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

Well, for one thing it may be because the executables built with MSVS 6 require only msvcrt.dll (C runtime) which is shipped with Windows now.

The MSVS 2008 executables need msvcrt9 shipped with them (or already installed).

Plus, you have a lot of OSS libraries already compiled for Windows 32 bit with the 6.0 C runtime, while for the 2008 C runtime you have to take the source and compile them yourself.

(most of those libraries are actually compiled with MinGW, which too uses the 6.0 C runtime - maybe that's another reason).

Answer 2

Quick list of improvements you'll see going from 6.0 to 2008:

• Many bug fixes
• Better conformance to the C++ standard
• Better compiler optimization
• Improved UI (better intellisense, etc)

One thing that people sometimes forget is that VS 6.0 is over 10 years old now! At this point, I don't see how anyone would want to stick with it.

Answer 3

one tough thing we encountered was that "value" became a keyword.

Answer 4

Visual C++ 6.0 integrates with memory tracking tools, such as Purify, HeapAgent, BoundsChecker and MemCheck, thoroughly and well since those memory tracking tools were actively maintained and aggressively sold after Visual C++ 6.0 came out.

However, since C++ has been out of vogue for a while, the companies that sell memory tracking tools still sell them but never update or integrate them with new Visual C++ versions, including Visual Studio 2008. So, using memory tracking tools with Visual Studio 2008 is frustrating, errorprone and, in some cases, impossible.

Answer 5

VS2008 has better compiler (much more standards compliant, better optimizations, ...).

VS6 has much faster IDE. VS2008 IDE has many nice features, but it is a low slower than VS6.

Answer 6

Advantages of Visual Studio 2008 over Visual C++ 6.0:

• Much more standards compliant C++ compiler, with better template handling
• Support for x64 / mobile / XBOX targets
• Improved STL implementation
• Support for C++0x TR1 (smart pointers, regular expressions, etc)
• Secure C runtime library
• Improved code navigation
• Improved debugger; possibility to run remote debug sessions
• Better compiler optimizations
• Many bug fixes
• Faster builds on multi-core/multi-CPU systems
• Improved IDE user interface, with many nice features
• Improved macro support in the IDE; DTE allows access to more IDE methods and variables
• Updated MFC library (in VS2008 Service Pack 1)
• support for OPENMP (easy multithreading)(only in VS2008 pro.)

Disadvantages of moving to Visual Studio 2008:

• The IDE is a lot slower than VS6
• Intellisense still has performance issues (replacing it with VisualAssistX can help)
• Side-by-side assemblies make app deployment much more problematic
• The local (offline) MSDN library is extremely slow
• As mentioned here, there's no profiler in the Professional version

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In the spirit of Joel's recent blog post, I've combined some of the other answers posted into a single answer (and made this a community-owned post, so I won't gain rep from it). I hope you don't mind. Many thanks to Laur, NeARAZ, 17 of 26, me.yahoo.com, and everyone else who answered. -- ChrisN