MSVC++6 vs. MSVC++7

[Darkwraith]

What are the differences between version 6.0 and 7.0 besides the version?

[azteched]

7: more compliant STL with fewer bugs, support for writing managed C++ (.NET) apps, new ide (nicer but more bloated), probably more godawful appwizard things..I'm sure other people know more differences.

[NoteMe]

I am not sure if it is any help. But I couldn't anything then laugh when I read this (not your post...I am getting to it).

I am on MS DirectX mailing list. And MS (actually the "Visual Studio Program Manager") has asked what they think needs to get improved in VS. And there was a LOT of questions. There is a backup of it here. Read it and enjoy...


http://discuss.microsoft.com/SCRIPTS...a&L=directxdev
PS: At the bottom. Read the post on the bottom first, then the one over and so on:



Quotes from the first post:

This is a message from our Visual Studio Program Manager regarding the
concerns / issues some of you were having with Visual Studio 2003. Feel
free to contact him directly with any questions / comments.



Thanks,

Daniel Roman [MS]







Hi, my name is Kang Su Gatlin, and I'm from the Visual C++ team, and
short response to some of the issues.



Visual Studio 2002 was a complete rewrite of the IDE, which had a shared
core for all languages. With that, there was some VC functionality that
was changed/lost. One of the big things we're doing for VS 2005 is
fixing these problems. For example, the dependency checking you mention
that was dog-slow in VS 2003 is fixed in VS 2005. We are stressing
performance of the IDE greatly for this 2005 release.



With respect to code quality, VS 2003 is our best optimizer to date.
We've added Pentium 4 support (/G7), and also support for the SSE2
instruction set (/arch:SSE2). Additionally we added a whole new class
of optimizations, called "whole program optimization" (aka "link time
code generation). To enable this there is a setting in "General" of the
properties called 'Whole Program Optimization' (or you can set it with
the /GL compiler switch, and the /LTCG linker switch).



We pretty consistently see performance improvement with
code-generation... And don't get me started with what we're doing for
VS 2005!



Lastly, we've done a lot of work to help make more secure code with the
/GS switch. This helps avoid buffer overruns in your code.



All in all, I think you'll find the actually compiler MUCH superior in
VS2003. True, the IDE may not be quite what you wanted coming from VS6,
but we've heard your complaints and we're going to try to address it in
VS2005.



You can reach me for questions, comments, concerns, ranting, etc... at
[email protected]



Thanks,



---

Kang Su Gatlin

Visual C++ Program Manager