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Depends on what you want to do. For most things, in my experience it's not as bad as people make it out to be. Try using other compilers/toolchains, specifically GCC/ld/GDB, and then get back to us about what's pathetic 
For really advanced template stuff, yeah it's got some problems, but I don't think that's the way most people program, even now.
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Jim Crafton wrote: For really advanced template stuff, yeah it's got some problems, but I don't think that's the way most people program, even now.
It's not just templates. VC6 compiles a lot of code that it really shouldn't even without a warning and that can lead to nasty run-time crashes. Also, it misses a great number of optimizations available to modern compilers. It was a great compiler when it was released, but it was in 1998. What other software from 1998 do you use?
My programming blahblahblah blog. If you ever find anything useful here, please let me know to remove it.
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Maybe so, but it's still better than something like GCC.
And the code goof-ups are relatively easy to train yourself on, once you've tried compiling your code on another compiler. Still I agree it's got a number of problems, but it's all I have access to that can build what I need to. If MS offered a pro version of VC++ in the $300-500 range I'd upgrade, but for now it's just not an option.
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Jim Crafton wrote: Maybe so, but it's still better than something like GCC.
You mean the VC++6 compiler is better than GCC? Nope, it is not. Version 4 of gcc is really good, and even versions 3.x were pretty much OK. If you are referring to the lack of a good IDE for gcc, then yes, but we already agreed that VC6 has a great IDE but outdated compiler
My programming blahblahblah blog. If you ever find anything useful here, please let me know to remove it.
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Well based on my experience wiht the VCF, GCC 3.x is still dog slow in terms of compiling performance, and still produces really fat binaries compared to VC6 (this is with linux, windows, and OSX versions of GCC). GCC4, which I have only tried on OSX, is better than GCC 3.x, but still slower that VC6 at compiling and still produces fat binaries. In terms of executable performance I can't say. It would be interesting to see someone put up GCC 4 benchmarks like they did with the Dr Dobbs article from a year or two ago.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire!
Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)!
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Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
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> It was a great compiler when it was released, but it was in 1998. What other software from
> 1998 do you use?
None--which is why I think this is a testament to how good VC6 was, not how bad.
For the record, I'm still on VC6 and lovin' it. 
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No, it's not pathetic. I prefer it to that frilly piece of VB wanna-be garbage we know as VS2005.
------- sig starts
"I've heard some drivers saying, 'We're going too fast here...'. If you're not here to race, go the hell home - don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Why don't you tie a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt
"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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At the Canadian bank where I consult, VC6 is still the standard for C++ development. However there is very little development done in C++ any more, but in order to maintain the few C++ applications, the platform is to remain unchanged. The amount of time that I spend compiling, is so small that even considering the advances in the compiler, I don't think there is much of a business case that can be made. For example, I probably spend less than 30 minutes a day compiling, so even if the newer compiler was 100% faster, I'm only going to save 15 minutes a day. That's a hard sell. I expect though that at some point in the future, say when the user base is moving to 64 bit machines, I will have to 'upgrade' to newer version of VC and <crosses fingers> hope </crosses fingers> that the various applications's projects still compile.
Chris Meech
I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar]
When I want privacy, I'll close the bathroom door. [Stan Shannon]
Nice sig! [Tim Deveaux on Matt Newman's sig with a quote from me]
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I use it because I have not finished porting 500K+ lines of MFC to VC.NET. I am actually working on this now and its going well (I have about 1/2 of the code compiling without error). At this rate I should be finished by the end of the week but I have not done any type of testing at all on the new code so if anything breaks during testing it will greatly add to the time...
John
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John M. Drescher wrote: I use it because I have not finished porting 500K+ lines of MFC to VC.NET.
Yep, the increased standards compliance means that unless you wrote your VC6 code with a copy of the standard sitting in front of you, you are going to be making a lot of changes to just get the code to compile.
Regards,
Nish
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I don't blame them for that bacause gcc has done the same thing but I wish they would have had a compatibility mode (gcc does not have this feature either). The hardest part is the code that I did not write. Stuff from codeproject, or even codeguru. This time (I tried 2 years ago and gave up because it was too much of an effort) I am finding it a lot easier to port because a lot of the codeproject code has been updated but there still is a lot of work because I never just copy posted code I always edit and update...
John
-- modified at 11:33 Monday 30th January, 2006
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I would tend to agree. I think the issues faced with upgrading would depend largely on how 'wacked' your code was in the first place. If you adopted every ATL/Template/Whatsit that came out along the way, surely you will have problems. If you were writing fairly straightforward, clear C++ all along, then probably no changes required a tall. Consider this, you wrote allt hat stuf fin obscure ATL so it would be protable and reusable. So, now that a new standard is out .. blah blah blah .. how reuseable is it now and how much work is it to decipher that crap and get it back to something following a standard?
People that start writing code immediately are programmers (or hackers), people that ask questions first are Software Engineers - Graham Shanks
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If anyone is still interested... Apart from an runtime error in a sharedlib with resources not being found (hopefully I will solve that one today). I was able to port all 500K+ lines to VC.NET 2003 in about 2 weeks. Once I got through 2 dlls that contain a lot of code that I was not the primary author the porting was very easy. Here are a few details of how I did that: About 1 day of the time spent was modifying my build system to get my code to parallel build and install. In both systems I build from the shell using .bat commands and a very structured folder layout that grab needed dlls/libs, build the code, create an install .exe that contains source code, documentation along with release, debug and debugrelease targets. With the help of CVS I was able to setup sandboxes for each compiler and the only difference that was not committed into CVS was a single batch file in the batch folder for each target on VC.NET that set an environment variable that stated we were building for vc71.
John
John
-- modified at 11:13 Monday 6th February, 2006
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the main reason for me is a *nostalgic* reason 
well, actually, i still use VC++6 for the old projects i already designed with it, which i did not migrate for VC++ 2003 yet...
on a GUI user point of view, i love VC6, and thanks to Visual Assist, it became inseparable from me now. the only thing really missing is certainly some tabs that allow to switch between the open files...
for newer projects, i create them for VC++ 2003 for standard compliance, IDE ergonomy...
and for a financial reason (as i donnot use Visual C++ at work), i still don't have the money for Visual Studio Pro 2005... waiting for CP offers for that...
TOXCCT >>> GEII power
[toxcct][VisualCalc 2.20][VCalc 3.0 soon...]
-- modified at 12:01 Monday 30th January, 2006
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toxcct wrote: the only thing really missing is certainly some tabs that allow to switch between the open files...
You mean like WndTabs[^] ?
WndTabs makes VS.NET IDE looking like a child's toy. E.g. you can group .cpp and .h files on one tab to save the space. You can get CVS status of the file with CVS plugin etc...
<center> </center>
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George wrote: WndTabs makes VS.NET IDE looking like a child's toy.
Yes, it's a world class add-in. I wonder if Oz has any plans to apply a similar treatment to VS 2003/5? Perhaps it's too difficult or too much work?
Kevin
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yeah, i know WndTabs...
i talked about native tabs, with the look&feel of VC6 ide. i also tried another plugin like this one called VSBooster, but unfortunately, it was not free...
TOXCCT >>> GEII power
[toxcct][VisualCalc 2.20][VCalc 3.0 soon...]
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Nope, personal pref. VC 2003 is ok. The extra compile performance and language is nice, but I don't really need it* to get my job done at work (with the exception of integrating with some 3rd party API's). And at home I just can't justify spending $1000 for an IDE.
*oops - helps to use the correct grammar!
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire!
Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)!
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-- modified at 20:37 Monday 30th January, 2006
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Jim Crafton wrote: And at home I just can't justify spending $1000 for an IDE.
This one[^] is free of charge.
My programming blahblahblah blog. If you ever find anything useful here, please let me know to remove it.
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Right, but it's CRT support is hobbled in such a way to make it useless for me. You can't create DLL's that link dynamically to the CRT.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire!
Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)!
SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
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Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
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On the contrary - VS.NET is actually forced and I have the same feeling about VS.NET as about Lotus Notes: Just can't understand how can they get away with such useless and buggy piece of crap!? Both applications are pushed on by either bad managers (Lotus) or bad coders (VS.NET) who just don't know any better and fall for the propaganda...
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My guess would be that most of those who do, do it because they *have* to - for some reason.
Nope, quite the opposite.
Out of preference: Yes. VS6 IDE is streets ahead of VS 2002, 2003, 2005.
Because the company says so: Yes. VC6 is much more productive than 2002, 2003, 2005. Pointless having engineers fighting a tool that is needlessly awkward to use.
2002 was awful.
2003 was an improvement but still broken
2005 is getting close to being usable like VS6 but it still isn't there.
Frankly there is no excuse for having a great product like VS6 and then breaking it so badly that you dread using any of the versions that come afterwards. This is 5 years after .NET arrived and still no decent IDE?
None obvious UI usage:
o Broken keybindings. They should be the same as VS6 out of the box. The compatiblity mode is broken - it doesn't map things correctly.
o How to get the filename and path of a source file?
VS6. Properties.
VS7 and above, hover over the tab and wait. Good grief.
o How to set Project properties?
VS6. Choose Settings on the Project menu.
VS7 and above. Even though you are editing the project (that is implicit) you have to select the project and then choose an entry on a menu. That is brain dead. Just broken. Such poor design its unbelievable.
o No MFC GUI builder support, despite the fact there are millions of MFC project around the world that need to be supported, and if you are doing native C++ you'll want to use MFC (unless you are wxWidgets or Qt).
o and so on...
Its as if Symantec Cafe and Delphi poisoned the well. Just awful.
Read the microsoft newsgroups. This subject comes up time after time. There are plenty of VS6 users. Looking at the feedback notes at Software Verification I can see that VS6 is still used by a lot of people and that many people are forced to use the newer tools they dislike by management.
Its a shame as the debugger and compiler are meant to be better than the VS6 one, but productivity is where it is at. The VS6 IDE wins without even trying. If I have to fight the IDE to get my work done then something is wrong with the IDE.
Mind you, I recently had to use NetBeans and Eclipse. Ouch. Netbeans 4.1 was a step backwards from 4.0. How do people do that? Why break stuff that works?
Stephen Kellett
--
http://www.softwareverify.com
Tools for C++, Visual Basic, Delphi, Java, Python, Ruby, Lua, JavaScript
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I've used many IDEs over the last couple of years - KDevelop, JBuilder, Netbeans, VS.NET studio. None come close to VC6.
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Agreed, I've used the same IDEs, the VC6 is a really great IDE.
I really prefer NB 4.0 to the newer versions, SUN kinda ruined it, hopefully they'll turn it around.
It is not a requirement to use VC6 at work but several hundred of us do along with C++ which is our corporate standard. The types of applications we have to maintain and create need to run and be debugged on old systems  and VC6 doesn't require much horse power at all.
I don't understand why people say that there aren't jobs using the older stuff  (even for the fact of migration/maintenance). There are probably billions of lines of code in running programs that are still in use today which are decades old (*nux/Mac/Windows). A lot of companies like mine, in the electronics manufacturing industry, look for that kind of skill (C++/MFC/STL). I guess you look for what you think that you need.
I'll use whatever I need to get the job done though, right tool for the job and all that  , no need to argue about which is better, just try to get over the hype.
A programmer with a dream can accomplish anything. So, start by implementing your castle in the clouds and then working on its interface to a foundation
Quote by: Jeremy Pemberton-Pigott
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Stephen Kellett wrote: This is 5 years after .NET arrived and still no decent IDE?
And doo keep in mind that VC6 was release in 1998 (or maybe 1997)! 8 years later and still nothing much better?!!! 
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire!
Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)!
SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
0 rows returned
Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
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