What are the differences between Visual C++ 6.0 an

Question

What are the advantages/disadvantages between MS VS C++ 6.0 and MSVS C++ 2008?

The main reason for asking such a question is that there are still many decent programmers that prefer using the older version instead of the newest version.

Is there any reason the might prefer the older over the new?

Answer 1

Off the top of my head, the advantages of the new Visual Studio are:

• stricter adherence to standards
• support for x64 / mobile / XBOX targets
• better compiler optimizations
• (way) better template handling
• improved debugger; possibility to run remote debug sessions
• improved IDE
• improved macro support; DTE allows access to more IDE methods and variables

Disadvantages:

• IDE seems slower
• Intellisense still has performance issues (replacing it with VisualAssistX can help)
• runtime not universally available
• source control integration not up to par (although in all fairness VC6 lacks this feature completely)

Answer 2

I would like to add that it's not the case that applications developed using Visual C++ 2008 must require more DLLs than those developed using Visual C++ 6.0. That's just the default project configuration.

If you go into your project properties, C/C++, Code Generation, then change your Runtime Library from Multi-threaded DLL and Multi-threaded Debug DLL (Release and Debug configurations) to Multi-threaded and Multi-threaded Debug, your application should then have fewer dependencies.

Answer 3

Besides the deployment mentioned above, the main advantage of MSVC 6.0 is speed. Because it is a 10 year old IDE it feels quite fast on a modern computer. The newer versions of Visual Studio offer more advanced features, but they come at a cost (complexity and slower speed).

But the biggest draw-back of MSVC 6.0 is its non-compliant C++-Compiler and Library. If you intend to do serious C++-Programming this is a show-stopper. If you only build MFC-Applications it is probably not much of a problem.

Answer 4

Since VC6 most of the focus of Visual Studio has been on C# and .NET, as well as other features, so some C++ old-timers see VC6 as the good old days. Things have improved in Visual Studio for C++ developers since those days, but not nearly as dramatically as for .NET users.

One way that VS2008 is significantly better than VC6 is that it can build C++ projects in parallel. This can result in significantly faster builds even on a single CPU system, but especially if you have multiple cores.

Answer 5

Visual C++ 2008 is much more standards compliant (Visual Studio 6 doesn't support the C++ standard set in 1998).

Answer 6

Did you know that MS VC6's implementation of the STL isn't thread-safe? In particular, the reference counting optimization in basic_string blows up even when compiled with the multi-threaded libraries. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/813810