{"id":2617,"date":"2022-08-23T17:01:46","date_gmt":"2022-08-23T21:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.wholetomato.com\/?p=2617"},"modified":"2023-11-21T03:48:57","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T07:48:57","slug":"why-its-necessary-to-invest-in-visual-studio-extensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wholetomato.com\/blog\/why-its-necessary-to-invest-in-visual-studio-extensions\/","title":{"rendered":"Why It’s Necessary to Invest in Visual Studio Extensions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Extensions are tools meant to make a developer’s life easier. But as with any tool, choosing the best one to invest in requires a bit of probing.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re in the market for your or your team\u2019s SaaS fix, you\u2019re in luck. This article will make your research a bit easier. In this blog, we discuss the value of one of the most powerful productivity extensions<\/a> in Visual Studio and why plugins in general are still necessary in 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n

What does Visual Assist do?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Visual Assist is a Visual Studio productivity<\/a> plugin that is designed to help write C\/C++ and C# code faster and easier.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Visual<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

VA does this by improving or adding built-in tools and features in Visual Studio with an efficient and a more powerful alternative. These benefits may manifest as more responsive menus, better code analysis tools, or even bespoke shortcuts that streamline complex processes into a single click.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other articles can give a more complete explanation of <\/span>what Visual Assist does<\/span><\/a>, but in a nutshell, VA is a tool extension that improves a developer\u2019s productivity.<\/span><\/p>\n

How much is a developer’s time worth?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Not everyone realizes that time is the most expensive currency we exhaust every day. It is an indispensable and irreplaceable resource\u2014and doubly so in the world of developers and programmers!<\/span><\/p>\n

the average day for a developer costs a whopping $420…<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Did you know that the <\/span>average day for a developer<\/span><\/a> costs a whopping $420? That’s around $3,000 weekly. That is why it is in the best interest of businesses and teams that the majority of a developer\u2019s eight-hour workday is focused on actual <\/span>programming. <\/span><\/i>\"c++<\/a>However, this also means that developers are getting pressured with shorter development cycles. A 2020 <\/span>research<\/span><\/a>\u00a0found that codebases are increasingly getting larger, and pressure to deliver projects faster has increased in the past 10 years. And as larger and more complex codebases became the norm, demand for <\/span>tools to support C++ developers<\/span><\/a> has also ballooned.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

From Sourcegraph: The Emergence of Big Code Survey<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Is a Visual Studio code assistant the solution?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Going back to the main question, why is investing in Visual Studio extensions necessary? VS has made leaps and bounds in usability, efficiency, and support but the advantages are reduced due to increasing project requirements and time pressure.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example,\u00a0 there are still areas that lack extensive support and functionality. Game development projects, for instance, have resource-intensive tasks<\/a> and unfamiliar syntax causing unintended behavior in the IDE.\u00a0<\/span>This unsupported niche is filled by plugins and is also why <\/span>professionals need extensions to perform better.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The core of development work is problem solving\u2014not typing, navigating, or fixing syntax errors. They are part of the work, but they should not take more time than necessary.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Visual Studio is a tool. Visual Assist is an enhancement. They are meant to simplify work and increase productivity. With increasing workloads and expectations, developers need to have more and better tools to produce quality work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dividing a developer\u2019s attention into other tasks such as debugging small errors, shuffling through blocks of code, and waiting for builds to compile can stunt productivity\u2014resulting in slower project turnaround time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some users may rely on native tooling, but as long as Microsoft cannot support every possible use case and application of Visual Studio, having performant plugins will still be a necessity for C\/C++ developers. Besides, $129 for Visual Assist is a relatively low opportunity cost to get massive gains in productivity\u2014 making it an investment that pays for itself<\/a> in as fast as two weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

The advantages of having Visual Assist<\/h2>\n

For those who transitioned to VS 2022, the <\/span>shift to a 64-bit architecture<\/span><\/a> has certainly fixed a few of the issues that long plagued the IDE. But a few problems persist to this day, such as:<\/span><\/p>\n