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I'm on dial-up so I don't yet have a chance to try VC++2008(express),
but VC2005+PlatformSDK+WTL is really all you need to create any app.
Beside, as a beginner I'd be lost without Intellisense
(it should be way faster, though).
Only thing that makes VC++ short of perfection is refactoring; there is a free add-in, but it should be out-of the box feature.
WTL IMHO is the best thing that ever happened to us (and it's free!).
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WTL has been our chosen framework for all C++ development since 2004 (in fact I'm in the middle of moving the last of our MFC dependent products over to it right now).
We've just moved from a VS2003 + WTL 7.5 combination to VS2008 + WTL 8 and it's working just fine for us (with Visual Assist spicing up the code editor and adding refactoring as always).
The only downside is the lack of up to date documentation, so you need developers who aren't afraid to read and understand the source.
In the sort of product we write, that's no bad thing though...if a dev can't understand framework source code, the poor soul is definitely not going to cope with the ideosyncrasies and downright strangitude they will encounter when they try to get to grips with the Visual Studio extensibility (VSX) interfaces. :evil grin:
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that the responses strongly favored the older versions, implying that the newer versions were junk?
oh, excuse me; the newer versions ARE getting suckier; it's enough to say 'Bring on WordStar 3.3' :-P
--
Jeff Dickey jdickey@seven-sigma.com
Seven Sigma Software and Services
Phone/SMS: +65 9360 1820
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Jeff Dickey wrote: the responses strongly favored the older versions, implying that the newer versions were junk?
It depends on what software you are developing. The folks that do C++ prefer the older versions because it was tailored to them better. The folks that do C# and VB.NET prefer the newer versions because a lot of work has gone in to making the IDE great for them, but haven't really done anything for the C++ guys.
I still rembember VS6.0 with fondness for when I did C++
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Colin Angus Mackay wrote: but haven't really done anything for the C++ guys
Sad, but true. 
I remember reading on the Visual C++ team blog that there are great things to come our way with VS 10 (umm... if I remember the edition right) 
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. - Cicero
.·´¯`·->Rajesh<-·´¯`·.
Codeproject.com: Visual C++ MVP
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Colin Angus Mackay wrote: I still rembember VS6.0 with fondness for when I did C++
True, but that compiler was probably one of the worst ever.
I like the 2005 IDE and the Visual Assist plug-in for intellisence
codito ergo sum
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BadKarma wrote: True, but that compiler was probably one of the worst ever.
Not really. When it was released (early 1998?) it was one of the best compilers on the market. The problem is that others were catching up very quickly, and MS did not release a new compiler until 2002.
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Ok, maybe I'm a little biased, because I tended to use templates and stl a lot.
But hey, I've used it 'till the 2005 came around.
And MS is indeed to slow on there c++ compiler releases. I'm wondering what they will do with TR1 & C++0x. It doesn't ship with Ocras. Hopefully there will be a SP for the C++ compiler.
codito ergo sum
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<blockquote class="FQ"><div class="FQA">BadKarma wrote:</div>But hey, I've used it 'till the 2005 came around.</blockquote>
Should've switched to VS 2003  VC 7.1 was already an excellent compiler.
BadKarma wrote: I'm wondering what they will do with TR1 & C++0x.
Apparently, TR1 is already here[^]
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Thx for the information
codito ergo sum
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It wouldn't be so bad if Microsoft would keep trying to string us along. Every version since VC6 it's been "We're really enhancing IDE support for C++ development in the next major release of the IDE."
Sometime, the $20 bill on the dresser just doesn't cover it anymore.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Colin Angus Mackay wrote: It depends on what software you are developing.
Yes, MS is forcing their choice of IDE upon those that develop for Windows CE.
When CE was the lonely child, the IDE was specific to Windows CE.
Then they forced VS upon us, couldn't keep up (or marketing failed) and they retreated back to CE specific tools.
Now, if you want to work on the latest Mobile versions of CE, you need VS2008.
We get what we need, plus all the bloat.
Don'tcha love marketing?
Gary
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I agree 100%.
I still have a copy of VS6.0 that I keep for posterity.
Mike
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Jeff Dickey wrote: the responses strongly favored the older versions
Actually, I see it as a logical progression. New versions come into the fold starting at the bottom because they're new -- not everyone is using them yet and they have yet to go through the product lifecycle of fixing new product issues (yes, bugs).
A new version starts off low in the ranks and climbs up in popularity as more people use it and they release updates to fix the bugs.
I've installed VS 2008 on one of my development workstations. I still use VS 2005 primarily because one machine needs more memory (it's barely able to hold on as it is), and the other is in need of an OS rebuild at which time I will upgrade it to VS 2008. Once that happens and I do the work to address a couple of other minor issues that bother me, I'll be using VS 2008 primarily - partly because it's a little nicer, and partly because I fee obligated to stay current. The latter is important for reasons of personal marketing.
Aside from that, I like the extra little features I've noticed so far. It's not a huge improvement, but it does make programming a little faster/easier.
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Jeff Dickey wrote: that the responses strongly favored the older versions
It depends what you count as older version. As you can see VS2008 and VS2005 together are very close to 65%. And I'm unsure about those who voted VS2003, wheather they want to use that version or they have to use it.
Mostly, when you see programmers, they aren't doing anything. One of the attractive things about programmers is that you cannot tell whether or not they are working simply by looking at them. Very often they're sitting there seemingly drinking coffee and gossiping, or just staring into space. What the programmer is trying to do is get a handle on all the individual and unrelated ideas that are scampering around in his head. (Charles M Strauss)
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They're all junk. Nostalgia is such a debilitating illness...
But who is the king of all of these folks?
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Yeah, bring back WordStar 3.3. Back in 84/85, that was my word processor and my text editor.
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I find the Intellisense "improvements" of VS2005 a bit over-zealous, and it doesn't seem as responsive as VS.NET 2003 even on a powerful PC. So the latter just seems a bit better, despite lacking some great features of 2005.
However 2008 will likely become my new favourite...
"For fifty bucks I'd put my face in their soup and blow." - George Costanza
CP article: SmartPager - a Flickr-style pager control with go-to-page popup layer.
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As someone who tries to maintain a rock-stable automated build environment across many compiler versions, I must say that the "customer harassment" misfeatures in newer MS IDEs have been mounting starting at VS 98 (Visual C/C++ 6.0):
1. Bad coexistence with other compiler versions on the same machine (This is critical in an automated build system where historic product versions need to have their service packs built with the original tools used for their gold release).
2. Refusal to run without scattering junk all over the global Windows registry, VC 5.0 was the last version that could be truly XCOPY-installed and run with no prerequisites.
3. Insistence on installing "prerequisites" that affect the "global" behaviour of the computer (Like the .NET framework, or the "Office" files bundled in recent MSDN viewers).
4. Insisting on installing or storing many files on the C:\ or system drive, even if the compiler is ostensibly being installed on a different disk. The worst offender is the new documentation viewer introduced in VS.NET.
5. Increasingly slow technology used for the basic IDE User Interface (To someone who edits code 8+ hours a day, a slowdown of each keystroke by 500ms adds up to very bad usability).
6. Non-modular install: Starting somewhere in the ".NET" studio series, the ability of the user to install only desired parts of the suite has been reduced to a joke. Example: In 2005 users cannot install the CE targeted compiler and libraries without also installing the remote device access tools and graphical device emulators. Similar for many other parts of the IDE.
7. Forced takeover of other parts of the computer: When installing VS 2005 on a machine which also runs IIS and/or SQL server, those servers are forcibly reconfigured from production quality servers to debug slaves unsuitable for production use.
8. Overzealous dropping of platform support: Just because Microsoft PSS drops active support for a platform version (such as NT 3.1 or Windows 2000), this does not justify cutting the legs out from under developers who still want to support users of such older systems. However in recent years, the VS team has been very swift to make changes that prevent VS (or worse: VS created programs) from running on "deprecated" platforms.
9. Destructive VS service packs: Each of the following VS service packs contained incompatible runtime or build time changes which guaranteed that developers would loose out if they upgraded or not: VS98Gold (incompatible version of the cross-version runtime redistributables), VS98SP6 (Suddenly switched to use VS2003 runtime for some tasks), VS2005SP1 (introduced a version of the runtime redistributables which cannot share a process (such as Internet Explorer or IIS) with the VS2005Gold version, due to abuse of the manifest system).
10. Almost industrial espionage: Starting with VS2003, various tool, IDE and viewer features routinely send information to Microsoft about what every single developer does on a day by day basis. While rarely including source code, uploads do include all the search terms in the documentation viewer (ostensibly to present updated online content), automatic "crash" feedback when compilers linkers etc. fails (Those crash dumps just have to contain snippets of the source code being processed, and the "privacy policy" grants MS permission to use the data for development!)
Personally, I currently use the oldest VS IDE around: MS PWB 1.0, ca. 1990 with the 1992 updated API help and much more recent MS C compilers (currently at version 14.x, aka VS2005 Team Edition). For the occasional ATL/MFC task, I fire up VS98, because it doesn't refuse to run without its MSI registry keys).
<div class="ForumSig">This message is hasty and is not to be taken as serious, professional or legally binding.
I work with low level C/C++ in user and kernel mode, but also dabble in other areas.</div>
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But seriously...
Coexistence? These tools make the Borg look like touchy-feely New Age pop psychologists!
Sh!tt!ng all over the entire system? Why should we care? We're not supposed to be running any non-Microsoft stuff, and they'll make bloody well sure we have to WORK for it if we want to...
(and on, and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, ad ware)
I have a client who just got talked into a completely automated build/SCM environment; developers throw things over the wall by checking in files, which get tagged, build process gets fired up, a successful build triggers automated testing, reports get emailed to the various stakeholders, you know the drill. They're trying to figure out how to transition off VS98's command-line tools (developers can use the VS98 IDE or any third-party editor they want). They've got pilot copies of VS 2005, and they're Not Happy, for just the sort of reasons you lay out (very well, I might add). They do basic black-box development; customers buy boxes that run XP (another soon-to-be-headache), hook them up to their LAN, and do everything over the network via a set of MFC-based client programs. If this all sounds terribly early-90s, there's a reason for that; the system in one form or another has been around that long.
They've been coasting along in a Microsoft world for a long time, now that world "is changing in ways that don't seem to really help", as the CTO has been saying lately. They've stayed with MS because their clients are "quite conservative" and because their people know the toolchain they've been using... but now they're starting to wonder if life wouldn't be better Somewhere Else.
I have a really hard time believing that these guys are at all unique, or even terribly atypical. If SteveB really thinks the way to maintain world domination is "developers, developers, developers", then he'd better start thinking real hard about how to keep selling products and services to folks who basically can't change hardware platforms as often as he changes his shorts. Given an apparent tradeoff between a knowable, working platform and the Latest And Greatest SHIny new Thing, the former *always* wins (these guys haven't had a serious or severe defect in their code on a production (24/7/365) system in almost *10 years*). But if a vendor does something stupid like cancel their entire technical world in an attempt to get them to crap buckets of cash to the same vendor to do the exact same business activity...then things start getting "interesting".
This is gonna get greasy...
--
Jeff Dickey jdickey@seven-sigma.com
Seven Sigma Software and Services
Phone/SMS: +65 9360 1820
FOAF: http://www.seven-sigma.com/foaf.rdf
Yahoo! IM: jeff_dickey
ICQ: 8053918
Tencent QQ: 30302349
-- If you can't reach me by any of these, one of us may be permanently offline --
I use and recommend GNU Privacy Guard to authenticate and secure email messages!
Public key: Download from public servers - Key ID EBCCBD6C
Fingerprint: Fingerprint: EC0A A53B 3FF3 043B 9C11 7006 55A6
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Well for starters Microsoft vs. Microsoft coexistence would be nice...
As for the VS98 command line tools: Except for the option to launch the VS98 IDE in a command line mode to autobuild projects, most of the other command line tools are still there in VS2005, provided you ignore the "advice" given in the documentation. They even have new features and bugfixes in them
(like x64 support, code validation options etc.). And unlike the VS2005 IDE, the VS2005 traditional
command line tools can be run in an XCOPY-install (with a few weeks of hard work), thus avoiding
running the VS2005 installer on the rock-stable automated build server.
Just too bad the VS2003/2005 IDE can no longer produce a traditional Makefile itself, but then the
VS98 generated ones were not exactly following best practice anyway.
And yes, I "know the drill", having actually built and maintained (most of) such as system, with full
support for mixing Microsoft C compilers version 6.0 (16 bit) to 14.0 (64 bit) inclusive. And it is 95% Microsoft technology with a few additional tools from elsewhere (such as a zip file packer).
This message is hasty and is not to be taken as serious, professional or legally binding.
I work with low level C/C++ in user and kernel mode, but also dabble in other areas.
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CListCtrl
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds, and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides, and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all - he's walking on them. --Leonard Louis Levinson
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Vasudevan Deepak K wrote: CListCtrl
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. - Cicero
.·´¯`·->Rajesh<-·´¯`·.
Codeproject.com: Visual C++ MVP
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The legendary figure of every survey right?
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds, and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides, and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all - he's walking on them. --Leonard Louis Levinson
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