I attended the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 / Visual Studio .net 2003 Launch event (hey it was right next door, and it was free!). Mostly marketing hype, but the last session covered some great features in VC++ 2003:

  • “98%” C++ ISO compliant (now supports template partial specialization, compiles boost, loki and blitz++ out of the box…)
  • whole-program optimization, can inline across modules
  • better intellisense, faster dynamic help, faster startup, generate html from comments
  • support for Windows Forms via Forms Designer – includes docking and auto-resizing layout capabilities – but generated code is “managed” (allocations are done on the .net garbage collected heap hrmmm…) – you can derive forms!
  • /G7 optimization switch for P4/Athlon, “5-15% improvement”
  • /GS security switch to check for buffer overflows and exception table hacking
  • /arch:SSE/SSE2 for improved (“2-3%”) floating-point performance

    Time to break it out…

  • Leave a Reply