Inside Visual Studio 2008

mlimber writes "Dr Dobb's Journal has a peek at what is new in Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008. Most of the features discussed in the article are related to .NET, web development, and the IDE itself. However, Herb Sutter, Microsoft software architect and chair of the ISO C++ Standards committee, blogged about some developments on the C++ front. This includes a significantly enhanced MFC for GUI building, and the inclusion of TR1 (library extensions published by the C++ standards committee, most of which have also been incorporated into the next C++ standard)."

twitter?

[stoolpigeon]

how can he not have been here yet? i'm not waiting forever.

CL

[Ojuice]

Yes, but where's the Lisp module? :(

Re:CL

[plague3106]

Why, righ here [lsharp.org], of course.

Kudos to the Visual Studio Team

[RuBLed]

All I could say is that the best tool for windows development just got better. The new feature that could impact my work most is LINQ. I dunno but the VS Team of M$ had been doing some good things...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately for me, they removed the visual XML schema designer which was
nice to get a quick overview of schema (for editing, nobody sane would anything except XML mode).

Re:

[tieTYT]

I never used VS XML schema designer, but I really like this product: http://www.liquid-technologies.com/Download.aspx [liquid-technologies.com] I don't think it's open source but at least it's free.

LINQ is over-hyped

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Just for the record, I think LINQ is a neat idea, and as a general principle I'm all in favour of strong abstractions and useful syntactic sugar in programming languages if these make code easier to understand and quicker to develop.

However, I'm worried by a lot of the hype about LINQ that's been flying around in recent months. Earlier this week, I found a code sample in a blog post showing how to use LINQ to find all the items less than 10 in a list. It went something like this:

from n in mylist
where (n => n < 10)
select (n => n)

For reference, here's the equivalent expression in Haskell:

filter (<10) mylist

That's obviously a much more elegant representation of the idea, and while it's not as generic, you also have things like map and reduce available, and a lot more if you need it.

If you don't like the functional syntax, Python's list comprehensions also provide a bit of flexibility, with less redundant clutter than the LINQ:

[n for n in mylist if n < 10]

Even using the standard library algorithms in C++98 — where, let's face it, the use of iterators and of algorithms with predicates is pretty unwieldy in the absence of good syntactic sugar — the code is about the same size as the LINQ version:

find_if(mylist.begin(), mylist.end(), bind2nd(less<int>(), 10))

This isn't intended to be a criticism of LINQ, because LINQ can do far more than just a simple filter operation on a single list. Rather, I am criticising those who over-hype a new technology as if it is the One True Way to solve all remotely related programming problems, and then apply a powerful, generic approach to a simple problem giving a ludicrously over-engineered result. See also: design patterns, template metaprogramming in C++, dynamically typed languages and web frameworks, monads for trivial I/O in Haskell, etc. Like all these other things, LINQ has a lot of potential to improve development when used in the right context, but I fear it will be overused just because it's new and heavily hyped.

Re:

[shutdown -p now]

LINQ is also System.Linq. Using the latter, your example would be: mylist.Where(x => x 10)

Re:

[JamesNK]

from n in mylist
where (n => n < 10)
select (n => n)

That is just poor code. A more elegant example using LINQ would be:

mylist.Where(n => n < 10)

I have been using LINQ for the past couple of months and have found it fantastic.

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That is just poor code.

Indeed it is. As I said, my problem is not with LINQ itself, but with the people who are over-hyping it (and, yes, giving poor examples along the way).

Re:

[shutdown -p now]

It is unfortunate that LINQ to SQL only works with Microsoft SQL Server at the moment...

Re:

[coryking]

Yet.

The MySQL guys are like 75% of the way there (they already have pretty good .NET / Visual Studio integration). It is my beloved PostgreSQL that really lacks good Visual Studio (and by proxy, LINQ) integration. There is some dude who is pushing out a Linq provider for MySQL, Postgres and Oracle [code2code.net]. Looks like there has been an update just a couple days ago even.

I dont blame anybody for why it is taking so long. I tried to get get my hands wet in the Linq provider stuff, and man is it tedious!

C99 yet?

[hpa]

Do they actually have C99 support yet?

Re:

[ireallylovelinux]

Uh, GCC doesn't even support C99 why would you expect MS to be?
http://gcc.gnu.org/c99status.html [gnu.org]

Re:

[ad0gg]

Better question is: Do people still code in c?

Re:C99 yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kernel developers, system programmers and embedded developers do a lot of C, so does a lot of scientists who write in C instead of Fortran (as the restrict keyword in C99 solves the main issues with writing numerical code in C). Language runtimes tend to be written in C as well (e.g. the standard python distribution). So yes, people still write in C. Some developers (application developers for example), should naturally not write in pure C for most part (there are obviously some performance critical parts that are suitable for C).

Re:

[shutdown -p now]

MS guys say that their (paying) customers don't ask for the whole of C99, so they won't bother. Some specifically requested features such as "restrict" may be implemented individually, though.

Thanks for asking

[Tony]

Fuck, yes.

C++ sucks. It's a half-assed attempt at an object-oriented language, combining the easy memory model of C with the simple OO model of Simula. I used to think the only good thing about C++ was templates. Then I figured out that templates suck, too, because they're damned near impossible to debug, for most non-trivial bugs.

I fuckin' *hate* C++. I'd much rather have to code straight C while being punched repeatedly by a baboon.

Objective-C is much less ugly. But then, so is LISP. (Actually, LISP is a damned good language. It's just not *pretty*, in a strictly aesthetic sense.)

So, to not be snide, there are *many* people who still code in C. There are many objective reasons to avoid C++. (This *was* about C++, wasn't it?)

Re:

[jacquesm]

somebody with mod points please mod parent very far up, thank you.

Re:Thanks for asking

[iangoldby]

[C++ is] a half-assed attempt at an object-oriented language, combining the easy memory model of C with ...

Took me a moment to realise you were being sarcastic.

Seriously though, what's so difficult about the memory management model of C? I find it hard to think of anything much simpler. The great thing about C (IMHO) is that if you didn't write it, it won't happen.

Re:

[frodo from middle ea]

Try arguing that with a Java Programmer.

Re:

[hal2814]

"Seriously though, what's so difficult about the memory management model of C? I find it hard to think of anything much simpler."

Well, dynamic memory management isn't even part of the language. It has to be handled by outside function calls malloc() and free(). Other than that, it's pretty easy.

Re:

[plague3106]

Seriously though, what's so difficult about the memory management model of C? I find it hard to think of anything much simpler. The great thing about C (IMHO) is that if you didn't write it, it won't happen.

Exactly. Don't write that statement to free memory, and you have a memory leak. Its an important line that needs to be everywhere, so why not have a tool that does it for you, ensuring you CANNOT forget it? That's one less kind of bug I need to hunt down, and I get my work done quicker.

Re:

[fbjon]

Don't static code analysis tools detect most of those? I haven't used such for C, so I don't know.

Re:

[plague3106]

Possibly, but if its baked into the language or framework, that's one less thing static tools need to worry about, and the developers building the analysis toos can put more effort into finding other potential bugs.

Re:

[plague3106]

Oh, and baking it in means anyone using the language will have the feature, vs. only those that bother with an analysis tool.

Re:

[immcintosh]

What sort of memory management would you prefer to have? Garbage collected? There are good garbage collection libraries available. "Smart" pointers? There are more libraries for minutely varying shades of that than I think I could count. That's what I, for one, like about the language.

For example, I do a lot of graphics/game programming as a hobby. For that, Garbage collected memory is really inappropriate (for a number of reasons, but most of all the need to release memory immediately with graphic

Re:

[jhol13]

what's so difficult about the memory management model of C?

vector a;
  a.push_back(Foo()); // repeat N times ...
  a.clear();

This simple operation in C++ is annoyingly difficult in C.

You also could argue whether garbage collection is simpler.

Re:

[ZeroConcept]

When you have 80 developers working on a project in C/C++, the amount of defects introduced by errors in memory management tend to be very expensive.

Kinda my point

[Tony]

My point was, you get all the bad things with C (the anal-retentive nature of memory management), but none of the good things of OO programming (the ability to almost ignore memory management, plus the well-defined and easily-implemented interfaces to the objects).

That's all I was saying.

I love C. The C memory model is dead simple, and I like that. If you make it, you clean it up. Or, part of the interface contract is that the library makes it, but the client cleans it up. Either way, the clean-up duties ar

Re:Thanks for asking

[epine]

The strangest possible criticism of C++ is the superiority of C. Unlike most languages, if you don't like a C++ feature (one that C doesn't have) you don't have to use it, and there is little or no runtime penalty imposed.

The strangest possible criticism of C++0x templates is that they are impossible to debug. It is, after all, the primary focus of changes to the C++ template system to drive diagnostics to the appropriate surface (at long last).

This is the fundamental advantage of a hammer over a pneumatic nail gun. The nail gun might be perfectly safe is used wisely, but human nature decrees that ultimately many people are going to file off the safety, leading to predictably gory anecdotes.

Standardize instead on the hammer, this can never happen. Which is the principle virtue of C.

C++ is probably the worst language ever devised to throw into a room full of monkeys. Many of the people who hate C++ most strongly have an underlying distrustful view of their peers as unwashed monkeys completely lacking in prudence, judgment, or impulse control.

There are situations where C++ simply should not be used, in much the same way that surgery in an African aid hospital lacking electricity and hot water is not your preferred medical option. Under sterile conditions, with doctors you trust, the pros and cons of C++ balance out quite differently.

I've been trying to put this sentiment into words for a long time. In development teams where dog-eat-dog survivalism holds sway (us against the world, me against my teammates, managers against the staff) C++ can only play out in the worst possible way.

Armed with hammers instead (the C language), the tragedy of the commons can't degenerate nearly so far. The virtue of C is that you don't have to like or respect everyone else you work with, which is no small virtue given human is what it is.

Re:Thanks for asking

[master_p]

Buddy, only God (or Stroustrup) can write good c++ code. If you have the guts, read this [yosefk.com]. There are humongous flaws with the language (and I say this with 10 years of c++ experience).

The concept of c++ is good: a language close to the bare metal that has the capability to abstract details so as that it reaches higher level language status. But in practice, it has incredible flaws; the implementation is *bad*. It could have been so much better...

Re:

[oliverthered]

Hey, I like C++, are you using it in a 'good' way (it is very hard to find a good way of doing c++ as it lends itself to so many bad ways of programming).

just look at the likes of QT and KDE great examples of great c++.

Re:

[david_thornley]

I started to read it. It's rather long, so I'll continue later.

Amazing, isn't it, that after years of C++ coding, I haven't found it particularly difficult. (There are corner cases, which are usually easy to avoid.) Interesting that I found the unreadable templated type definition fairly easy to read (if not immediately comprehending it). Odd that, for somebody complaining about C++, the author doesn't seem to have embraced it, talking about using arrays (which are holdovers from C that should not no

Re:

[daveisfera]

Plus, some of the claims from http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/ [yosefk.com] about the "flaws" of C++ are just flat out wrong, so I wouldn't rely on that as too valid of an opinion.

Re:

[swillden]

Buddy, only God (or Stroustrup) can write good c++ code.

Bull. I have written plenty of good C++ code, and I've read lots more, over the 16 years I've been using the language. C++ requires discipline, no doubt, but used correctly it can be both extremely productive and extremely efficient.

If you have the guts, read this.

Read it before, disagree with some of it, most of the rest is overstated, there are a couple of real, but avoidable, issues mentioned.

Re:

[Lord Duran]

You use a lot of metaphors, but even you say, "Unlike most languages, if you don't like a C++ feature (one that C doesn't have) you don't have to use it, and there is little or no runtime penalty imposed." You keep saying why C, the hammer, is better than the pneumatic nail gun - but you just proved that C++ is not a pneumatic nail gun, it's the hammer with a detachable pneumatic nail gun on the side. In most cases, it's C, and a little more. That seemingly little addition makes a difference in design, an

Re:

[epine]

I didn't say C++ was a nail gun. I said that with C++ you often get the same gory results if you hand C++ to the kind of person who would file the safety off of a nail gun to become a turbo nail god.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3685791.stm [bbc.co.uk]

37,000 nail gun accidents a year. The damage one can self-inflict with C++ is also impressive.

That doesn't make C++ a bad tool, it just makes C++ a risky choice for work sites where the majority of workers are less than fully compliant with workplace safety procedur

Re:

[naibas]

There is nothing wrong with C++.
There is nothing wrong with C.

I think that epine has it right, that a lot of the rancor over C and C++ is due to abuses of the languages made by unskilled hands. Just as you need the right tool for the job, you also need the right worker for the job. Even with the best tools, you still need an experienced plumber to keep the water in the pipes, and an electrician to keep high voltages out of people, etc.

C is hugely popular, and probably always will be. C++ was created to r

Re:

[kv9]

I fuckin' *hate* C++. I'd much rather have to code straight C while being punched repeatedly by a baboon.

why a baboon?

Re:C99 yet?

[forkazoo]

Better question is: Do people still code in c?

Sure, lots of people write new stuff in C all the time. But, even if nobody did that, there are still a ton of people with existing C codebases that they are still working with. IIRC, Win32, Carbon, and GTK+ are all C API's, even if they have bindings to other languages. Lots of video and multimedia stuff is done in C, like the Dirac reference implimentation, gstreamer, ffmpeg, etc. When people talk about how C is dead, and nobody writes anything in C, they generally mean that higher level languages are used to glue together a bunch of C.

Re:

[JNighthawk]

Just to lend some more weight to this, Cryptic Studios, the developers of City of Heroes/Villains, code in straight C.

Re:

[BeanThere]

Gee I dunno, maybe because one is made by a bunch of people working voluntarily in their free time, while the other is a massive software corporation selling expensive "professional" development tools whose software runs on most PCs in the world and which makes billions each month. Honestly, we should demand that Microsoft behave like a company of its position *should*, not pretend that making cynical remarks suggesting we should not expect it do so is "insightful".

Re:

[BeanThere]

Newsflash: Customers are also stakeholders. Newsflash: Customers can voice their opinion on what they think a company can do. Newsflash: Even outsiders are free to do so, that's called "free speech". Newsflash: Somebody expressing an opinion on a forum isn't "speaking for you" --- cool the fuck down, OK? You haven't told me anything new, I *KNOW* they don't give a shit and aren't obliged to do anything - duh - that's the whole point of voicing an opinion to the contrary. Oh sorry, I forgot it's not "cool" t

Re:

[Per Abrahamsen]

Herb Sutter wrote in his blog (which was linked in the submission) that the only thing from TR1 for C++ not implemented was C99 support. So I guess not.

Re:

[Jugalator]

Do they actually have C99 support yet?

Doh, the spec isn't even finalized. If they had it in now, you'd complain that they were using unfinalized specs. But to answer your question, yes, it's coming in a free update scheduled for Q1 2008.

In addition, we will also be delivering TR1 support. Portions of TR1 are scheduled for adoption in the upcoming C++0x standard as the first major addition to the ISO 2003 standard C++ library. Our implementation includes a number of important features such as smart pointers, regular expression parsing, new containers (tuple, array, unordered set, etc), sophisticated random number generators, polymorphic function wrappers, type traits and more! We are not currently shipping C99 compatibility or support for special math functions.

Re:

[hpa]

Doh, the spec isn't even finalized. If they had it in now, you'd complain that they were using unfinalized specs. But to answer your question, yes, it's coming in a free update scheduled for Q1 2008.

The spec was finalized in 1999 (hence the name "C99", specifically ISO/IEC 9945:1999.) There has been a few TRs since then, but that's always the case.

Does it do real time error highlighting?

[tieTYT]

Real time error highlighting is the MOST important thing to me when it comes to an IDE. If I forget a semi-colon the IDE should tell me as soon as I go to the next line that I'm missing a semi-colon. It shouldn't wait to compile or run my code, it should tell me as soon as possible. The last version of VS didn't do this (without a plugin), does this version?

Re:

[tieTYT]

shoot, i meant to say "It shouldn't wait for me to compile or run my code"

Re:

[pembo13]

I'm not a big fan of Visual Studio, but it has done real time error highlighting for a very long time now (relatively long at least).

Re:

[tieTYT]

I don't know what you consider a very long time but at least for VS 2005 you're wrong. It highlights your errors after you try to run your code. That's in no way closer to "real time" error highlighting than compiling my code manually.

I feel that VS is great at doing very high level things. For example, designing a UI or mapping tables to objects, etc. But when it comes to the BASICS, VS pretty much sucks ass. If you compare it to even the shittiest java IDEs, it falls flat on its face in this departme

Re:

[nxtw]

I don't know what you consider a very long time but at least for VS 2005 you're wrong. It highlights your errors after you try to run your code. That's in no way closer to "real time" error highlighting than compiling my code manually.

Visual Studio highlights errors in Visual Basic.NET code and has done this since at least 2003.

I'm not sure why they can't extend this functionality to C#; the languages are very similar.

Re:

[plague3106]

They could, but C# developers would crucify them. The community has been very vocal that they DON'T want that feature. Quite frankly, I agree. VB.net has been plagued with problems related to the "on the fly" compliation and letting you change code while the program is running. I don't want to type, fix, type fix. I'd rather get the implementation done and then compile to see if I messed up any syntax. It seems though that between Intellisense and automatic code formatting that I catch most syntax err

Re:

[nxtw]

They could, but C# developers would crucify them. The community has been very vocal that they DON'T want that feature.

"The community" is a pretty big group of people. I'm sure there are people that would like the functionality, and as long as you can enable/disable it, what's the issue?

VB.net has been plagued with problems related to the "on the fly" compliation and letting you change code while the program is running.

Visual Studio 2005's C# functionality has on-the-fly code editing for minor changes.

Re:

[plague3106]

Visual Studio 2005's C# functionality has on-the-fly code editing for minor changes.

Hmm, you seem to be right. It's present in 2008 as well.

Re:

[coryking]

Visual Studio 2005's C# functionality has on-the-fly code editing for minor changes.

Minor nitpick, but this is true only for 32-bit code--for both 2005 & 2008. Once you are in 64-bit land, it just gives you a fatty "sorry pal, no such luck" error instead.

Re:

[fbjon]

Catching missing ;'s by way of screwed up autoformatting seems like a crude hack. Why not just have the IDE point with its red arrow, "Don't forget to put a ; here at some point!". This shows you all errors, instead of just the first one.

Also, not sure what Eclipse does these days, but I wouldn't say NetBeans is slow because it checks for syntax errors, since there's a deliberate delay between the user stopping typing, and the IDE starting checking. The "forcing code completion" is weird, I'd think it woul

Re:

[shutdown -p now]

If that's the case, then why ReSharper (which provides on-the-fly error checking and highlighting, among other things) is so popular?

Re:

[Mongoose Disciple]

What language are you programming in? VS2005 certainly does it for C#.

Re:

[Elgonn]

I'm quite certain all versions of VS for at least the last 8 years have done that. Plugin? Maybe it doesn't in your language of choice?

Re:

[Saffaya]

VS 2003 does not (C++) do real time error highlighting.
You need to use 3rd party plug-ins.

Re:

[Elgonn]

Poor C++. I checked and built in support for C++ was included in 2005. I've never quite understood how Microsoft can keep its strange leap frog functionality between 'similar' types of things.

Re:

[Matje]

download the evaluation for resharper. the last version even includes a panel that'll show you all your compile errors in the complete solution. it does much more than that, but you'll notice that out as soon as you start using it ;)

Re:

[Jugalator]

I believe not, but the Resharper and Visual Assist addons have this, for example.
Along with a bit worsened performance due to having to real-time analyze every character you type, but for "modern" computers, this should be less of a hassle. The performance hit is clearly noticeable on this Athlon XP 1700+ though. Kind of funny, but I guess we adjust to what hardware we have, even if it means typing into pretty much a text editor becomes slower!

wake me up in 1998

[epine]

Back in 1998 I would have welcomed a standard compliant C++ compiler from Microsoft. What Microsoft did support, it supported one level deep (e.g. namespaces, many template features) with unbridled hypocrisy.

Fast forward to 2008, if Microsoft can't be bothered, others can, so now they bother. Kind of like arriving at a New Year's party at half past twelve. The champagne is gone, and when you make your grand entrance into the room full of glassy expressions, everyone slaps you on the back and says "hey, glad you could make it". Almost like being there.

Re:wake me up in 1998

[Jugalator]

So you mean this means nothing to the millions of C++ programmers out there? Standard compliance on the by far most prominent OS tend to be a big deal, even if it's coming late. I very much agree with the "better late than never" saying here. If I wouldn't, that would mean I'd be pleased with an old non-compliant Visual C++ 6 compiler, which I would definitely not be.

Re:

[z0M6]

Not as if I am going to bother finding out if it is true or not, but I am sure there is better than decent alternatives on the "most prominent" OS

Re:

[g051051]

Please note that there are lots of Standard compliant C++ IDEs and compilers for the "most prominent OS" that also support other OSes. The world is not Windows...

Re:

[fireboy1919]

Standard compliance on an often used, though not dominant compiler tends to be a small deal because its coming late.

Fixed that for you. It's not the OS that's in question here. You don't even have to use the VC++ compiler in Visual Studio, much less is it the only choice for the OS.

Re:

[shutdown -p now]

Microsoft doesn't just bring a standard-compliant implementation to the table: they bring one well-integrated into a very good C++ IDE. The debugger in VS2005 and above is really great, especially the visualizers for STL classes (that's when you see e.g. std::list as "std::list[10]{1, 2, 3, 4, ...}", not as "_List{_Size=10,_Head=0x234a3f01}"; now they're also doing it for TR1 types as well). IntelliSense is so-so, but better than all the alternatives (for C++) that I am aware of, except for Visual Assist -

Is it any better than Visual Studio 6?

[johannesg]

I still develop in Visual Studio 6. Yes, the language support is somewhat lacking (scope rules for 'for' get me regularly), but to me it just feels so much nicer to work in than the later versions of VS. As if this was the last version that was still for C++ developers: I neither want nor need to develop web pages, C# applications, .NET stuff, or whatever crap they added later, and I sure don't want it to be the focus of the package I'm working in, with C++ thrown in as an afterthought.

Have they brought back the keyboard macro's? They were there in VS6 but I could never find them in later versions.

Re:Is it any better than Visual Studio 6?

[ThaReetLad]

Well, we're just completing the porting of approx 1 million lines of VC++6 to VS 2008, and I have to say it's been so worth it. The new compiler picks up on and warns about many more potential problems, and there's also the issue of whole program optimisation. Also the debugger in VS2008 is much better than the VC6.0 one. I have to say, I think VS2008 is pretty great. A lot of the niggly little problems in VS2005 have now been dealt with, and speaking as someone who is just now starting to write some C# after 9 years writing C++ the LINQ stuff and lambda expressions are just great.

Re:Is it any better than Visual Studio 6?

[TheThiefMaster]

Have you tried MSVC++ 2005?

The debugger is leaps and bounds ahead of the VC6 one.
It supports parallel building of multiple projects on multicore cpus / multiple cpus (massively reducing build time).
Built in x86-64 compiling / debugging (local machine and network) support.
It supports link-time code generation (a major optimization improvement). The Pro version also supports profile-guided optimization.
It supports OpenMP multithreading extensions for C++.
Many many other improvements.

The C++ .net extensions are optional. And, in my opinion, crap. If you want to use .net, you're better off with C#.
Note: VC++ 2005 Express Edition (the free version) doesn't come with the Windows Platform SDK, and if you don't install it is only good for developing C++.net apps.

The ONLY advantages to VC6 are: that it links programs against the VC6 runtime dll, which comes with most versions of Windows, right back to some 9x editions, where with VC2005 it links against the VC8 runtime dll, which most people need to install / you need to distribute it with your program / you need to static link with it, resulting in a larger .exe; and that it supports building .exes that run on Windows 95.
Basically VC6's only advantage is that it's old.

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The ONLY advantages to VC6 are: [snip]

I think you forgot a few. For one thing, VC6 is actually responsive as an IDE, and doesn't go into a trance for several minutes at the slightest provocation. For another, the online help is actually helpful: if you look up a C++ library function, for example, it tells you about the library function, and not some completely irrelevant class with a vaguely similar name in the .Net framework (after taking half a minute to fire up the help system before it does anything else). Then there's the browse toolbar,

Re:

[bigstrat2003]

Maybe the C++ editor in newer versions of Visual Studio just blows chunks, but I've certainly never had the problems with responsiveness you cite with VC# 2005. It runs just fine. And this is on a crappy computer, no less... on my good computer, it runs even better.

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Yes, all of this stuff is C++ specific. VC++6 was a decent IDE for its time. When the first version of VS.Net came out, the architecture behind VS moved to a common core for all languages. That was fine if you were using something like C# or VB.Net, as they were new and you had all the .Net trickery to support them. However, a lot of useful stuff from VC++6, such as the browse toolbar I mentioned, couldn't be readily supported in this new multi-lingual architecture and therefore got dropped as MS effectivel

std::auto_ptr is broken in VS2005

[shutdown -p now]

Be warned: std::auto_ptr is broken really, really badly in VS2005, with no fix available for now(aside from a recommendation to migrate to VS2008, where this is fixed):

• https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=319580
• https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=316513
• https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=101842
• https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?Feedbac

Re:

[shutdown -p now]

It should've been just 4 links, sorry.
And yes, it's easy to fix on your own. But you have to know of this bug before it bites you. I didn't, and spent a good half of a day debugging our code that was broken by it (it makes it worse that it does not necessarily crash near the cast) - by the end, I simply couldn't believe that the standard library implementation is broken that bad.

Re:

[Xest]

Better standards compliance and better compiler optimization as the version numbers increase are probably the primary reasons to upgrade from VS6.

Re:

[hesaigo999ca]

Dude..just cuz u couldn't be bothered to know how an app works, don't say it doesn't. You are complaining about stuff that is all configurable through the IDE, and even your keyboard macros are there, in VS 2005,...maybe I could suggest a good book before blasting the best suite for windows development.

VS 2005 tips & tricks...says a lot about all the stuff u think is missing, but really isn't

Elastic tabstops?

[nickos]

Visual Studio has to be the best piece of software to have ever come from Microsoft. IMHO it would be even better if they would support elastic tabstops, and I know I'm not the only one. [arstechnica.com]

Developers, developers, developers, developers?

[tieTYT]

As long as I've known that MS makes an IDE, I've always wondered why they charge for (some versions) of it. The majority of apps compiled on it get compiled to MS Windows binaries. People will need to buy Windows to use these apps. That means more money for MS as more people make useful/necessary apps. Where does MS benefit by charging for the development tools? It seems to me that there would be much bigger benefit to giving away the tools for free. Perhaps I'm greatly underestimating the chunk of ch

Re:

[Jellybob]

Take a look at the Visual Studio Express range - it's not full featured, but they are given away for free. These days the only people paying for Visual Studio are people who want the Pro features, and software shops, who can usually afford to pay for the software that drives their business anyway.

Re:

[thetroll123]

Or to put it another way, "because the market will bear it". Microsoft like money.

Re:

[plisskin]

Or someone who wants to write MFC apps. I don't think MFC is included in the 2005 or 2008 express editions. Although wxWidgets provides an open source MFCish alternative.

Re:

[JNighthawk]

The same reason console manufacturers charge for dev kits: it costs money to make, so they need to recoup that money, and since they can make a profit at it, why not?

Re:

[ericlondaits]

I thought the same, until I read somewhere that the reason would be that it would drive some competitors (Borland was one, at the time I read this) out of business... and that wasn't good, because a wide choice of compilers and developing tools makes a platform better supported, which is good in the eyes of IT managers. That could also explain why MS eventually started giving VS Express away for free... since in the current dev tool landscape it'll hardly drive away any competitors (PHP, Python, GNU compile

Upgrades to MFC? what upgrades?

[master_p]

MFC - we are working on a huge update to MFC that should knock your socks off. I can't tell you too much right now, but this is closer than you might [think]

What do they mean?

Do they mean, perhaps, that widgets are now normal objects? no double-creation (first new Object, then object->CreateWindow).

Could they mean that all widgets are destroyed in the same way? no object->DestroyWindow for some widgets, delete object for some other widgets?

How about some serious memory management using shared pointers? no temp CBrush objects etc.

How about layout management? all serious widget toolkits have that. It's 2008, we should not have to position widgets manually.

What about the tab widget? in MFC, the tab widget is not a real widget: you have to manually hide and show controls upon tab click.

What about the model-view-controller pattern? this is 2008, should I still manually copy edited data from widgets to the data model of my application? most other toolkits support the MVC pattern. Dialog Data eXchange is a joke, of course.

How about the issue of message maps? Qt proves you don't need stinkin' message maps, which are hard to maintain, difficult to understand, and dangerous because casting is untyped and done through macros.

How about MIME type support?

These, and a lot more, are the issues that have driven developers away from MFC to Qt or WxWidgets. I have been maintaining a line of products based on MFC for the last 10 years, but this year I've decided I had enough: all the products are to be rewritten with Qt/WxWidgets. I will only approach MFC if it will approach Qt/WxWidgets quality.

Re:

[krelian]

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2389517&SiteID=1 [microsoft.com]

Office 2007 Ribbon Bar: Ribbon, Pearl, Quick Access Toolbar, Status Bar, etc.

Office 2003 and XP look: Office-style toolbars and menus, Outlook-style shortcut bar, print preview, live font picker, color picker, etc.

Internet Explorer look: Rebars and task panes.

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I agree with many of your criticisms of MFC, but isn't it a bit of a joke to attack MFC for using message maps and macros if you're advocating Qt (completely with signals, slots, and not just macros but a whole preprocessor!) as an alternative?

Re:

[master_p]

No, because Qt's additions to the language are invisible and harmless (just a few empty preprocessor #defines), and the MOC is invisible as well (it is invoked automatically if Q_OBJECT is added to a file). MFC's macros in message maps are dangerous.

Re:

[shutdown -p now]

Your complains are not really about MFC, they are about WinAPI. MFC at its heart is a relatively thin wrapper around WinAPI, and most of its design problems come from this. In most cases, there is a one-to-one mapping between an MFC control and a Win32 control, and similarly MFC methods and Win32 functions. That's why there's no layout management, no proper tabs, no MVC etc.

How about some serious memory management using shared pointers? no temp CBrush objects etc

On a side note, you absolutely can use boost

Microsoft Fails It

[wandazulu]

(For me, anyway). I still use VC 6 for C++ work simply because it was the last example of an IDE (I'm just talking IDE) that had everything I wanted; it was clean but more importantly, *fast*. I skipped the initial .net releases because of the lack of an upgraded C++ compiler and eagerly installed VS2005 to discover that MS had turned VS into a bloated monster that was slow to open do *anything* (the performance of Intellisense greatly improved my knowledge of MFC because it was easier to memorize all the methods than wait for it to show them to me), as well as having some bizarre GUI choices (tabbed windows with the close button off to the far side of the app, instead of on the tab itself???, plus the sliding windows (yes, I can dock them, but for some reason they would sometimes "undock"). Basically it didn't "feel" right to me.

Plus they committed, in my opinion, the unforgivable sin of trying to push their _s* functions that they said were "safe" instead of ones like strncat, strncpy, etc. The first time I compiled some code in VS2005 I freaked...what are all these warnings? Then I discover it's Microsoft being "helpful" and I was annoyed. Then I realized they wanted to make my code entirely Windows-dependent (functions that start with _ are not standard) and I was enraged. What *really* enraged me was that you have to turn these stupid warnings off per project ...if there's a way to turn it off in the options dialog I have no idea where it is. What made me scream was that they word the warning in such a way as to think the *standard* calls the functions depreciated. Herb Sutter, you should be ashamed of yourself for letting MS get away with this.

I will give VS2008 a chance, but VS2005 with all its "standards compliant goodness" was not enough to sway me from VS6. The bloated IDE + improper warnings has utterly soured me on developing for windows; I don't want to do .net...I write server based C++ software where fast isn't fast enough. VS2005 was also not fast enough. Maybe I'll just bite the bullet and learn to write in Vim and compile at the command prompt.

Re:

[bigstrat2003]

...eagerly installed VS2005 to discover that MS had turned VS into a bloated monster that was slow to open do *anything* (the performance of Intellisense greatly improved my knowledge of MFC because it was easier to memorize all the methods than wait for it to show them to me)...

You mean MS turned VC++ into that, maybe. VS is not that, I use VC# 2005 all the time and it works great. I don't use VC++, so your complaints against it may be valid, but they don't apply to the whole studio.

TR1 is not in VS2008

[shutdown -p now]

TR1 is not in VS2008. It will be available as a "Feature Pack" at a later date ("first half of 2008"); only a beta is available [msdn.com] at the moment. Also, see the FAQ [msdn.com] on the beta for more details on the TR1 implementation, such as a list of what's not supported and why.

Very, very little change for native code

[Myria]

I installed Visual Studio 2008 and noticed that hardly anything is different from Visual Studio 2005. Oh wait, that's because I'm only using native code. It's very obvious that the mandate from above is to focus only on .NET. Almost all the fancy new features are for .NET only. I think it's only a matter of time before Microsoft declares Visual C++ dead for anything but service packs. (They still need it to build Windows, so it'll just remain this way.) The C++0x support and MFC are probably just thro

Re:

[stoolpigeon]

i don't know. i checked and he's got a pretty low user id.

Re:

[josteos]

installs Visual Asisst http://www.wholetomato.com/ [wholetomato.com]

Yep. Works great now.

(No, I don't work there. Just been a long-time customer.)

Re:

[coryking]

The best improvement is that Visual Studio now uses your XML documentation for a function while you type a call to it. 2005 was kind of flaky with those and maybe 50% of the time did it show them while you were typing in a function call. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the improvements to the XML documentation system are one of the best improvements they made. When you type "///", visual studio will automatically insert the entire XML template so you can fill it in. In addition, it green underlines any

Re:

[setagllib]

Why not use Eclipse with Java and SWT for new projects? It'll perform a lot better than Visual Studio with the massive bonus of producing applications that run on Linux, MacOSX, Solaris, etc. on servers and desktops. Almost everything VS does that Eclipse doesn't is available in expensive versions, and even then, most of those features can be added for free to Eclipse via plugins. It's a pretty sweet deal.