We also have a new code checker, support for two new C++ language features, and small but useful improvements to VA’s behavior. Read on further to get the complete details of the changes and improvements in this release, or download the release right away.

Share source code via email, GitHub, and more.

Starting from VA 2023.6, users can now highlight sections of code from the editor and open the Quick Actions and Refactoring (Shift + Alt + Q) menu, or right-click on the code and select the “Share with team member” option to instantly send code to other developers.

Select and share sections of code by highlighting it and using the Quick Actions
menu (Shift + Alt + Q).

Choose where and how you want to share your code. This new feature can work in conjunction with GitHub Gist and GitLab’s snippets feature, where you can instantly share and upload parts of your source code. You can also send your source code via email for more general-use purposes. 

Improvements to VA’s navigation features

This release provides a number of improvements and additional functionality to VA’s bread and butter navigation features, such as open file in solution and find symbol in solution.

• Fuzzy search and uppercase search for opening files and searching symbols
  Fuzzy search is a technique used in searches and information retrieval to find approximate matches for a given query, accommodating variations like typos and misspellings. It employs string distance metrics to measure the similarity between strings.
  
  Visual Assist’s open file in solution and find symbol in solution will now employ this algorithm, so you can expect more results with fewer, less accurate search queries.
  
  Furthermore, besides fuzzy searching for inexact matches, VA will also match capital letters. If you have a class named MyClassName, searching for “mcn” would find it. It works similarly if you have a global variable named myGlobalVariable and type “mgv”. It is smart enough to count the lowercase “my” as if it were MyGlobalVariable leading to expected results.
  
  

  Enable fuzzy search and see smarter search results using approximate string matching.

   

   

• Select all items in open file in solution (Ctrl + A)
  You can now select and highlight multiple files and open them simultaneously when using open file in solution. The usual shortcut Ctrl + A works.
  

  Select and open all files with the new select all shortcut.

Improved support for Braced Initialization Lists / Uniform initialization (C++ 11)

2023.6 also improves support for braced initialization of lists and/or uniform initialization. Brace initialization lists and uniform initialization provide a more consistent and flexible way to initialize objects in C++. 

These features  improve code readability and reduce the chances of certain types of errors. Visual Assist’s parser will recognize these lists and highlight and suggest auto corrections within them.

Improved support for constexpr, consteval and constinit  (C++ 20)

These features are related to compile-time evaluation and initialization. They have specific use cases and are used to enforce certain behaviors at compile time. If you haven’t been using these, here’s a quick breakdown:

• constexpr used to indicate that a function or variable can be evaluated at compile time.
• consteval a stricter version, ensuring that the function or expression is only evaluated at compile time and cannot be evaluated at runtime.
• constinit is used to indicate that a variable must be initialized at compile time and, once initialized, its value cannot be changed during the program’s lifetime.

When using these features, Visual Assist will recognize what you are trying to accomplish such as refactoring commands mainly. Refactorings such as Create From Usage will now properly handle these keywords.

New code inspection for detecting “magic-numbers”

This new Clang-based code inspection checks for instances of magic numbers—or numeric literals that are used without any definition—that are advised against by many coding guidelines for readability sake.

Enable code inspections by navigating to Extensions ->> VAssistX ->> Code Inspection ->> Enable code inspections.  This specific code inspection is disabled by default because some users may be intentionally using it and are not interested in “fixing” it.

Then you can either click on detected issues underlined in blue, use the Quick Refactoring Menu (Shift + Alt + Q) while on the highlighted issue, to allow VA to do it for you. In this case, there is no automatic fix so it will prompt you to define a variable with that number as its value and use the variable instead. 

Protip: VA can help do that for you with the introduce variable feature. If you highlight the number, then use the Quick Actions menu and select Introduce Variable it will ask you for a name and pull the number out into a variable for you.

You can read more about the readability-magic-numbers code checker on Clang’s documentation. 

New move class feature

You can now move entire classes into different files with the new move class feature included in 2023.6. 

For example, if you have a class named MyClass, with its declaration in MyClass.h and its definition in MyClass.cpp, you can move the entire class into a new pair of files, MyClassNew.h and MyClassNew.cpp. 

This is useful if you have a header and source file pair (.h and .cpp) that contain multiple classes and you want to break that up into multiple files.

Bug fixes and improvements

For this release, we have a couple of fixes based on user requests. The most notable of these improvements include a fix for file exclusion instructions using .json configs similar to a previous release, a parser improvement for Unreal Engine 5, and improved auto-detect logic for Unity.

• Fixed multiple issues with file exclusion logic when reading from “.vscode\settings.json” configs.  
• Our parser now better understands Unreal Engine 5.0 (specifically that build) types, such as FVector.
• Fixed Create from Usage behavior when used inside const inline methods. 
• Fixed coloring of [[fallthrough]] marked enum items. 
• Attempted to fix rare temporary hang when debugging C# Unity projects.
• Code Inspections options dialog now displays much more quickly. 
• Improved Unity engine auto detect logic to reduce false positives.

Thanks to those who submitted their feedback and bug reports. Please continue sending them our way. Send us a message or start a thread on the user forums for bug reports or suggestions.

You can also check our download page to manually update to the latest release. Happy coding!

The post Visual Assist 2023.6 release post first appeared on Tomato Soup.

What is a High Performer and How does G2 Determine It?

A high performer is a user satisfaction indicator that signifies high efficiency and capability of software.  The efficiency score is determined using special algorithms based on user feedback. It calculates an average user satisfaction score that depends on the software’s quality and existing features. In addition, the number and quality of received reviews are also taken into account.

A high performer award means that the majority of a program’s users have rated the software highly effective for its tasks.  It is something that lives up to its claims and more. The only thing separating a high performer from industry leader status is a higher review count.

What does Visual Assist do?

Visual Assist is a productivity plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio that improves IDE functionality using a variety of techniques such as static code analysis. Visual Assist fills gaps in the coding experience of Visual Studio and allows developers to code faster, easier, and with fewer errors. It provides code understanding, code correction, code assistance, code suggestions, and code inspection features.

The main features provided by Visual Assist:

• Syntax highlighting.
• Enhances code suggestions.
• The ability to easily navigate to any file, method, symbol, or reference in your projects and solutions.
• Automatically code generation.
• Code refactoring tools.
• The possibility of using ready-made code snippets.
• Code auto-completion.
• Identifies and fixes typical programming errors.
• Ability to check spelling in comments.
• Support development for Unreal Engine.

How did users reviews for Visual Assist go?

In general, users highly rated the effectiveness of Visual Assist. They noted that this tool is necessary when working with a large code base, it significantly speeds up the process of writing code thanks to the IntelliSense system, fast navigation, powerful tools for refactoring, and code autogeneration.

Visual Assist received an overall score of 4.6 out of 5 stars. In other ratings, he has the following points:

• Ease of use – 9.2 out of 10.
• Quality of support – 9.1 out of 10.
• Ease of admin – 10 out of 10.

Be sure to download a free trial of Visual Assist and leave us a review after!

The post Visual Assist enters G2 Awards as High Performer first appeared on Tomato Soup.

We’ve had a couple of giveaways during our stint at GDC last March in San Francisco— the most exciting of which was our Steam Deck giveaway.

After drawing from our list of entries, we’re excited to introduce our winner: Rebecca Vessal. We have coordinated with her and she will receive a brand new Steam Deck as soon as stocks are available (even we aren’t immune to shortages!)

Omg!  I’m super excited to win the Steam Deck from the GDC giveaway!  I look forward to receiving it and playing my Steam games on the go or hooking it up to a TV.  Thank you so much! =D

– Becca

Rebecca Vessal is currently enjoying her work as a gameplay programmer at Double Fine Productions. She particularly enjoys collaborating with her team of game developers to come up with creative solutions in order to make awesome games. 

Becca helped her team at Double Fine create the cinematic platform-adventure game Psychonauts 2, which won Best Narrative at this year’s Game Developers Choice Awards.

Prior to her joining Double Fine, Becca worked on mobile games like the popular Diner Dash at Playfirst and Glu Mobile. She also worked on LEGO Movie Maker, a mobile application for DIY LEGO animations.

Rebecca has a wide variety of programming experiences, from mobile games and apps to console/PC games.  Her game development programming experience includes working on:

• Video Game A.I.
• Global gameplay systems
• Custom level specific systems
• User Interface
• Physics and tools programming. 

In her spare time, Rebecca likes to try out new kinds of food and drinks, play sports, hang out with friends, play with and pet her doggos, draw, play video games, and explore new places.

Her next big thing is Whole Tomato’s MVP program

One other thing that you need to know about Becca is that she is a dedicated Visual Assist user. There is almost never a work day where she wouldn’t be able to find use for one of VA’s features.

And in the spirit of full disclosure, Rebecca was a participant in one of our focus groups, so we had a bit of a background on her already. It was a happy coincidence that she won the giveaway out of the 240 entries we had.

With that in mind, we took the opportunity to invite her to be one of our first MVPs for the launch of Whole Tomato’s new community recognition program. We’re looking forward to many exciting collaborations and projects with her soon!

If you think you’re qualified to be one of our MVPs and are interested, you can fill this form.

The post Announcing our GDC giveaway winner, plus an important community announcement first appeared on Tomato Soup.