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Personal preference. 
One of these days, I should reformat my Win 2K partition (since that install is now unusable (thanks Nero!!)) and use it as a testing ground for VC8.
--Mike--
Visual C++ MVP
LINKS~! Ericahist | NEW!! PimpFish | CP SearchBar v3.0 | C++ Forum FAQ
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I use VS6 because it was the last actual product Microsoft delivered to developers. VS.NET is some incompetent designer's ego trip, which does not constitute a product in my estimation.
It is designed to actively work AGAINST programmers. It was designed without user feedback or anything resembling a user study.
I use VS.NET because some clients need features of the VS7 MFC or C++ compiler, and I use it for teaching because most developers are being forced against their will to use it, but have no real choice, so neither do I, as far as teaching.
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VC++ 6.0 by my own preference. Actually, I'd REALLY prefer VC++ 6.1 but we all know that ain't gonna happen.
I bought VC++ 2003 so I could tinker with it but VC++ 6.0 is still proving to be faster to code/develop with. Working with property pages take longer then the wizards. GDI+ is somewhat painful without intellisense in VC++ 6.0 so Microsoft kinda forces me to use VC++ 2003 when integrating GDI+ into my MFC Doc/View apps but intellisense drags and the help takes forever to load in 2003 so to get things done fast, I choose VC++ 6.0 90% of the time still.
Also, the VC++ 6.0 compiler doesn't allow any managed code command line switches which makes it the best darn NT era compiler even if it's not standards compliant. 
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bob16972 wrote: GDI+ is somewhat painful without intellisense in VC++ 6.0
Have you tried Visual Assist[^] yet?
<center> </center>
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I don't do much C++ development, but what little C++ development I do, despite being a Visual Studio 2005 junkie, I tend to focus on the 6.0 version.
There are several reasons. The most important reason is because it keeps me from being tempted to "dirtify" the project with "/CLR". Call me a purist. But for that matter I don't like the IDE cluttered with non-C++ stuff either. The third reason is because usually when I work in C++ I adopt third party source code, and most (or a lot of) open C++ source code for Windows is still written for v6. Finally, in light of that previous point, Visual Studio 2005 is often a breaking compiler for some reason when importing old projects into it.
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I totally use it out of preference.
I have used .net, and It just doesnt feel comfortable, like VC6.
Im not a power user or anything, but I have never had any problems with VC6, however when I tried to port to .net, I never did get all of my projects working.
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VC6 (with WndTabs) by PREFERENCE because it's STABLE and it works. It's a pity that there is no easy way to ungrade the compiler but 99% of the time it's not really an issue.
Like all the others have said the newer IDE's are slow, pathetic, get in your way.
I think it points to the deeper malise within Microsoft where everything seems to be being designed and written by a new generation of college kids with no real world experience... Performance, Stability and Scalability seem to take a back seat to pretty alpha blended graphics and scripting.
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Joey Bloggs wrote: I think it points to the deeper malise within Microsoft where everything seems to be being designed and written by a new generation of college kids with no real world experience
The last time I was at Microsoft, it was far from being overrun with college kids. Yes their products do have (known) bugs, but that should not overshadow what their products do and do well. Given the complexity of their products, it's amazing they even get them out door at all.
"The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own." - Benjamin Disraeli
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So what from your perspective is the root cause of the problem ?
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If I was smart enough to know the answer to that, I might be smart enough to work for Microsoft. There is no single solution to the problem. Microsoft's Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a very complex beast, and has had years of refinement. It has many goals, but also has provisions for trade-offs (e.g., we acknowledge this is a bug, but since it only affects 1%, or some other small percentage, of the user base, it is not considered high priority). Rest assured that no developer touches a line of code without a dozen others knowing about it. I would be totally surprised, not to mention disappointed, if this were not the case. Code reviews are also common, too, so no one person has sole ownership of a function/module/product.
People are often quick to blame Microsoft, and others, when they make the slightest mistake, but suddenly are stricken by laryngitis (or the I-don't-know-but syndrome) when asked what they would do to solve the problem. It's easy to complain when looking from the outside-in.
"The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own." - Benjamin Disraeli
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I use VC6 because that is what the products are developed in. Ours are DLLs and they are loaded dynamically by other DLLs and EXEs that were written with VC6 and some flavor of Java.
I will get around to installing and using VS2005 one of these days, but it will be for my own personal benefit.
"The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own." - Benjamin Disraeli
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I use VC6 for all my development and much of my debugging, and VS2003 for release builds. Why?, the resource editor in VS2003 is very cumbersome, the patchy tools that replace ClassWizard are even more cumbersome, and Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, dropped support for custom DDXs, which I use alot. 
I would love to be able use just one IDE and compiler, but VS2003 is not even close to being a productive tool for MFC Win32 development for the type of work that I do. First looks at VS2005 suggest that none of these issues have been addressed.
I also use EVC 3.0 and 4.0 for PocketPC and CE.NET, adding another two IDEs to do the same thing!
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I used VC6 every day right up until August 2004 when I left Sonardyne. By then, it was well overdue for retirement on that project...the only reason we carried on using it was that it was "a known risk" with zero impact on our build/deployment.
Unfortunately that known risk included the knowledge that daring to open the Class View would crash the IDE, and even loading a workspace was touch and go. The IDE just wasn't designed to deal with a workspace of that size (80 projects and something like 4000 implementation files).
Then of course there was the non-standards compliant compiler, outdated ATL support (if you've used VS2003's ATL7 you'll know what I mean) and the lack of compile time checking on MFC message handler signatures. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
These days I generally only use VS6 when I'm working on a legacy project or (of course) testing one of our add-ins with it (ResOrg has supported it from day 1 of course, and we have a version of Visual Lint in development which runs with it as well as VS2002, 2003 and 2005). Every time I do it feels like a frustrating experience...compiler issues aside, the lack of control the user has over the UI (want to see the File View and the Resource View at the same time? You can't) is annoying. The only thing they seem to have got right is the dialog editor...but then on closer inspection it doesn't support extended dialog styles. More Ouch.
As an add-in author I also have another perspective on it. Writing add-in products for VS6 is a pain - the automation interface is truly pathetic by comparison with VS2002 onwards. Even simple things like showing the status of a toolbar button or implementing a toolwindow aren't possible without diving directly into the innards of the IDE using undocumented features and low level techniques such as hooks and subclassing. Yuck. 
Given all that, you can keep VS6. I'm sticking with VS2003. 
Anna ![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.freetls.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
Currently working mostly on: Visual Lint
Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter
"Be yourself - not what others think you should be"
- Marcia Graesch
"Anna's just a sexy-looking lesbian tart"
- A friend, trying to wind me up. It didn't work.
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I still use VC6 IDE for my employer's C++ product suite, but only because I haven't gotten round to rebuilding the projects in VS2003. It's mainly as case of "its not broken so lets not make work until its really necessary". I've done the conversion on my own image processing software (www.pixcl.com) and its pretty straightforeward, almost (but not quite) seamless.
Stewart DIBBS
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agreed. I use VC6 because I have to in my job. If it were only up to me , I would have stayed with Borland's Xbuilder.
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Well I use VC6 from choice. Albeit with the Intel v9 compiler. I find the user interface of 2003 and 2005 visually unacceptable. I do have a slight visual impairment, being in the geriatric brigade of coders, and I find the simple visual interface of VC6 far superior to any of the later offerings, despite all the wizzy tweaks they have to offer. I have spent time trying tweak the appearance to my needs, but have systematically failed.
I'd look at other IDEs, but I'm not going to do without Visual Assist, unless I really have to.
Rob in the West Riding
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I would love to switch to OCaml but there is no demand for it, so yes I am "still" in C++ waters. Not even the sad fact that VBers took over Code Project can make me change my mind about it
Anyway to answer the question: on Windows side, it is VC++ 2005. On Linux side, it is gvim + ctags + gcc 4.02. I enjoy both. Microsoft IDE has a great debugger, but gvim is a better editor.
My programming blahblahblah blog. If you ever find anything useful here, please let me know to remove it.
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Nemanja
For .NET, are you still using the 2003 MC++ syntax? Or have you moved to 2005 C++/CLI?
Regards,
Nish
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Nishant Sivakumar wrote: For .NET, are you still using the 2003 MC++ syntax?
Still on 2003 MC++ syntax. The reason is that we are getting rid of .NET alltogether and it just doesn't make sense to upgrade it at this point. Maybe if MS finally releases mscfront, I take a day or two and upgrade it.
My programming blahblahblah blog. If you ever find anything useful here, please let me know to remove it.
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Nemanja Trifunovic wrote: The reason is that we are getting rid of .NET alltogether
Hmmmm, interesting. I haven't heard anyone else say that
Regards,
Nish
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Nishant Sivakumar wrote: Hmmmm, interesting. I haven't heard anyone else say that
It simply did not work for us. .NET is a platform for data-centric business applications, but we are developing natural language processing software. It turned out that 90% of core work still needs to be done by native C++ code, and adding .NET on top of that makes little sense. Also, Linux has become a very important target platform, and Mono is too risky to rely on at this stage.
My programming blahblahblah blog. If you ever find anything useful here, please let me know to remove it.
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Ah ok. That makes sense.
Regards,
Nish
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We have about 60 clients running our software on about 50,000 machines. At user group meetings, it has been made very clear to us that anything other than native code is completely unnaccetable to them. It isn't all that long since the last Windows v3.1 machine was removed from the list. We know there are still a lot of Win98 around, and I suspect (with some supporting evidence) that there are Win95 systems around, but not admitted to.
We asked, "What if you all ran XP?". Answers were the same, no CLI. A reasonable percentage said that they'd rather we produce a Linux solution than go down that route. Though I don't see that happening any time soon.
Rob in the West Riding
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Michael P Butler wrote: My last remaining C++ product is maintenance only, and that is done using VC6.
We are not all independent consultants, Michael. Some of us can't just choose to do what we think is exciting! 
Regards,
Nish
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