class member. It is easy to do using the Find All References command or Shift+F12 hotkeys. After executing the command, a search results window will open with a list of all references. By clicking on the selected reference, you will be redirected to it in the code. Find out more about setting up Visual Assist.

#3 Browsing the Structure of the Code

With Solution Explorer, you can view the overall structure of your code. It contains information about classes, their types, and members. If you select a code element in Solution Explorer, the associated file opens and the cursor moves to the selected element in the file.

You can also browse the hierarchy of method calls, search for symbols and symbol references, and so on.

#4 Code Editor Split For Productivity

You can split the code editor vertically or horizontally. This is very useful if you need to edit code in several related files at the same time. Also, vertical groups of documents improve Visual Studio productivity on very wide screens. You can easily move files between different groups of documents.

#5 Quick Search In Visual Studio

In Visual Studio, there is a search text box in the menu bar. You can use it for searching menu commands, dialog boxes, files, types, members, and more. To do this, just enter the keywords you want to find.

Also, it is possible to filter the content of tool windows. A lot of tool windows have a search bar that you can use to find the items you need.

In the Error List window, you can use the filter to display errors only in the files currently opened in the editor, errors only in the current file, or errors only in the current project.

#6 Conditional Debugging

In Visual Studio, you can add conditions to breakpoints. In this case, the break in the debug process occurs only if the specified condition is met. This can be especially useful when debugging loops that have a large number of elements and you only want to examine the element that matches the specified criteria.

#7 View objects that are out of scope

When debugging applications, in the Watch window, objects are tracked by their reference names. When such a reference goes out of scope, its value in the Watch window becomes unavailable, even if the object pointed to by the reference is still active.

Visual Studio provides the ability to continue tracking the state of an object outside of the scope. To do this, you need to create an object ID. Then, when the reference goes out of scope, this ID can be used to observe the state of the object.

#8 Code Snippets Increase Productivity

An important tool for increasing Visual Studio productivity is the ability to insert code snippets into your project. Using this feature, you can automatically insert frequently used pieces of code, which significantly speeds up the process of writing code.

There are a lot of ready snippets in Visual Studio. For example, snippets for creating a constructor, properties, loops, conditional operations, etc. If you often use the same piece of code in your project, then you can create your own snippet.

#9 Extract methods and interfaces

Visual Studio provides the ability to automatically perform various actions that otherwise would take a long time if you were performing them manually.

You can generate a new method from the selected part of the code using the quick action Extract method. A method will be created with all the required parameters and the code you chose. All that’s left for you to do is enter the method name.

It is also easy to create interfaces from existing classes. Just click the quick action Extract interface near the class name and select the class members you want to extract to the interface.

#10 Work with images in web applications

Visual Studio greatly simplifies working with images when developing web applications. You can drag and drop images from Solution Explorer into HTML code. In this case, the code is generated automatically. You can encode the image to base64 automatically, as well as automatically insert image height and width attributes.

#11 Shortcuts

Visual Studio has a huge list of keyboard shortcuts that allow you to perform various actions from code navigation to code generation, refactoring, debugging, and more. Using keyboard shortcuts is the best way to improve Visual Studio productivity and speed up the coding process.

#12 Extensions

If you are missing the standard tools that Visual Studio offers, you can install extensions. There are a lot of extensions available for Visual Studio that can be easily installed and customized to suit your needs.

One of them is Visual Assist, which simplifies the process of navigating through code, writing, and debugging code, and also allows you to customize code highlighting in a way that suits you.

Ready to get started boosting your Visual Studio productivity?

In this article, we learned a lot of interesting features that improve Visual Studio productivity. Want 10 more reasons? We are confident that when using them, you will write code much faster and easier.

Head over and download the latest version of Visual Assist!

The post 12 Helpful Tips For Visual Studio Productivity first appeared on Tomato Soup.