techie said:
I'm a VC++ programmer with around 5 years of experience using VC++6. My
company have plans to migrate to VS 2005 in the future. I know C++/CLI is
I hope you are aware that switching to newer compiler does not mean you also
have to change programming language (as C++/CLI is NOT C++). If your company
has plans for migration to C++/CLI , that is porting all code (and/or writing
new one) on .NET then go ahead and learn about .NET and THEN C++/CLI . Be
aware that this is steep learning curve. C++/CLI is much more complex than
simple sum of complexity of these two: standard C++ and .NET , as it also
defines interactions between them two, and these interactions are anything but
simple. Once you start writing in C++/CLI your programs will REQUIRE .NET
framework 2.0 to work (as a runtime environment). But this is NOT the only way
to go with VC8.
It's quite possible that your employer just find newer version of Visual C++
compiler better than VC6 (rightly so, but there are some bugs and annoyances
that will be fixed in SP1 - to be released later this year) and then you do
not have to learn whole new languague. But there is also good chance you will
find your existing C++ source code not working any more with new compiler,
since VC6 does not actually implement C++ as it is defined in ISO standard
(VC6 was released before the standard, and standard is already 8 years old),
while VC8 is pretty good at implementing almost all ISO standard requirements.
This means that source code that was invalid or nonportable from the ISO C++
standard point of view, BUT was accepted by VC6 and produced programs that
(somehow) did what you expected them to do, might be refused by VC8 or produce
programs that crash. There are some wonderful books on standard C++ , I
heartily recommend all three parts of "Exceptional C++ " by Herb Sutter AND
third edition of "Effective C++" by Scott Meyers. You will also benefit from
books by Dewhurst and Wilson, and some good language reference will be
probably handy too - "C++ Primer" (4th edition) by Lippman, Lajoie and Moo is
the one I recommend. Oh, and you definitely want good C++ library reference -
Josuttis is the one to buy.
B.