The best part of working in dev tools? Hearing directly from the people who use them. Over the past several months, we here at Whole Tomato have had the privilege of speaking with C++ professionals across many industries: gaming, fintech, agtech, manufacturing, and beyond.
From those conversations, one thing is clear: despite the rise of new alternatives and lively debates about its future, C++ is and will remain a cornerstone across industries for years to come. We’re proud that Visual Assist has served the MSVS/C++ community for decades, and we sincerely hope to serve you for decades more.
Of course, the landscape is shifting. The gaming industry is facing significant headwinds following massive post-Covid growth and investment. Companies are still navigating how to integrate formerly nascent AI products that are rapidly becoming a mainstay for many coders. And debates about C++ safety continue to heat up.
From my perspective, this is why it’s so important that we remain connected to the community we serve. As our tech progresses, old problems become obsolete, and new problems arise. I’m proud of the work our team has done – and continues to do – to first listen to our customers, and, secondly, act thoughtfully to build solutions that solve them.
One focus that will never fade for us is user experience. Developers consistently tell us they expect tools that are polished, seamless, and smart…tools that don’t fight for attention when not warranted or beg for a prompt, but instead subtly offer productivity boosts at the right time, without breaking concentration.
That’s why our roadmap for the coming months specifically focuses on honing VA’s existing capabilities to deliver even more productivity. This starts with a modernization of our UI (stay tuned for our next update), better surfacing of and eventually something we’re very excited about: subtle, behind-the-scenes Ai features. In other words, not another bolted-on AI chatbot, but “under the hood” integrations that make the things you love about VA even better – something that over 70% of you responded favorably to in our recent community survey.
For example, can our parser coupled with AI quickly generate accurate unit tests? Can we leverage AI to identify memory safety issues, then use VA’s refactoring to address them? How can AI improve our renames, inspections, and navigation? These are the questions we’re asking. Of course it’s early, and there’s much work to be done, but we’re excited about the possibilities. And you should be too!
By the way, do you have thoughts? Send me a note – I’d love to hear what’s on your mind.
Ben Schwenk,
Whole Tomato general manager
