There is a lot of competition in the software market today. Whoever can quickly release quality software that meets customers’ needs can take a large part of the market. Therefore, there is a need for development tools that can speed up the process of writing code and ensure its quality control. Visual Studio Extensions are such tools.
In this article, we will explain why you should use C++ extensions and analyze the top 5 extensions that allow you to improve Visual Studio productivity.
Table of Contents
C++ and Visual Studio: How is One Incomplete without Another?
C++ is a popular programming language that is widely used to develop software for various industries. With C++, we can create applications for different operating systems, including Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux, and develop new programming languages, games, embedded systems, and more.
Visual Studio is a powerful IDE (integrated development environment) that is one of the most popular among C++ developers. It provides advanced features that allow them to significantly simplify and speed up the process of writing, debugging, and testing C++ code.
Also, Visual Studio makes it easy to install extensions using the Manage Extensions dialog. When this dialog opens, you can see the list of currently installed extensions. A list of available extensions you can find in the Visual Studio marketplace. Also, you can publish your own extension to the marketplace.
Visual Studio Extensions: How they help You Become a Pro?
There are a lot of extensions for Visual Studio. They provide additional functionality and convenient tools that allow you to simplify, speed up, and automate the process of writing code, resulting in increased Visual Studio productivity.
Since there is a large selection of Visual Studio extensions, it can be difficult for some to choose the best one. So, go through the list of the Top 5 Visual Studio Extensions.
Top 5 Visual Studio Extensions
We have selected the 5 best Visual Studio Extensions and analyzed their main functionalities, advantages, and disadvantages. Read and choose the extension that suits you better than others.
Visual Assist
Whole Tomato Visual Assist is a popular powerful extension that provides a lot of functions to significantly simplify and speed up the process of writing code.
The main Visual Assist features are:
- Quick navigation. You can easily navigate to any file, method, or symbol in your code.
- Easy formatting. Visual Assist is an opinionated code formatter that automatically formats code according to the given style.
- Refactoring allows you to simplify and improve code readability.
- Automatic code generation and auto-completion make the process of writing code much faster.
- Ability to use ready-made code snippets.
- Automatic error correction in code and comments when typing.
- Ability to search files using regular expressions and patterns.
- Ability to automatically diagnose and correct common programming errors.
In addition, Visual Assist supports the popular and powerful 3D graphics development tool Unreal Engine. This feature allows you to easily create high-performance 3D applications using C++ and Unreal Engine.
ReSharper C++
An alternative popular extension that allows you to increase development productivity is ReSharper. It provides quick search and navigation features, auto-completion and code generation, refactoring, and more.
The main disadvantages of ReSharper are its high cost and slow operation, which can cause windows to freeze.
Code Runner
Another good Visual Studio extension is Code Runner. It allows you to run the source code of the file, the selected code snippet, or a custom command and view the results of the invocation in the Output Window with no need for terminal interaction.
Code Compare
Code Compare is a handy tool for comparing and merging files and folders. It highlights the inserted, deleted, and modified text in rows in detail.
Code Compare allows you to collapse unchanged areas of text, edit files on the fly, and easily merge using the mouse pointer. However, Code Compare for Visual Studio IDE can operate slowly.
SonarLint
SonarLint is a static code analyzer that allows you to find bugs and code quality and security issues. It uses hundreds of rules to analyze the code. You can disable some rules on the fly or exclude some project files from the analysis.
Final Verdict
Using Visual Studio Extensions greatly simplifies the coding process and reduces the number of errors. In this article, we talked about the top 5 Visual Studio C++ extensions and analyzed their advantages and disadvantages. You should choose the right extension for your according to your budget and requirements.
Whole Tomato Visual Assist is a powerful Visual Studio extension that provides all the features you need to quickly code, navigate, search, and debug.
Install a free trial version of Visual Assist and make sure that it is the best C++ extension on the market.
FAQ
Is Visual Studio a good IDE for C++?
Visual Studio is one of the best IDEs for C++ as it provides powerful functionality for quickly writing code, debugging, and testing software.
Is Visual Studio 2022 good for C++?
Visual Studio 2022 has new features to improve development productivity and also includes robust support for C++ workloads, making it a good choice for C++ development.
How can I be more productive in VS Code?
In order to be more productive when developing using Visual Studio Code, you should use hotkeys, functionality for quick navigation, search and replace symbols. In addition, you can install code extensions that provide even more functionality to increase development productivity.
In which ways can you extend the functionality of Visual Studio?
Visual Studio has a large selection of extensions available in the Visual Studio marketplace that you can easily install to extend its functionality.