Customer Rating:  
Summary: C# .NET best of breed if you are a Windows shop
Comment: C# .NET is an easy transition for either a C++ or Java programmer. After crashing and burning on every Visual Basic Project I've ever worked on, this is a refreshing change. Its fast and easy - I only wish that it were an open standard. The code I've written in it and used as pseudo-code ported back to linux with only a few changes and wrappers.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great C++ compiler
Comment: For the price, you can't beat it. Great for making programs while taking a C++ class. Haven't had any problems with the compiler.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent value!
Comment: While Visual C++ Professional is a better choice for those needing to build optimized production code, Standard Edition 2003 rates 5 stars for the price.
This product is targeted at students. Hence the low price and lack of an optimizing compiler.
That said, here are some reasons a professional developer on a tight budget might still want to buy this product:
- Can be used for many projects where compiler optimization is not critical or even relevant: prototyping, debugging, Managed C++, tools, many production apps, etc.
- If you need high-performance compiled code (and can't afford the Pro version) you can download the optimizing compiler free from Microsoft. That compiler compares well overall with anything else available on Windows or Linux.
- Simply the best C++ development environment available at any price. (Class View is far superior to 6.0. GUI-development tools are also far better, once you get used to them.)
- .NET is superior to MFC for GUI development. However, Managed C++ is not the best tool for taking advantage of it.
- .NET is superior to MFC/ATL (COM) for development of distributed applications. (Easier to develop, deploy, manage, etc.)
- One of the most standards-compliant compilers around (unlike 6.0). This is necessary if you want to use a some modern techniques like template metaprogramming.
- Excellent documentation for C++ and STL. (unlike 6.0, but also available online)
- Excellent documentation for Windows API and many other windows-related technologies. (also available online)
- MFC, ATL, and .NET libraries not available with "free" software.
If you are on a shoe-string budget, this product is well worth the price. You will be more productive than you can be with "free" tools, and you will get a better product overall than Visual C++ 6.
That said, 2005 is due out soon. Managed C++ is supposed to be much improved. In addition, a third-tier product will be introduced called Visual C++ Express, presumably at an even cheaper price than Standard.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Thank you all
Comment: I was going to buy a game dev SDK and it required VC++ 2003. Thanks to these reviews I will forget the whole thing and use Dev C++ which is free (and I already use) and use open source game components like Ogre.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Bad and Slow
Comment: You can download this product for free, including the 2005 edition. Despite this fact the VC++.net compiles code that is about 1000 times slower than their visual studio compiler, even after optimizations are turned on (g1-g7.cpp). Even funnier is the fact that when I turn on SSE2 optimizations on their visual studio product, their floating point code test sample (gl-g7.cpp) runs slower on my Pentium 4 2.4 GHz machine (SSE2 enabled) than with the optimizations turned off. Nice advertisement for their optimizing compiler eh?
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![Microsoft Visual C++ .NET Standard 2003 [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516JG91FQEL._SL160_.jpg)
