Microsoft Visual C++ .NET Standard 2003 [OLD VERSION]

Customer Reviews

An overwhelmed beginner C++ programmer

2005-02-18
After starting out learning on Bloodshed Development's free C++ development suite, I bought Microsoft C++.NET in hopes of finding it easier to understand. Now I am totally confused!

The resources (wall charts) included with the software look pretty when tacked on the wall of my workroom, but they have done little to help me create any useful applications.

If you are new to working with C++ (or programming in general) you will find that Microsoft increases the learning curve dramatically with this product. Find something less complex.

fraud

2005-02-10
The blurb above touts an optimizing compiler. The product box does too. When you get to using it you find that the first line in the build log states "This edition of Visual C++ does not support the optimizing compiler." When you try to set the project propety for optimization you find it greyed out and unavailable. So much for truth.

Optimizing Compiler Please...

2005-01-06
Just a note to those thinking about replacing std compiler with the one coming from free Visual C++ Toolkit 2003... It's most likely NOT ok to build commercial apps with it. This is an excerpt from MS's EULA of C++ Toolkit:

"1.1 General License Grant. Microsoft grants to you as an individual, a personal, nonexclusive license to make and use copies of the Software (i) for your internal use; (ii) for designing, developing, testing and demonstrating your software product(s); and (iii) for evaluation of the Software"

For demonstration, not for sale. Well, afterall Toolkit is a free product.

If there was VC++ Professional edition, I'd swollow the fact that VC C++ Standard is useless. But there isn't and I'm forced to pay for the whole VStudio, that I will strip down to bare VC++...

BTW, it's less of a problem today, but instead of this mean & lean VC6 we got a sluggish and fat IDE, devoid of an old good code wizards (properties to the rescue, but they are not that convenient!).

Oh, and there's also comming new 'Express' edition of C++. That one on the other hand will have no resources editor, nor MFC & ATL libs.

Thank you Microsoft!

Optimizing Compiler is available!!

2004-04-28
I have been researching this product after reading some disturbing reviews here. The standard edition does not come with the code-optimization features.

You can, however, download the 2003 toolkit - FOR FREE - which includes the Microsoft C/C++ Optimizing Compiler and Linker. This is the same compiler and linker that ships with Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional!

It can be downloaded here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/

The new compiler moves toward ISO conformance. So this version of VC++ is actually more standardized than previous versions. This can be helpful when porting applications to other standardized environments and compilers.

I program mostly 3D graphics and have experienced a frame rate increase since downloading the toolkit. This new version is helpful when working on large group projects as well. Oh and the shader debugger is a plus when writing vertex and pixel shaders.

This product is not practical for any type of development. 2004-04-21
I've been writing an OpenGL engine for a while now, and decided to make the step up from VC6 to .net in order to continue development. I was already quite adjusted to the interface since I'd been using it for about 6 months where I was previously employed. That said, I'm not a fan of the new interface, having spent so much time adjusting myself to VC5/6. I've got quite a few pet peeves with it (like alt+F7 no longer bringing up project settings even with the VC6 keyboard layout), but that is not my main problem with the product... (obviously, or I would not have ordered it anyway)

Once it arrived, I decided to do some benchmarking to compare performance of builds between VC6 and vc.net. I made a build of my engine to arbitrarily do 500 box-triangle collisions against level geometry per frame, figuring that would be a good way of averaging things out since it's completely cpu-based (and largely dependant on compiler optimizations). I was a bit shocked by the results. My VC6 build maintained a consant 40+ FPS on my p3 1ghz, while using the exact same code and assets, the vc.net build stayed at around 15-20fps. I fiddled with the project settings for a while, but concluded this speed loss was due the lack of compiler optimizations in vc.net standard. Which means there isn't a darn thing I can do about it. Oh, and no, I didn't do something silly like test a release build against a debug build. I made sure the project settings for each build were as similar as possible.

So, in conclusion, I've got no choice but to keep using vc6, and this was a great waste of 100 dollars. My advice is, if performance matters to you at all, don't buy this product. I was expecting to see some amount of performance loss due to the lack of "compiler optimizations", but this is completely absurd. The loss of performance makes this product completely unusable as a serious development platform. For serious development, you really have no choice but to go for a higher-priced development suite. Otherwise if you just want to fool around and performance isn't an issue, you might as well be using one of the many free compiler/IDE sets out there instead of blowing 100 dollars.

C# .NET best of breed if you are a Windows shop 2005-12-17
C# .NET is an easy transition for either a C++ or Java programmer. After crashing and burning on every Visual Basic Project I've ever worked on, this is a refreshing change. Its fast and easy - I only wish that it were an open standard. The code I've written in it and used as pseudo-code ported back to linux with only a few changes and wrappers.

Great C++ compiler 2005-10-18
For the price, you can't beat it. Great for making programs while taking a C++ class. Haven't had any problems with the compiler.

Excellent value! 2005-06-12
While Visual C++ Professional is a better choice for those needing to build optimized production code, Standard Edition 2003 rates 5 stars for the price.

This product is targeted at students. Hence the low price and lack of an optimizing compiler.

That said, here are some reasons a professional developer on a tight budget might still want to buy this product:

- Can be used for many projects where compiler optimization is not critical or even relevant: prototyping, debugging, Managed C++, tools, many production apps, etc.
- If you need high-performance compiled code (and can't afford the Pro version) you can download the optimizing compiler free from Microsoft. That compiler compares well overall with anything else available on Windows or Linux.
- Simply the best C++ development environment available at any price. (Class View is far superior to 6.0. GUI-development tools are also far better, once you get used to them.)
- .NET is superior to MFC for GUI development. However, Managed C++ is not the best tool for taking advantage of it.
- .NET is superior to MFC/ATL (COM) for development of distributed applications. (Easier to develop, deploy, manage, etc.)
- One of the most standards-compliant compilers around (unlike 6.0). This is necessary if you want to use a some modern techniques like template metaprogramming.
- Excellent documentation for C++ and STL. (unlike 6.0, but also available online)
- Excellent documentation for Windows API and many other windows-related technologies. (also available online)
- MFC, ATL, and .NET libraries not available with "free" software.

If you are on a shoe-string budget, this product is well worth the price. You will be more productive than you can be with "free" tools, and you will get a better product overall than Visual C++ 6.

That said, 2005 is due out soon. Managed C++ is supposed to be much improved. In addition, a third-tier product will be introduced called Visual C++ Express, presumably at an even cheaper price than Standard.

Thank you all 2005-06-10
I was going to buy a game dev SDK and it required VC++ 2003. Thanks to these reviews I will forget the whole thing and use Dev C++ which is free (and I already use) and use open source game components like Ogre.

Bad and Slow 2005-04-01
You can download this product for free, including the 2005 edition. Despite this fact the VC++.net compiles code that is about 1000 times slower than their visual studio compiler, even after optimizations are turned on (g1-g7.cpp). Even funnier is the fact that when I turn on SSE2 optimizations on their visual studio product, their floating point code test sample (gl-g7.cpp) runs slower on my Pentium 4 2.4 GHz machine (SSE2 enabled) than with the optimizations turned off. Nice advertisement for their optimizing compiler eh?