Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition. - Is it worth it?

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cpp
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Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition. - Is it worth it?

Post by cpp »

I found out that VC++ 2005 express is now out of beta status, and that its free. I currently use VS.NET 2003, and im wondering a few things, any input would be greatly appreciated;

1) ibe read that there are some "special steps" required to get wxWidgets working properly with it. Like some trouble with the windows manifest, etc. However im not shure if they are still true (maybe those issues applied only to the beta version of V++ 2005?), so, are there any special steps required to get it working?

2) To the people (if any) who are allready using it: have you come across any new problems? like things that worked fine before but now they dont?

3) Is it worth the effort at all? someone once said: "if it eint broken, dont fix it", and im having no trouble working with VS.NET 2003. So why change? is the compiling faster? or maybe the IDE has some cool new feature?, or maybe the apps are smaller or faster?

Any toughts, comments, or opinions are much appreciated.
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lowjoel
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Post by lowjoel »

smaller or faster, definitely not, its actually bigger (by 50kb for the wx dll.)

standards compliance is the real thing now.
priyank_bolia
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Post by priyank_bolia »

There are lot of plugins for VS.NET 2003, that makes the things more faster, these are not available for express. So, at this time, I would say 2003 is better choice.
cpp
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Post by cpp »

IMHO: its is *NOT* worth it.
like lowjoel said, "the good this is the standards compliance" wich is of course true, but we have to define _CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE and _CRT_NONSTDC_NO_DEPRECATE if we expect it to work with wxWidgets (and not get 10 billion warnings), by we are shuting down its standards compliance at least in part. Besides, there are some "small issues" in VC2005 wich i dont like. (http://forums.wxwidgets.org/viewtopic.php?t=6040)
Going back to VS2003
Thanks for your input guys
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metalogic
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Post by metalogic »

One more thing that wasn't mentioned and the reason why I moved from VC 2005 back to 2003:
2005 has finally dropped support for Windows 95. Many people probably won't care but I saw no need for stopping my binary from running on 95 so I went back to 2003 which still supports it.

As mentioned by others, I also found the binaries larger.

For those that don't own VC 2003 though, getting a free copy of 2005 is a sweet deal.
cpp
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Post by cpp »

wow! dint know that Windows95 support was removed in VC2005, if i had known this, i would have never even bother to try it out!. Belive it or not, some of my clients STILL have W95 in some of their PCs.

About binary size, i found that one of my projects, that was 1.57 MB was now 1.91MB, using (of course) static linking to both wxWidgets and CRT.

I guess that like metalogic said, for those that do not own VS2003, VS2005 for free is a sweet deal, But for anyone who allready owns VS2003, my advice would be: Dont waste your time.

NE way, im happily back in 2003 and there was no harm done in trying out 2005, i "only" lost about 10 hours work :D
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