MS Visual Studio 6.0 vs. MS Visual Studio .NET

[Superwormy]

Taking a programming class, they use MS Visual Studio .NET.

We will just be doing console apps for now ( beginners C++ class ).

I really don't want to buy a copy of .NET if I dont have to... and I already have an educational version of 6.0

Can I get away with just using 6.0? What are the major differences? Anything I need to worry about? Ways to get around features that 6.0 is lacking?

 

[tkdkid]

Nope, that won't work. .Net is very different.

If you're into programming, you'll really like it. It's much more powerful and flexible than VB6.

 

[Superwormy]

Um... we're not using Visual Basic.

It's a C / C++ class, using Visual Studio .NET to write console applications.

Again, will I run into any problems, and are there ways to avoid them?

 

[dighn]

if the course is just on c/c++, you won't be using any .net features so vc6 is just fine. i don't think any programming course would use .net unless it is specifically a .net course.

one thing to watch out for is you probably won't be able to open project files created in .net in 6.0 but for beginner c/c++ you probably won't deal with many source files so you can just copy the source files directly

vc++6 does have some bugs that aren't in vc++7 but no big deal really. a couple that i know of is the getline() function requiring two returns, and improper scoping in case like for(int i...) but again the first one can be fixed and the second one can be avoided by choosing different names

 

[PricklyPete]

As long as you are not using C++ with managed extensions and are just writing "pure" C++/C, you should be fine. If you use any of the features offered by .NET (i.e. wrting C++ w/ managed extensions), then you'll be in the hole. I think getting Visual Studio.NET would be a great idea. Learning .NET would be very beneficial...it is a great technology.

 

[oog]

heck, if it is pure c++, you could use any of a number of compilers out there.

 

[Descartes]

The C++ compiler that comes with VS.NET is considerably more ANSI compliant, but other than that you can use VC++ 6 without issue. Unfortunately, the .NET SDK does not include a C++ compiler, so if they're using facilities of VS.NET that aren't present in VC++ 6, you'll need to get VS.NET.

 

[DT4K]

Talk to your prof.
It seems odd to me that they would be doing a beginning C++ class with VS.Net unless you are going to be using some of the .Net features, in which case, you will probably need it.
In all my Java and C classes, we used notepad or DOS Edit as the development environment and javac and gcc to compile.

 

[HJB417]

it makes total sense to use vc.net++ over vc6, mainly because of what Descartes mentioned, but also, as an IDE for C++, .NET F***ING OWNS VC6. The debugger is awesome, the made the UI prettier, and ya, already mentioned, but more ANSI compliant. I remember VC6 was bitchin about I used my for loops

e.x.:

for(int i = 0; ;);
for(int i = 0; ;);
for(int i = 0; ;);

The above resulted in a nay-no when compiling in vc6

in vs.net
for(int i = 0; ;)
for(int i = 0; ;)
for(int i = 0; ;)

Wah da tah! it compiles!

bah, i give up w/ the tags