A few weeks ago I gave another talk at my local C++ user group. We discussed recent “goodies” from C++ and tools that can increase productivity.
Intro In my post for the “C++ summary at the end of 2017” I mentioned that we could see a considerable improvement in the area of tooling for the language.
Do you write code 100% of your job time?
I’m guessing the answer is no. Ignoring the whole management part, meetings, coffee, youtube, cats, etc, even if you’re sitting at your keyboard you’re not typing all the time. So what else are you doing?
The short answer: you’re probably figuring out what to write and where to add new features (and what to fix)… so you’re mostly reading and trying to understand the code.
With around 230 positive reviews (85% of five stars) (4.7 on the average), John Sonmez made a huge splash when he published his first book “Soft Skills”. 2.5 years later we get another book. Can the new book continue his success?
Can it move you further along with your?
How does your typical coding session in Visual Studio look like?
What’s the first thing you do when you’re about to start coding?
Yes… let’s check Gmail, Youtube, Reddit, etc… :)
OK, please be more professional!
So, let’s assume my Visual Studio (2013, 2015 or 2017) is already started. What to do next?
As you might already know, I work remotely. That’s why I try to follow and read guidelines/articles that relate to that style of working. Recently, I got very curious when I saw a new book called “*Async Remote*” from the Arkency team. Let’s see what it offers.
Warning: the book is not only about remote!
Programming is not only typing the code and happily see how smoothly it runs. Often it doesn’t run in a way we imagine! Thus, it’s crucial to debug apps effectively. And, it appears that the debugging is an art on its own! Here’s my list of tips that hopefully could help in debugging native code.
Some time ago an intriguing article appeared on reddit: “Do Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently?”. The author discussed if expert programmers use google more often than novice coders. He mentioned than using google is actually a good thing. It helps to find best solutions, validate ideas, speed the development. Google nowadays seems to be a crucial part of any developer toolbox.
Visual Studio is my main development environment. I’ve been using this tool probably since version 2003…2005. I am really happy that VS is getting more and more powerful these days and you can also use it on multiple-platforms (through VS Code, for web or cloud apps). What’s even better - it’s free for personal use or if you’re a small company (Community Version)!
Since the beginning of January I’ve had a chance to play with a nice tool called Deleaker. Its main role, as can be easily decoded, is to find leaks in your native applications. I often had problems creating and maintaining custom code that tracks leaks, so Deleaker seems to be a huge relief in those situations.
You’ve just started a new job and landed in front of a huge code base. Great! What a challenge! It would be nice to quickly get a general understanding of your project and be able to comfortably move around in the code. How do you do it?
In the article you can find my list of three set of tools from Visual Assist that might help with this problem.