Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

VC at the PDC

Hello

 

Everyone on the VC team is getting really excited about the upcoming PDC in Los Angeles. This will be our first chance to show you some of our upcoming features and a great way for us to get feedback direct from you on what we have implemented so far and what we have planned. PDCs are always one of our most exciting events to speak at, given the forward looking nature of the program (and, to be truthful, we learn as much about what other teams are planning as attendees do sometimes!) Just wanted to add a small reminder that VC will be presenting two sessions at the PDC and invite any of you who will be there to drop by and meet us. The two sessions are:

 

·         Microsoft Visual C++: 10 Is the New 6, presented by Boris Jabes.

 

·         Microsoft Visual Studio: Building Applications with MFC, presented by myself.

 

Also attending from VC will be Arjun Bijanki and Raman Sharma; all four of us will be delighted to meet you during the event, at one of the above sessions or look for us in the lounge too. Once we have our lounge sessions booked we will post the times here, if you would like to arrange to meet.

 

Thanks

Damien

Published Friday, October 10, 2008 3:54 PM by vcblog

Comments

Friday, October 10, 2008 7:01 PM by VC at the PDC : EasyCoded

# VC at the PDC : EasyCoded

PingBack from http://www.easycoded.com/vc-at-the-pdc/

Saturday, October 11, 2008 10:58 AM by James

# re: VC at the PDC

10 is the new 6? Seriously?!

I know people who are still traumatized by VC6. Is this going to be a compiler that, although reasonable for its time, is chock full of nasty bugs, ships with an out-of-date library, then hangs around for far too long without getting any better?

Saturday, October 11, 2008 11:13 AM by Mark R.

# re: VC at the PDC

When they say "10 is the new 6", I really think they're trying to convey the increase in focus on VC++ with the upcoming v10 release of Visual Studio.

VC6 had its problems, sure, but it was also very performant and didn't treat VC++ as an afterthought (with the .NET Framework technology stack getting all the focus and resources).

Since a huge percentage of commercial application developers are using VC++, this renewed focus is most welcome (and really overdue).

Monday, October 13, 2008 2:37 PM by small_mountain

# re: VC at the PDC

A question I'd love to hear answered is:  Why are a huge percentage of commercial app developers still using VC++?  Is it just a reluctance to invest in conversion to .NET?  Not enough gain for the pain?  Waiting for the .NET stack to mature?

I'm concerned that Microsoft is spreading itself too thin trying to support the VC++/MFC stack *and* the .NET/WinForms stack *and* the .NET/WPF stack.  I've got an aging VC++/MFC app that I'd like to modernize, and the only real option is to keep the non-visual parts in native VC++ and move the UI to WPF, which is clearly superior UI technology to either MFC or WinForms.  But that route does not seem to be a focus for Microsoft.  Their WPF focus seems to be on pure XAML/C# apps, mostly database front-ends.  There seems to be very little focus on putting everything in WPF that would allow VC++/MFC apps to move forward, at least so far.  The VC++/C++/CLI/WPF hybrid seems technically doable, but I suspect I'll feel like I'm the only person on Earth doing it.

Eric

Monday, October 13, 2008 5:34 PM by Ben Voigt [C++ MVP]

# re: VC at the PDC

The "non-visual parts in native VC++ and move the UI to WPF" is exactly what Microsoft is trying to optimize.  You're just missing one detail:

non-visual parts in (mixed native and managed) C++ and WPF UI wired in C#

You ask why are people still using C++?  Because it's portable portable portable when done right, almost as portable as Java with far lower overhead and better performance.

Monday, October 13, 2008 8:20 PM by Stephan T. Lavavej [MSFT]

# re: VC at the PDC

Yes, "10 Is The New 6" refers to the IDE, not to the compiler and libraries. The compiler and libraries have steadily improved from VC6 to VC7.0 to VC7.1 to VC8 to VC9 (to VC9 SP1, with TR1 and MFC goodies!), and I like to say that "10 Is Greater Than 9".

After PDC, we'll have VCBlog posts explaining the new compiler and library features in great detail.

Stephan T. Lavavej, Visual C++ Libraries Developer

Monday, October 13, 2008 10:22 PM by Long-time ISV

# re: VC at the PDC

> Why are a huge percentage of commercial app developers still using VC++

Well, maybe because for client (desktop) applications, distributing the .NET Framework (any version of it, really) is a significant burden?

Maybe it's because most WinForms apps take forever to start up, no matter how well they're written (yes, even the stuff written by MS and running on my quad-core machine with 4GB RAM)?

Maybe it's because MS has a severe case of shiny object syndrome, and as soon as we have the time to think about WinForms - they shift the bulk of their focus to WPF and nobody knows *what* the heck to use anymore?

Or maybe it's just because VC++ works incredibly well when done right (avoiding all of the above)?

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 6:37 AM by sdhe

# re: VC at the PDC

Nah, it is the millions of page-faults in WinForms and GDI+ per minute..

Than there is the lack of expertise in .NET framework design internally, and lack of language design skills in C# team.

.NET targets masses, C++ targets all the top apps.

Good luck with that WPF for UI and C++ for logic, been there 10 times and back. Not worth it really, WPF is so much overhead it is incredible. All the idioms of WPF and C# are so, so wasteful.

Frankly, it is nothing different to Java days, it will be sluggish and irritating for users. Heaven forbid you try to do something time-critical..

About time MS got some resources in C++ and VC teams.. They shouldn't have invested more in .NET in the first place. It was and still is the root of all problems being overstreched and now having to catch up with Intel on basic std containers performance and more is coming..

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 11:39 AM by Arun Raj

# re: VC at the PDC

Wow... "10 is the new 6" !!!

This type of marketing will definitely get backfired.

Visual C++ 6.0 was horrible from a compiler pointof view. It was not a standard compliant (though it was okay at that time, but it was really really lagging behind). There were many bugs in compiler. The standard library included was really bad..(I still remember we had to use STLPort).

Also Visual C++ 6.0 has released quite a few service packs within a short period of time to address various issues.

Moreover Visual C++ 6.0 (during late 1999 and early 2000) gave us the impression that the future of C++ development in Microsoft environment was a not recommended path. Everyone was talking about upcoming .NET and Microsoft was not updating the compiler/libraries etc.

So IMHO please do not use the term "10 is the new 6" !!!!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 4:25 PM by longtime VC++ user

# re: VC at the PDC

I consider it a positive thing that VC6 had multiple service packs.  Ideally, it's nice to pretend software doesn't need service packs but this generally leads to quality problems.  And, it's a shame that customers need to continually buy the latest product version to get bug fixes... especially when the new versions are larger, slower, more complicated, less reliable, and introduce too many new problems related to a failure to manage complexity.  

If anything, I'd like VC10 to focus more on Quality and less on Shiny New Doodads.  Also, talk about code bloat: VC6 was a blazingly fast IDE - later IDEs are just blazingly slow.   So, I'm in favor of the 10 IDE being the new 6.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 4:52 PM by Arun Raj

# re: VC at the PDC

>>So, I'm in favor of the 10 IDE being the new 6

I agree, but ONLY on IDE (not on anything else)

I too prefer the Visual C++ 6.0 IDE over the newly created bloat.. But thats it. regarding the standard library implementation, it was really horrible..The compiler too had many bugs.

Whats the point in a good fast IDE, if the compiler and the standard library are bad ?

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 5:33 PM by Ted

# VC 6.0

VC++ 6.0 was released ten years ago (1998)

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&x=16&y=6&p1=3003

Microsoft needs to address legacy development and porting non-Visual Studio C++/C code to Visual Studio.

The releases VS .NET and later have been lacking in these tools.  I've ported many unix/linux C++ applications to MS Visual Studio/windows and found that Visual Studio .NET tools for this purpose are minimial.

I've have to create an empty project and add the source files up the application 1 source file at a time just to get a clean compile and link.  This is not necessarily the fault of Microsoft but a combination of the forgiving nature of linux/unix C++ compilers.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 5:39 AM by Rajesh [VC++ MVP]

# re: VC at the PDC

@ Arun Raj:

Stephan T. Lavavej [MSFT] wrote >> Yes, "10 Is The New 6" refers to the IDE, not to the compiler and libraries.

Arun Raj wrote >> I agree, but ONLY on IDE (not on anything else) ... the standard library implementation, it was really horrible..The compiler too had many bugs.

Stephan has already clearly said that it is the IDE that MS is referring to and not libraries or compiler, which have improved over the time. So I just don't get the point on you talking about the libraries and compiler after his reply. Are you just killing time?

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 9:14 AM by R.J

# re: VC at the PDC

What about C++0x (C++09)?

Is there any chance that VC10 support C++09?

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 12:13 PM by S. Colcord

# re: VC at the PDC

>> Is there any chance that VC10 support C++09?

Given that C++0x probably won't be ratified until late '09 at the earliest, it seems unlikely that they'd be able to implement support for it in VC10.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 5:19 PM by SvenC

# re: VC at the PDC

Funny, how the moaners and whiners come out loud no matter what you do.

As Microsoft started to improve the C++ compiler and library the IDE moaners came out ranting how much better VC6 was.

Now Microsoft tells us that they listened and want to bring back the good VC6 feeling the other whiners come out to tell us how bad VC6 was.

Just like WinXP moaners telling us that MacOS is so much cooler and the Vista whiners telling us they don't need any of those 3D GUI stuff.

That looks so childish to me. To the moaners out there: how about getting perfect yourself before telling others to be perfect.

Well, I am pretty excited how VS (for me mostly VC++ and a bit of C#) evolves and I like being able to choose a proper tool fitting the problem.

Keep on the good work!

--

SvenC

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 7:03 PM by R.J

# re: VC at the PDC

As I know the standard is almost complete after September meeting and some compiler like GCC start to experimenting it or at least implementing some of it's features.

I really can't wait to see it in VC++.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 8:02 PM by rbiro

# re: VC at the PDC

While it might seem sad to say, DevStudio6 was the pinnacle of Microsoft C++ IDE.

All we wanted out of DevStudio were a few incremental IDE things:

More IDE standardization between VB and VC.  Placing buttons on a form should have been universal.  Equivalent toolbar layouts.

A NOT COM-language addon to VB so regular C++ classes could be easily imported into VB "classes" - thus making the fantasy of Developing the business layer in C/C++ and the GUI in VB closre to a reality.

The ability for the VC IDE Designer to make arrays of controls like in VB.

The ability for the VC IDE Designer to embed controls in panels in an Object Oriented way like in VB

The ability for VC to make modeless dialogs much more straightforward.

And of course for Microsoft to flush out support for ATL/COM so that we could use move from MFC to ATL/COM like they wanted us to in 1998 - but they suddenly became too busy migrating us to .Net 1.0 - I mean .Net 1.1 - I mean .Net 2.0 - I mean WinForms - I mean XML - I mean XAML - I mean WPF - I mean Ribbons...

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 8:21 PM by R.J

# re: VC at the PDC

Edit:

As I know the standard has been almost completed after September meeting and some compiler like GCC started to experimenting it or at least implementing some of it's features.

I really can't wait to see it in VC++.

Thursday, October 16, 2008 12:55 PM by longtime VC++ user

# re: VC at the PDC

well said rbiro!

But don't forget the extreme busy-ness and focus on .Net 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, CLR, Interop, CLI.

Thursday, October 16, 2008 1:27 PM by SvenC

# re: VC at the PDC

@rbiro:

> More IDE standardization between VB and VC.

> Placing buttons on a form should have been

> universal. Equivalent toolbar layouts.

That was started with VS.Net. But at the beginning you will loose functionality as you cannot do everything at once.

> A NOT COM-language addon to VB so regular

> C++ classes could be easily imported into

> VB "classes"

How should that work without COM? There is no binary standard for the layout of C++ classes. So using COM with its vtable layout and IUnknown for lifetime managment (AddRef/Release) and dynamic casting (QueryInterface) is just the solution as this is the only binary standard you have. And using interfaces helps to get versioning right. Doing that with any C++ class hierarchie which you enhance over time would be challenging.

And what about template classes. Is template exporting implemented by C++ compilers?

> thus making the fantasy of Developing the

> business layer in C/C++ and the GUI in

> VB closre to a reality.

That is the whole point of XAML and stuff like the Expression tools.

I agree that WinForms did not make sense. It felt so wrong to get all the GUI layout stuff added in source code stuff and avoiding GUI resources like good old rc files.

But I guess that again was just a problem of timing and not being ready to ship the real thing which was designed to separate devs and designers: XAML

> The ability for the VC IDE Designer to

> embed controls in panels in an Object

> Oriented way like in VB

You call it OO others would call it RAD. Not everything which you can grab and drag around is object oriented ;-)

> And of course for Microsoft to flush out

> support for ATL/COM

Sorry, I am not a native speaker. What does flush out mean? Is it enhance support or drop support?

> Net 1.0 - I mean .Net 1.1 - I mean .Net 2.0

> I mean WinForms

I don't like WinForms either

> I mean XML

First class XML support is essential. Unfortunately XSLT 2.0 and XQuery will only be added to the managed world. MSXML stays where it is.

> I mean XAML - I mean WPF

Which is the same

> I mean Ribbons...

Which is wonderful for us devs and in Office it has a native COM interface and is so much better to develop with than command bars. So much control with callback events. You should try it, it is really a good thing!

I didn't look much at the Feature Pack as we use a different VC++ control vendor (codejock) but if they offer the same Ribbon support than the Office implementation gives you, it should be really nice to use.

--

SvenC

Thursday, October 16, 2008 8:26 PM by Stephan T. Lavavej [MSFT]

# re: VC at the PDC

[SvenC]

> Sorry, I am not a native speaker. What does flush out mean? Is it enhance support or drop support?

From the context, it appears that "flesh out" was intended, meaning "enhance support".

Thursday, October 16, 2008 8:58 PM by R.J

# re: VC at the PDC

A native XML based GUI layer is really missing in MFC.

Friday, October 17, 2008 4:26 AM by ZiloT

# re: VC at the PDC

> A native XML based GUI layer is really missing in MFC.

Almost agree with you. I hate *.rc!!!

Friday, October 17, 2008 1:09 PM by R.J

# re: VC at the PDC

But first VC++ needs a good, reliable and standard look (maybe a template based) XML library.

Nowadays we can see XML almost everywhere in software world, but Unfortunately there is no XML classes in the c++ standard library and worse is there won't be any in c++09.

:(

Monday, October 20, 2008 6:56 PM by GregM

# re: VC at the PDC

Hopefully this focus on the IDE means that they will be taking care of all of the productivity things that they've removed or broken ("By Design"/"Won't Fix") from the IDE since 6.0.

Using a dropdown combobox instead of a checkbox for Yes/No options in the resource editor.  

Removal of the "match case", "match whole word", and "use regular expression" toolbar buttons. (105507)

Making the search tool randomly switch to "selection" instead of "Current document" when doing an incremental search. (105673)

Disabling the standard F4 to open combobox dropdown in the search dialog. (374703)

Simple column select mode replaced with separate navigation functions for extending the selection as a column. (139752/108814)

Changed column select text on a single line and paste puts cursor at the end of the pasted selection instead of the beginning.

Removed ability to change language and tab settings for an individual file loaded in the IDE. (105749)

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 4:15 AM by Sniffy

# re: VC at the PDC

I would like to see a redesign of the .vcproj system to be more 'progammable' like makefiles, and less raw-data-ish.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 12:27 PM by Visual C++ Team Blog

# Follow-up Post on VC at the PDC

Hello After my recent post on VC at the PDC I had a number of people ask me which PDC sessions I would

Saturday, October 25, 2008 9:54 AM by xieqidong

# re: VC at the PDC

Can we read the manuscript of "Microsoft Visual C++: 10 is the new 6" after PDC?

Tuesday, October 28, 2008 7:47 AM by Stan Lippman

# re: VC at the PDC

It's so funny to see a lot of people complaining about v6. Actually it was better than any newer versions of VC comparing to it's timeline.

Sunday, November 02, 2008 12:10 AM by vcblog

# re: VC at the PDC

Hello xieqidong

> Can we read the manuscript of "Microsoft Visual C++: 10 is the new 6" after PDC?

You can see the recordings of all PDC sessions online, here are the links for our two talks:

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/TL13/

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC26/

Thanks

Damien

Sunday, November 02, 2008 12:13 AM by vcblog

# re: VC at the PDC

Hello R.J

> What about C++0x (C++09)? Is there any chance that VC10 support C++09?

Please have a look at this posting for some details on our C++0x support:

http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2008/10/28/lambdas-auto-and-static-assert-c-0x-features-in-vc10-part-1.aspx

Thanks

Damien

Friday, November 07, 2008 2:11 PM by Amit

# re: VC at the PDC

>I would like to see a redesign of the .vcproj system to be more 'progammable' like makefiles, and less raw-data-ish.

With the release of Visual Studio 10 we are moving to a MSBuild based build system. MSBuild provides better diagnostics, extensibility.

Because of this move the project file will be more programmable and customers will be able to extend the build system and customize it according to their  build requirements.

More on MSBuild:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wea2sca5(VS.80).aspx

Thanks,

Amit

New Comments to this post are disabled
 
Page view tracker