Thursday, December 29, 2005

MSVC8

Okay, so when VC8 beta 1 came out, I was very excited - the new compiler was awesome, very close to standards compliance, pushing the envelope in terms of security, nice new compiler options, and the IDE - well it didn't suck.

Microsoft obviously learnt from thier MSVC6 hardcore crowd, that "real" programmers prefer the VC6 interface. Well, at least now VC8 interface mimics the VC6 IDE and also brings onboard the best of the VC7 interface. The intellisense/scanner/parser has also been impressively improved. The interface is still a little slow in terms of response times, so some of the oldskool c++ coders might not upgarde.

All in all, VC8 had me very happy. Couldn't wait for the final thing - a bug free version. I was disapointed.

So far, after installing VC8 on 5 different machines, I've had more problems with it than I did with the VC8 Beta 1! I know the products good so I'm going to keep sinking time into it, but I'm very disapointed that the final version is worse than the first beta. Ohwell.

Heres the first bug fix :
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/viewfeedback.aspx?feedbackid=90a3c883-6f86-4dd4-aef9-d28a8e4c37c9

On other compiler news, I discovered Pelles C the other day, which joins Digital Mars as my favourite 'alternative' compilers. Pelles has this wonderfull import feature and is closely compatible with MSVC, but either it or my code seems to have issues in it since I keep getting wierd problems in the binary. Shame.

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