Microsoft Visual C++: 10 Is the New 6

The Discussion

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  I hoped to see a new (maybe XML based) GUI library and VS designers so that I wont be forced to WPF and managed world.
  Pity...
  

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  I hope the new c++ standard can cover the thread library and gui library?
  first part is true now ,when is the second?

• 

  This video was recommended to me to allay my fears about how a perfectly good IDE (VS6) went bad, but is now supposed to be getting better.
  
  Boris admits VS6 was before his time, and in the video, he doesn't seem to know what MFC stands for, but sure thinks MEF is really cool. He said he was hired to add refactoring into the IDE, but it won't be in this verison.
  
  In the video, he doesn't demonstrate any understanding about what VS6 users have been complaining about. He doesn't mention any of them and certainly doesn't acknowledge the complaints VS6 users have. Sure he shows a couple of cool new library features, some new capabilities in MFC, and some bug fixes, but these have nothing to do with the IDE itself.
  
  If this is their leader, no wonder the IDE is languishing.
  
  He seems to suggest that the new VS IDEs can do way more with bigger projects. He keeps using the phrase "what WE want to do", refering to the developers at Microsoft.
  
  The problem, is the core IDE design, even if he gets Intellisense fixed, still sucks. The class wizard is disastrous, the add function and add variable wizards are poorly layed out and cumbersome, and just to awkward to be of any use. The Resource editor is crap. Property pages are entirely too time consuming to work with.
  
  I will lay down a challenge to Microsoft: For any given C++/MFC project, I can develop and debug it faster in VS6 than their best VS8 developer, especially if it has any kind of complex dialog specs or bitmap colouring, and end up with better structured and organized code.
  
  The new VS series will NEVER be the "New 6" until VS developers understand what is so good about the VS6 IDE and make a concerted effort to try to duplicate it.
  
  The title smells of a marketing person trying to pull a fast one.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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  Well I'm breaking this down while watching the screencast. So bare with me. Why are Windows developers still messing with Win32 api and MFC. Why can't we have a more state of the art api. That doesn't have the obtuse Hungarian notation that is so 1995. We don't use it anymore these days except on Windows. No other api uses it, wxWidgets, GTK+, Qt. Except WTL, MFC, win32 and legacy code. Why can't there be update without Hungarian notation, portability, unicode by default, and more structured Object Oriented. MFC is buggy as heck, no one will barely touch it, it's very ugly, no design layouts, pain in the butt to work with. I understand that Microsoft is push more users to use .NET/Mono. But why not focus on C++, because not everyone enjoys C#, VB.NET, etc. Why is it that other companies, Nokia Qt (formly Trolltech) created a beautiful api, more fully featured and what not. While Microsoft produced a god awful MFC? I'm just saying why do we still live in the 90's with Windows development while everyone else is in the 2009's? You say produce more code, reuse, extensibility but how can we if we do MFC and to create plugins for visual studio we have to learn a new api ATL which is just a pain in the arse and no documentation. Just like MFC. And MFC isn't updated. Other api's you find updates regularly like every few months. MFC is getting it pretty much with every Visual Studios updates. That is every 2-3 years. I mean come on get with the program. Make your developers feel more welcome to enjoy programming on it. Instead of pushing them towards looking for alternative's. Care about the money you get but not caring enough to make development more enjoyable. Well I'm glad to see that Visual Studio 10 will have C++0x out of the box. I just hope since VS10 is considered "The new VC6". Don't bring the problems that were present in VC6 to VC10. I want to see way better code complete for C++ headers. And plus for the love of gawd don't make it pre-c++0x like VC6 was pre-ansi. Make it fully standard compiler and not pre this or pre that and especially only what Microsoft's developers want in there like how you guys didn't implement all of C99. I want to see it all. Please don't release VS10 before the finalization. Because that is how VC6 failed and is totally dissed in the C++ community. Why don't you guys ship the VS10 runtime with Windows 7. So we don't have to ship it with our programs even if we don't use the IDE and just command because I run CMake build system on CLI? What about code styling like C# has to format code. Where is it for C++? What about options available in Visual Studio. I have Visual Studio 2008 Professional. I go to install it, I have to install Mobile SDK, SQL compact stuff. I don't use MSSQL only PostgreSQL. I don't want that. If I want those install, I'll add them myself. I don't want it to install if I don't want it to. I want minimalistic as possible and not bloat with useless features for me.