Bartlomiej Filipek is a software developer from the Polish city of Cracow. Bartek, as he prefers to be called, started coding when he was 14 years old, after reading “C++ in 24h”, and got his first real programming job in 2007. Bartek broad professional experience includes Native Windows Desktop Apps, OpenGL, Gamedev, BioFeedback games, .NET, large-scale app development, flight planning, and graphics driver coding. As a master’s student he also created lectures about OpenGL and gamedev. Since 2014 he has worked as a C++ software developer for Xara.
Bartek took time to tell us about his experience with Visual Assist, and why he’s a big fan.
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When did you start using Visual Assist and how long have you been using it?
It’s hard to recall, but it was very early in my professional career. After using Visual Studio (VS 2003 and 2005) for some time, I knew I needed some more productivity enhancements. Visual Studio 2005or 2008 wasn’t best at that. I searched for solutions and found Visual Assist – which was amazing.
What was it like building software before you had Visual Assist?
Visual Studio was great for development, but it lacked some essential improvements like the refactoring helpers. I wasn’t able to efficiently rename my variables or member functions. And most importantly, the speed of Intellisense was relatively poor on large solutions. Sometimes I had to wait a couple of seconds to get the list of methods for my object.
How does Visual Assist help you create your applications?
First of all, I love many refactoring tools that I get with VA. I can quickly and safely rename my variables, functions, and much more. Another important part is code extraction and the ability to move the code back and forth between a header file or the implementation. Additionally, VA is super fast with even larger projects, and I can quickly get a list of member functions, function signatures, and much more. Recently, I have also been exploring VA Code Inspections which helps with code modernization.
What made Visual Assist stand out from other options?I think it’s at least three elements:
I think it has three elements:
- Performance (as it’s super fast even for large solutions)
- Lots of refactoring capabilities
- Lots of options to understand and move through code faster
What made you happiest about working with Visual Assist?
I like the overall speed of Virtual Assist, I can quickly jump around my code, see definitions, list member functions and even make notes with Hashtags.
What have you been able to achieve through using Virtual Assist to help create your applications?
I think I can write safer code (thanks to code inspections), avoid code smells (like large functions because I can quickly make them smaller with code extraction tools). And overall, it contributes to better quality and readability of my code.
What are some future plans for your applications?
At Xara – my main job – we plan to make some great enhancements to our powerful document online editor. For my other projects, especially blogs and educational content, I hope to experiment with some latest C++ 20 features and practice good modern C++ techniques.
Thank you, Bartek! You can find the link to Bartek’s blog here
