Why I buy this one ?
- Use this powerful visual development tool for high-performance apps for Windows or the Web
- This cutting-edge technology serves industry-standard C++ development through commercial and community-based libraries
- Use the ATL Server to encapsulate C++ programs into a handy set of ATL classes
- Work with powerful new XML Services for smaller and faster programs

What our customer's say!

"C# .NET best of breed if you are a Windows shop", 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", 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!", 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", 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", 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?

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Stick with Visual C++ 6.0", Absolute and total crap. Try and compile any of your programs with and you will see the following error:

D4029 : optimization is not available in the standard edition compiler

That's right, Visual C++ .NET Standard Edition performs absolutely NO OPTIMIZATION.

My DirectDraw went from rendering more than 100 FPS to *17* FPS. I have never been so pissed off in my life, I have just blown $100.00 for NOTHING.

What's worse, you can not buy just Visual C++ .NET Professional Edition. To get an optimizing C++ .NET compiler, you have to buy *ALL* of Visual Studio .NET (it will only put you back a cool grand).

CRAP, TOTAL CRAP, STICK WITH VISUAL C++ 6.0 STANDARD EDITION

"Megasloth keeps getting crappier", I got the free evaluation of Visual Studio .net 2003 and couldn't believe how much the product has gone downhill in the last few versions. Microsoft is definately in the business of bloatware! The program hogs up about 4GB on your harddrive, reconfiguring and corrupting your whole operating system so nothing works well ever again.

Nevertheless, I kept trying to work with .net. I've been programming C++ for Windows for a long time. I was expecting new features to help me make better programs, but found just the opposite to be true. After doing a lot of reading and banging my head against the wall, I finally realized that the only new features .net has to offer are:

1) A giant overhead of automatic functions ("managed C++") that slow down the performance and increase the size of programs you make, but they allow sloppy Microsoft programmers to slap together messy code that doesn't crash as much. (I for one don't write programs that crash, because I can manage my own memory, thank you very much!) You are forced into proprietary language syntax, a total departure from standard C++, so that your eventual switch to Linux or whatever else will be difficult or impossible (hopes Microsoft).

2) Support for using multiple programming langauges in projects (forcing you to learn thousands of things from all the other inferior languages that you never wanted to mess with, just so you can make a simple program that shows a dialog box on the screen, for example).

3) A big push to develop "software as a service", with a plethora of difficult and cumbersome new tools that you are forced to use in order to build software that only works with an internet connection, helping Microsoft obtain world domination at last.

Because these features attempt to take me in a different direction than I want to go, I'm looking to use something else. I encourage you to do the same.

"Not a downgrade...", If you've been using visual studio prior to .Net, .Net adds a lot of time saving features that really make it worth switching over. Some of the most prominent features include code completion, and the ability to put your code into sections that can be expanded or retracted for readability, which really helps for a project with a large codebase (Such as a senior computer science project for a bachelor's degree). Regardless of C++'s standing in the microsoft suite of programming tools, .Net is a good C++ ide.

"Just want C++ equals not a Professional?", In general, I'm pleased with this product.

Although a number of people complain about the new IDE, it really isn't all that different. After 6 years of using 6.0 almost daily, I was worried about upgrade pains, but in one morning I was able to configure it to perform similarly to the old 6.0 interface, but with the added advantage that it does not crash every other compile. And finally, partial template specialization! No more iostream.h!

What really annoys me, however, is the fact that this, the Standard Edition, does not include the optimizing compiler. Apparently, a REAL developer would not buy this product. Cleverly, Microsoft does not offer a C++ Professional edition that would include this feature, but be less than the outrageous $1000 ($500 upgrade) for the full studio. Like I want to write in Visual Basic .NET!

"I�ve got a headache", While users new to C++ might be enchanted with Visual C++ .NET, those of us who have been programming with VC++ for years will be disgusted. Visual C++ has been relegated to a the same tier held by FoxBASE. All of the new .NET examples are in C# or VB.

Thankfully, I downloaded the evaluation copy, and didn't purchase the non-refundable software.

The first thing I noticed was that the Visual Studio IDE has been entirely rewritten.

The Visual Studio C++ class wizard is gone. Yes. Gone. You will have to spend time (and a large amount of it) to relearn how to add events, message handlers, and otherwise get up to speed with the VB-ish property window.

Granted, this version does have better ANSI standards compliance, better support for templates, and some optimizations.

If you only need to write native C++ code, pass on this product.