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I have to agree with you. I was there coding in DOS. To tell you the truth the
Win SDK has served me very well. People using MFC end up geting stuck trying to code
interfaces. The MFC wrapper cant solve or complete difficult tasks that require
thinking out of the box. You have to go back to the SDK.
I fell sorry for the companies stuck with a crew that only has MFC or VB people.
The limitations are great.
.NET so far has been NO picnic. Bugs like writting back to big files and other
stumbling blocks. Many things we needed to do reuired a resolution in JavaScript.
HUH? What kind of language requires another language?
Oh yeah the browser and MS does that.
What I find disturbing is if you live in the commerical development world
with many browsers how do you use .NET?
DHTML, XML and spans are not supported on many browsers.
Many people use FireFox or Macs, or IE 4 or 3.
That said I will look at the new stuff. Always do.
I think managed code is a great way to SLOW down your application and mess up any
COM you have developed. You can also find yourself
back in the early 90's when we had DLL's deplyment issues.
It took a rocket scientist to make some installs.
Well at least all the new stuff keeps me working and other programmers asking,
How did you do that? 
Bob
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I haven't seen it yet , and I think that Visual Studio 6.0 perhaps is good enough! Do you ?
You do the door,I do the window.
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Nope. The automation interface in VC6 is a joke, its ClassView can't handle large projects without crashing, and the STL that ships with it is almost unuseable.
Once you get used to the new IDE, VS2003 is far, far more productive - as was VC4 by comparison with VC1.52 (I saw the same complaints over that too).
Anna ![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
Riverblade Ltd - Software Consultancy Services
Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter
"Be yourself - not what others think you should be"
- Marcia Graesch
"Anna's just a sexy-looking lesbian tart"
- A friend, trying to wind me up. It didn't work.
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As with many other prods of MS, VS2005 is hopelessly overloaded with colorful uselessness. Working (editor) area in the new IDE shrinks down to a unmanageable point (isn't programming about editing source code ... or did I got this wrong?). Even on a 1920x1200 there is not much left. The IDE has changed quite a bit from VC6 - unfortunately not to the better. And it is buggy though. I was required to switch to VS2005 and I'm now (I wouldn't say 'far') less productive. And this is not because I want to be - but becasue of the tools given. Btw, it is far slower and resource-hungry, even on really fast machines.
On the pro-side, I would say the compiler came closer to C++ standards (e.g. templates). We develop platform independent code - that helps a lot.
Enrico
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but... no dollar for it this year, probably next year too 
Norman Fung
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Ha ha,u see ,everyone will meet it anytime in the earth. Like me ,I am sitting in the morning in the north of the earth,and feeling hungry while facing the PC.
You do the door,I do the window.
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With the 64-Bit .NET development our test of the Beta look very good. So when it comes out we want to upgrade just for the 64 Bit .NET development
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i've tried the betas for all of the post VS6 versions and just can't handle the much fussier interface.
does anyone know of ways to reduce the visual clutter so that visually its more like VS6? including turning off the gradient toolbar backgrounds.
.dan.g.
AbstractSpoon Software
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I wonder what the price of the U/G from 2003 to 2005 is going to be, $549.00? not sure about that one!!!
Nino
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If you only need the Professional version, that's been $100 for many years. I picked up VS 2000 Pro and VS 2003 Pro for $100 each.
For all the criticisms you can level against MS, they do make it very easy to acquire their development tools... often they are free. This is a very good thing, even if they are doing it to increase mind share (hey, they're a business!)
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none of the choices correspond for me...
i'd like to test it first, them upgrade if i'm satisfied, otherwise, i'd stay to my good old VS .NET 2003 for .NET applications, VS6 otherwise.
TOXCCT >>> GEII power
[toxcct][VisualCalc]
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While there are many good reasons to stick with what you are using, not having 2005 means that you are getting left behind. MS continuously moves on ( if only for a new look like Office)
If you stand still you will eventually be behind the pack.
You don't have to like it or agree with what they are doing.
Just put your money on the table and hold your breath.
.nuetter
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I don't follow this at all. You're saying that if we are comfortable and productive with tools from a few years ago, we're actually falling behind?
And that we should spend money on tools that don't meet our needs.. just so we can keep up with the pack?
MS's new development tools (C#, "managed" code, etc.) are veering away from industry standard practices. No need to follow them off the cliff.
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Jim A. Johnson wrote:
MS's new development tools (C#, "managed" code, etc.) are veering away from industry standard practices
huh? 
Norman Fung
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That's funny, I could swear that I've been writing fully-functional C++ code all day long... [hits Alt+Tab] Yep, there's VC6 right where I left it... Whew, good, it wasn't just a hallucination.
Someone has drunk too much of the MS Marketing Kool-Aid™
--Mike--
Visual C++ MVP 
LINKS~! Ericahist | 1ClickPicGrabber | CP SearchBar v2.0.2 | C++ Forum FAQ
Strange things are afoot at the U+004B U+20DD
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Running under Win 95 ?
.nuetter
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that's a little different i think (without taking you too seriously), anything less than nt4 is not stable enough to be productive and nt4 doesn't have a (wide) user base so that only leaves 2k and xp.
.dan.g.
AbstractSpoon Software
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No kidding. Every time MS comes out with new development tools, you face a new learning curve of dealing with their new byzantine, cumbersome, and bloated technologies rather than solving problems.
Me? I'd rather get work done.
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ConceptJunkie wrote:
Me? I'd rather get work done.
And then one day you get laid off from your job and find your skillset 3-5 years behind everyone elses.
It never ceases to amaze me how many "professional" programmers don't get the concept of keeping your skills up to date. So what if your current job doesn't need it? You don't want to be trying to upgrade your skillset when you need to find a job.
--
Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
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You have a very valid point, but tell my clients. Actually, I'd like to upgrade, and take advantage of some of the new functionality being offers but every client I've worked for uses Visual Studio 6 and does not want to change.
With respect to keeping skills up to date, there are two kinds of skills. First is the ability to think logically, plan, organize and make things happen. Second is the ability to know what dead chicken to wave around to get the latest Microsoft fad technology to do tricks. And yes, it's a fad. I'm not saying .NET and C#, etc, are not good tools, just that they ultimately don't have a significant benefits over older technologies coupled with good design and implementation. Lacking garbage collection never hurt me, and, no, I don't have problems with memory leaks, etc. The latest development paradigm (patterns, etc), are, in my experience, often simply formal names for ways to work I have figured out myself or have learned from others in the past. And some ideas (e.g., template metaprogramming) are just too evil to consider. They seem to exist solely so people can demonstrate how clever they are.
The first skill above will serve you indefinitely. The second will last a couple years at best. As someone with almost 20 years software development, having the first skill has never failed me, while not having the second is a temporary disadvantage at worst. While most employees these days don't seem to recognize the advantages of having a working brain, there are still plenty out there who do, usually among the startups, where I am most comfortable because the focus (again) is getting work done, not fueling the bureaucracy or stroking clueless upper management egos.
With respect to .NET, the only benefit that makes it worth using, in my opinion, is for integration of existing disparate systems. Beyond that, it seems to me it's just another bloated, labyrinthine Microsoft library that forces you to wrestle with it rather than get work done (embrace and extend has moved to C++). In non-trivial cases with MS development libraries (and understand, I'm talking about writing new software, not integrating or reusing existing stuff over with you do not have control), a combination of writing things yourself and taking advantage of the wealth of existing code from the OSS community will beat Microsoft for efficiency, flexibility and power every time.
Having said that, I enjoy using and developing for Windows, but in general, I find using MS libraries (DirectShow is my latest nightmare) to be a counterproductive and frustrating experience.
So don't worry about me. I successfully got a job programming in C without C experience in 1987 because I was able to demonstrate the ability to think logically and learn quickly. I was able to get a job in 1993 programming C++ with no prior experience for the same reason. Later I got a job using Visual C++ with no prior experience (I'd use Borland C++ for many years). In each case, my learning curve was sharp (the popular idiom is backwards), and I fit in easily.
Call me old-fashioned, maybe hopelessly so, but my priniciple that being reasonably well-rounded and informed, intelligent and logical are the best tools for any job. So does haing smart friends. 
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Ahh.. A control freak. I understand your position. If you didn't write it, it's not efficient enough or secure enough or just plain enough. That is a valid point in some ways, but you can't do that everywhere.
When you work in teams, you have to look out for the lowest common denominator. You can't write code that nobody else can maintain because they don't understand how it works. This usually means living within the frameworks of what the majority of the team knows. 10 years ago, using templates was impossible because nobody else understood them and they would just rewrite your wonderful code to something they could understand, and probably break everything in the process and then complain about how poor YOUR code is.
I understand exactly what you mean when you say that using your brain is more important than experience with a specific technology, but it's getting harder and harder to convince potential employers of that.
Further, there is a lot of value in knowing the "quirks" of given toolset. Learning to use the tool and having a lot of experience with using that tool are two very different things. As an example, I once walked into a shop that was having problems with a very strange assert showing up that they couldn't trace. I knew exactly what it was and fixed it within 30 seconds... something they had been trying to fix for 3 months. I know, because I ran into it several times before. In this case, it was using afxdump inside an MFC extension DLL (this was back in 16 bit MFC, that bug has been fixed for a long time).
There's value in both sides of the coin. Knowing older tools is great, but eventually the new tools become "the old tools" and suddenly you're faced with a knowledge and experience deficit that is often hard to make up for... no matter how smart you are.
That's why it's important to keep your skills current. Not so that you can pad your resume, but so that when you NEED those skills, you have them.
--
Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
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Yes, I would say I'm a control freak, having worked alone for a significant part of my career hasn't hurt that attitude. But rather than being hard to understand, I find my code much easier to understand, and far more consistent than anything Microsoft has ever and could ever come up with. When you have a thousand people working on something, the implementation is almost always a big inconsistent and confusing mess. Yes, if everyone speaks Pig Latin, they willl certainly understand Pig Latin better, but that doesn't make it a good means of communication. And yes, I'm the kind of guy who pisses off management by making snap judgements that are completely contrary to their estimation... and being right. That's why I'm happy I'm working for someone well-versed in software development who has a good grasp of what's possible and what's necessary and will listen to my opinions. If he disagrees with me, he's got a really good reason for it, and I can respect that... as opposed to other bosses who have literally said, "Yes, this is stupid, wasteful and prone to errors, but that's the way we do things. Period."
Furthermore, when someone comes to me with a bug that has to be fixed, I can because it's my code rather than having to work around the bugs in, say, MFC. I've wasted many hours trying to fix bugs in code I could not change (like a similar problem I had years ago with MFC... the data pointer for any mpty CString would point to a static location, and it would crash if you tried to access an empty string in a DLL where it wasn't created. This was stupid beyond belief, and you couldn't fix it without changing the code because the necessary functions weren't virtual. After experiencing this and many other problems you would never dream could exist, the group I was in decided to throw portability out the window in favor of getting things done. We fixed MFC. A short-sighted idea, certainly, but a great way to stop fighting the tools and get things done.
Also, with respect to templates, I shy away from them for the exact reason you state. STL is hideously unfriendly and unreadable in my experience. Furthermore, it throws OO completely over the side, although the tradeoff is the ever-important efficiency and even more important code-reuse. Things are a lot better now that templates are standardized, but I think templates are also abused a lot and I think they suffer from the "when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" syndrome. Anyone who thinks template metaprogramming should be anything more than a parlor trick should have their heads examined.
The biggest flaw in C++ (a deeply flawed language despite the fact that I do love using it) is that people felt the need to create templates. I think they're a real kludge, but they do fill a huge gap in the language, increasing efficiency and code reuse, if at the expense of readability. Oh well, imperfect solutions in an imperfect world.
Anyhow, I think you raise some very cogent points. It's a fine line between doing what's comfortable, and effective, and avoiding passing fads and planning ahead for when things change.
Rick Gutleber, cynical old crank in training
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Michael Dunn wrote:
I could swear that I've been writing fully-functional C++ code all day long... [hits Alt+Tab] Yep, there's VC6 right where I left it... Whew, good, it wasn't just a hallucination.
Someone has drunk too much of the MS Marketing Kool-Aid™
You get my five for the day! 
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depends on what you are doing.
If you are an Mini-ISV or something like this it is more importat to make good programs (or make your program better) than stick to the latest trends. (at least this is the philosophy of Joel Spolsky (sorry if i spelt his name wrong) www.joelonsoftware.com[^]
All the label says is that this stuff contains chemicals "... known to the State of California to cause cancer in rats and low-income test subjects."
Roger Wright
http://www.codeproject.com/lounge.asp?select=965687&exp=5&fr=1#xx965687xx
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As an independant developer I have found that I can produce better code, faster using c# than C++.
My investment in VS2003 and C# has paid off .
Productivity and language improvements in .NET 2 and the new VS200x will make my life easier. (I hope!) I don't think my ROI on 200x will be as much as in the VS2003 case.
M Dunn is right , you can produce great s/w with VS6 , why wouldn't you be able to? Will the new safe libs for VC++ make his software better? Probably.
My software is used in an environment that I control and not in a large corprate roll-out so any new framework bugs etc are fairly easily 'compensated' for.
I must admit , I love change and the whole learning proccess. If MS had a fan club, I would be in it.
Arrgghhh $549 . I hereby retract all above comments.
.nuetter
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