About Visual C++ 2008 Express

Well, it’s been a while since I last created a post, I have been a bit busy working on Visual C++. Although it is called Visual C++, the Express Edition doesn’t include MFC or ATL, thus, you can create your native applications with WinAPI, or you can create a slow .NET project.

Of course, I didn’t choose the .NET way, and started using direct WinAPI. While searching net for some info, I stumbled upon Gil Dabah’s Blog. He has a huge blog where you can find anything about low-level programming, including Windows, Linux and assembly. Although I couldn’t understand this guy’s most posts, the ones who can understand should have a look. Believe me, he is a very nice person, and he will be glad to hear from you.

Back to Visual C++, I have finished some projects with it. Until now, I can say that I’m extremely satisfied with the precision of the control it gives you on everything.

I never thought that I would do this, but I want to thank Microsoft for creating an IDE like this.

Happy coding

I, for one, welcome our Visual C++ overlords.

This is it. I’m leaving all of my coding history and switching to Visual C++ 2008. This IDE is so beautiful that I can’t stand its charm any longer.

I’m sorry, but the other tools on the market just don’t get it right. We warned the ones who we think are valuable and worth warning. They kept ignoring us, deleting suggestions, making comments offline, and telling lies. They don’t know what their customers want, and they ignore the ones who know.

It isn’t an easy decision to leave a language which you spent almost 20 years. Something gives me pain in my heart. But the pain is more when I look the state of my precious language. Most of the time I made myself believe that everything will be good. But things kept going from bad to worse. I don’t want to give a name, but everybody is guilty in this.

Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on other development tools I was speaking about, from now on. Just look at the screenshot at Wikipedia. Does this IDE deserve this bad quality?

I wish you good luck, you know who you are.

A look into Visual Studio 2008, Part 1

Honestly, I never liked Microsoft, and Microsoft products in the past, because of obvious reasons. I said “in the past”, because that is mostly changed now.

Last week, one of my friends brought me a DVD of Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition, and urged me to try it. He knows that I always hated the SDI (Single Document Interface) view of Visual Studio IDE, but I promised to take a look at it. And I’m really glad that I did.

Overall, the Setup screen has a really good design, and the colors are giving you some hints of the programming world which waits you ahead.

Because I wanted native Win32 programming, I went with Visual C++ setup. After extraction of temporary setup files, the setup started.

I have unchecked the “Yes, send information about my setup experiences to Microsoft Corporation” box, and clicked Next. (A note to Microsoft: When will you stop asking about my experience on your products? I refused to give any data to you on Live Messenger, Windows Live Toolbar and all other Microsoft tools in the past, so why are you asking again and again? I will not give any data about my experiences on anything, especially my bed experience with my girlfriends. So stop bugging me.)

After clicking Next, license screen has appeared. It’s the usual yada yada, so I clicked Next. You better read it though, It tells that Microsoft is your real mommy, and owns every right and patent about you and the rest of the universe.

I accepted the license to continue setup, but inside me god knows I never actually did. Anyway, after clicking Next button, two options appeared magically.

The installer program decided that I need these, so I just clicked next. The next screen gave me the opportunity to choose the installation folder, and I really appreciate it, because the ones I really wanted to disable are below that folder selection box, but those are not editable.

After a long hard battle setting up installation folder, I clicked Next button and the installation has started while Star Wars – Main Theme is playing at the background.

Setup program installed the following, one by one.

• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Bruce Almighty Edition
• Microsoft Windows SDK for Visual Studio 2008 Headers and Libraries (x86)
• Microsoft Windows SDK for Visual Studio 2008 Express Tools for .NET Framework (x86)
• Microsoft Windows SDK for Visual Studio 2008 Express Tools for Win32 (x86)
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition (Including Ballmer support classes)
• MSDN Express Library for Visual Studio 2008 (Necronomicon included)
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition (x86)

Everything is automatically installed in almost 40 minutes, and I watched recent “Developers, Developers, Developers” hit from Steve Ballmer while installation, over and over again.

Well, we’ll continue later with the evidence that Microsoft wants to rule the planet.