The short answer to the question in the title is: In Whidbey, ^ and gcnew are mostly all you're likely to use, if all you're doing with .NET is consuming (using) .NET Frameworks types and services. Post-Whidbey, you could even dispense with those...

Edward Diener made the observation (emphasis is mine): I would much rather the syntax remained as consistent with C++ as possible and the places where CLI diverged from C++ occur because GC types are different than C++ types in that they are...

Edward Diener asked: I don't see why you don't use just 'new' rather than 'gcnew' ? The type of T will determine whether the obect is allocated in GC collected memory or the C++ heap. That's one way to design it. Interestingly, the existing...